Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22Invalid+store+category+name...
Some weird personalization thing? Interested in seeing what others see when they click that link...
Rather strange to localize results so much (especially when the alternatives are showing many results vs. showing no results)
Also, that accusation was purely a PR play by Google that IMO Bing refuted convincingly: http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-ac...
Bing said they were using internet explorer to monitor users's activity and copy search results. They're still copying Google search results, just doing it through IE.
I wonder why you don't get the same result in DDG since they are supposed to be pulling results from Bing (that 1 results is from April 5th, so not very recent)?
Using Google, I only get 2 results, so it is not much better...
The results were all on eBay's developer forums, maybe their robots file only allows google?
One advantage to DuckDuckGo is that when searching it was fairly easy to flip and try google with !g and bing with !b after getting no results on DDG.*
It would be nice if bing/google got that feature since it's really handy, and it would be exceedingly nice if they all got the ability to add custom user defined !bang commands.
*However, annoyingly, there was a bug on ddg on iPhone that would clear the search input box when it was clicked to add !g then another error when clicking in the location bar to add the !g that the '"invalid store category name" !g' query was no longer editable instead it was the URL of the encrypted Google search making it difficult to remove the !g and add the !b.
It's pretty easy to check: https://forums.developer.ebay.com/robots.txt
Sitemap: /sitemap.xml
User-Agent: sitebot
Disallow: /
User-Agent: *
Disallow: /accounts/
Disallow: /users/
Disallow: /revisions/
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /*sort=newest
Disallow: /*sort=hottest
Disallow: /*sort=votes
Disallow: /commands/
Disallow: /badges/
Disallow: /comments
Disallow: /storage/
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Invalid+store+category+name&t=hf&i...
It popped right up on DuckDuckGo.
I admit I revert to Google for some searches, but 99%+ of the time DuckDuckGo works great.
I think the real difference between the searches are Google looks at he context per user. They have the most data and thus the best searches. At the same time I view that as a threat to sovereignty of nation(s), so for me avoiding Google is worth almost any cost.
I would rather is respond with “I don’t know but I can search the web of you’d like” or something like that. It’s especially useless while driving.
At this point I wish I could turn off safari results altogether.
I don't think it'll actually happen, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched.
Tsignal [1] claims to be building their own index, which if they are would mean there was a third index to choose from.
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/31/deepsearch_tsignal/
Another area where table stakes are incredibly high is geo (maps).
What’s going to kill you is ranking (especially in the tail) and keeping the index fresh, including the tail. Ranking requires human input. Keeping it fresh requires some non-trivial effort in the crawler too. And then there’s also serving all of it at 1M QPS, as a prerequisite for creating enough ad revenue to sustain the effort. That requires predictive caching. As a result you get a couple thousand people working on the thing, each pulling down about $400k on average when you total everything up. That’s $800M right off the bat, unless you cut corners like Bing (cleverly) did by stealing your competitors clicks as weak relevance supervision.
Being super pedantic, Apple doesn't care about anything, just like a company can't care... but I think it's safe to say that it's not last on the list of things they prioritize.
I've never used an iPhone, but I'm glad Apple put their foot down. The government is a terrible custodian of slippery slopes, don't give them any more.
Except the human cost and resulting PR nightmare if a terrorist attack happened that they could have in principle prevented (e.g. if the terrorist had collaborators, and information on the phone helped find them).
> I don't think this was a particularly difficult thing to do.
Very easy to say when you're not the one responsible for that $800bn company ... if you're a decent human being, you're probably not worried about your own wealth in that situation, but the livelihoods of all your employees and other entities that rely on you. Every decision carries weight. The value of your company is not always empowering; the higher its value, the larger the consequences if you're wrong.
Apple is not made of decent human beings and do not care for employees that much. Just look at how their devices are manufactured.
Apple cares about profits and money, just look at their tax evasion schemes and how they store their cash overseas waiting for a tax break to bring it back to the US.
This just isn’t true. Most people are decent human beings. Employees of Apple are no different. Don’t box them in as “the other.” They’re just people.
> Just look at how their devices are manufactured.
This is a valid criticism. Also an industry wide problem. Apple is very transparent with problems in their supply chain, even when it reflects badly on them. This is a problem we have to confront, but it’s far larger than Apple alone.
> tax evasion
There’s a difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. It’s not good practice for a company to pay more tax than they need to. The appropriate remedy to this is legislation.
> Sorry if I bust your little bubble of joy
You didn’t, so it’s okay :)
This doesn't reflect well on anyone involved, but it is pretty much the way things are.
Apple does, in fact, do better than most of the rest on (for want of a better term) progressive issues like this. They were leaders on environmental issues and is willing to fight with shareholders over them[1] (ditto accessibility, presumably as an example of other efforts not directly-ROI impacting).
Manufacturing is tough to change. Even with Apple-style money, creating the sort of hub of interlocking businesses that are needed to fuel large-scale manufacturing businesses takes decades and some secret-sauce we don't understand - Shenzhen wasn't built overnight. And if Apple did somehow build a shiny new manufacturing hub somewhere in Kansas, the products it built would be likely be substantially more expensive.
That said, Apple is building a US factory. See what happens. It might not change anything. Perhaps you believe they should put more money in to the effort. But assuming they aren't doing anything is incorrect.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-versus-a-conservativ...
[0] "Apple had asked the F.B.I. to issue its application for the tool under seal. But the government made it public, prompting Mr. Cook to go into bunker mode to draft a response" : https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/how-tim-cook-b...
[1] : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-20/the-behin...
Also the PR boost from this is far from free. Aside from the huge cost of engineering all this security into the system, to the point of delaying major new features by years in order to get the security architecture into place, its also costing them a chunk of the Chinese market. The Chinese government is absolutely not happy with this sort of consumer privacy stance and has been cracking down on security services and features on the iOS platform. They’ve banned VPN software and features, banned communications apps, even screwing with Apple by barring the iTunes media business, and stalling Apple Pay.
Going up against the US government arguably does Apple no harm, but setting themselves directly at odds with core Chinese government political goals such as pervasive monitoring and censorship of all forms of communications is going to be a real battle.
If they just wanted a marketing advantage, they’d just build in some anti add-tracking features and be done. Security and privacy is so appallingly bad on Android even a perfunctory effort there would put them miles ahead at little cost. The extreme lengths they’re going to goes way beyond anything remotely necessary for a marketing advantage.
Finally, Apples stance on accessibility shows just how serious they are about serving their users. The cost of their accessibility efforts must be dramatically higher than any possible financial or marketing benefit and they’ve been doing it for decades across platforms to little or no fanfare.
Also I don't see a direct relation between their accessibility efforts and efforts on privacy. That way, we can link anything with anything else.
The link with accessibility is just evidence that when Apple says they do something to benefit their users because it’s their right thing to do and not for financial gain, that they have history on that to back them up.
They were probably just defending their business model, as a hardware seller the minute it is known worldwide that the US government has a backdoor in their flagship device, apple is over.
The fact that they market privacy and security is a good thing if you care about those things. Previously you were just relying on their business model being different from Google's or Microsoft's, but now they're on the record (repeatedly) which also sets them up for a PR crisis if they back down from those positions.
There are plenty of Apple haters that would jump at the opportunity.
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2016/03/17/opinion-apple-pr-allegations/
Try using the official apple statement[1] next time which clearly states that it was a targeted attack and not a breach leading to a full leak.
Of course it was a privacy issue (iphone automatically uploading pictures online) and a weak security design (no 2FA, no email warning of access from an unknown IP, no browser authentication, etc.). There is stronger security on accessing your humble bundle game library.
Also there was a serious icloud vulnerability allowing for bruteforce attack and bypassing account lockout restrictions and secondary authentication[2][3], that it was not used for the fappening does not make it less real.
[1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2014/09/02Apple-Media-Advisor...
[2]: https://github.com/Pr0x13/iDict
[3]:http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/31749/hacking/idict-hack...
This difference is deeper than business models. Compare Google's Hands Free with Apple Pay for example: the same business model (collecting interchange fees) but Apple's approach preserves user's privacy at the cost of some convenience, while Google's is arguably more convenient but informs both Google and the merchant as soon as you enter into the store.
I think this is less about privacy and more about control. Only Apple apps are allowed to track Apple users.
Can Apple phones only call or text other Apple phones? Where is the 'buddy list'/graph/contact database that can't be easily ported to another social network?
Google is the hugest ad network based on gobbling all privacy from everywhere while Apple is an overpriced hardware seller, of course it will do better on privacy than google. But this does not make apple a privacy oriented company.
Having been a *nix admin for a hair under 20 years, I prefer only Free & OpenBSD to macOS.
It's overpriced if you could make more revenue by lowering the price.
To me, it’s: “a company whose profit incentives are aligned with their user’s privacy.”
You can go on and on about whether they’re “truly” privacy-oriented but to me that’s a meaningless distinction; a company’s profit incentives are the very definition of what they’re “oriented” towards.
they didn't offer this option I had to suggest it but basically I'll have to reformat the drive before taking it in for service.
I've managed to get this concept across to authorised repairers who don't speak english (and I don't speak Thai).
Having said that, prior to my recent visit (failing mbp fan) my trips had always been for failing/failed discrete graphics (about 5 trips on 2 different generations of 17" mbp) so a reinstall is inevitable because making macOS work properly after a mainboard replacemnt is more work than reinstalling from scratch
- Boot into single user mode...
# mount -uw /
# rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
# reboot
Reboot the machine and it walks you through a re-run of setting up the OS X set up assistant, which allows creation of an admin account.
FileVault 2 encrypts your entire boot volume, so there's no separate encryption of your home folder going on. If you give someone any of the passwords that unlock the boot volume, they could get all of the data off it (by using target disk mode or booting to single user mode, etc.)
Can't wait until they build this into the auto-correction...
You need to change it now.
Doing it on-device has other advantages besides privacy (e.g. it works without an Internet connection).
> Apple's directions aren't as good as they could be because Maps randomly segments trips and masks its users identity.
Could you explain that? I didn't really understand what you mean by segmenting the trips and why that should masks the user identity.
> Apple's App Store revenues are lower because they limit how apps can identify users.
You're comparing them to Google here. One could ask why apps can identify their users at all?
A trip from your house to the sex doll shop
vs.
A trip from your house to the busy thoroughfare a mile away + trip from busy thoroughfare to the next town over + trip from next town to sex doll shop
Having worked there for a time, in my opinion privacy is deeply ingrained in the company culture. Much easier solutions are avoided if they sacrifice the customer's privacy. Further, it seems many of the decisions are made to minimize the amount of information required at each step to the absolute essentials. These concerns permeate internal technical discussions -- it is not just marketing materials.
They also have pretty extensive privacy materials on their website [2, 3]. While that may not be useful to the HN crowd, hopefully it makes privacy more accessible to some segment of their customers who actually read it.
References: [1] PDF warning: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.02874.pdf [2] https://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/ [3] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
Apple doesn't need to collect anything at all for privacy to be a concern. The iPhone stores as much of your information as any other phone by another maker. Which is why Apple's devices are notable for privacy-minded folks, since their hardware and software make it much more difficult to crack into the device than with other phones.
There is nothing "magical", as you say, about how Apple does this. The difference is that, for whatever reason, they do in fact seem to care more about privacy than other companies. Whether that is driven by market sentiment or not does not change this fact.
Not sure where this idea came from, but this is so far from the truth it isn't even funny.
1) Focus on encryption everywhere.
2) Privacy controls built into iOS way sooner than Android ever had.
3) Fought (and won) against the FBI demanding a universal backdoor.
4) Developed on-device machine learning tech, even if it isn't as powerful as the collective, it protects users privacy.
5) Fully detailed white papers around iMessage security and encryption.
... and the list goes on. Saying things like that first sentence is just gross negligence to discussing and reporting on facts here on HN.
2) anybody will look good compared to the worst offender
3) because it threatened their business model and profit (also see this[1])
4) I don't get how this protects privacy, not destroying something is only protection in mafia's lingo.
and the debunking list goes on too.
The idea that Apple does not care about user privacy come from the fact that apple does not care user privacy (also US laws such as patriot act and edward snowden revelations). The just like to keep it in their own hands because apple wants to keep control and customers locked in due to being a hardware seller.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-20/the-behin...
Not collecting data in the first place is a pretty big part of respecting user privacy.
Numerous parts of the iCloud-related tech stack in iOS/macOS devices do peer-to-peer syncing between account-linked devices specifically so that data isn't sent to Apple servers. That isn't something you just do by chance and then capitalise on later.
> many of the things they have done have been weak, easily exploitable, or hacked
[citation needed]
It's not just skin-deep.
What specific things are you referring to?
Well, except for the whole switching-to-google thing..
> As is expected with Apple now, searches and results are all encrypted and anonymized and cannot be attributed to any individual user. Once you click on the ‘Show Google results’ link, of course, you’re off to Google and its standard tracking will apply. Clicking directly on a website result will take you straight there, not through Google.
Not perfect, but better than just opening Google directly.
They are still exposing their users to Google's shenanigans...
Considering DDG is a wrapper for Bing/Yahoo it would be quite the opposite.
You can test that they are doing that by searching for something directly on Google, and then searching for it on Siri. If the results page differ, there is a chance that Siri is not passing along state information to Google.
Search engine providers provide results as json page without decoration. Everything about the user experience is controlled by the code converting that json into display. This is what DDG does.
Everything about the user experience is controlled by the 'front end' which is making a call to the search engine service on its 'back end'.
The only difference here is how much tracking/PII is part of the request that is sent to the search engine. I was saying you can test that by comparing Siri results with those obtained through a web browser which is forwarding cookies full of PII and tracking information.
Edit: Apparently they use yahoo and bing as a source for some of their results then filter and combine it with other things: https://web.archive.org/web/20150124074006/https://duck.co/h...
It will probably not happen as it seems to me ddg is not for sale.
This is mandatory by law for every company operating in the US.
Had this privacy weakness not been in place, it would have been much more difficult to get the pictures. Probably would not have happened as it would have required getting close enough to the devices themselves.
If you enable it in the iCloud settings...
In search industry, you can probably spend 1x time and resources to reach 90% Google's relevance score. However, to reach 95% or more, you probably need 100x in time and resources.
E.g., NLP in query understanding; Knowledge Graph in webpage understanding; Much larger corpus; Location awareness, etc.
Simple searches you would do from your phone would be/are neck and neck between Google and Bing, where they diverge a bit are more complex/technical queries.
That said, it doesn’t use AMP (not relevant here) and its map and images offering is excellent.
They can't start small, meaning the need users to train the SE? What else can it be. Of course they can't put live a horrible version...
I use iOS, but I very much prefer using Google Maps to Apple Maps: mainly for the Google Account integration, and it feels like they provide more information (shop/restaurant hours, street-view) even though Apple Maps provides almost the same level of detail. On my desktop I use a Google Maps and the map design is the same so familiarity helps, whereas Apple Maps is strictly off-limits for Windows and Linux users.
Given that Apple and Microsoft are no-longer competing in the mobile space (MSFT finally admitted Windows Phone's failure earlier this year) maybe we can see Apple choosing MSFT/Bing services over Google? Apple could save a lot of money by switching to Bing Maps, and with a re-skin no-one would notice!
https://here.com/en/products-services/consumer-app/here-wego...
Btw. HERE is owned by Audi and some other car companies.
Same goes for Google Maps as well, which still don't have speed limits available which is kind of critical when driving through unfamiliar streets.
Apple might release the search engine to just a xx% at a time and rotate to see /get data to tweak it (if it's feasible) or make Apple Search default but give option to switch for a few years.
Search is like maps, a core product.
Even in the US, there are a lot of missing POI on Apple Maps. Parks in particular are woefully underrepresented.
Especially tube stations are much more visible on Google maps and I often use tube stations for orientation. On Apple Maps stations are very light color and hard to spot. The same with other landmarks.
I don't understand why they don't do some user testing and find out what UX practices are the reason why Google Maps is so much easier to use and replicate that. They've had years do do this.
Both Google and Apple buy basic maps info from third party and the quality depends a lot on the deal they get. For example it is not possible to save area offline in Google Maps for Thailand due to some legal issues I guess.
Google has much more user engagement and stars and recommendations give Google a big advantage.
I occasionally open Google Maps because I want my search results to include only things on the same continent as the one I live on, and I literally cannot figure out how to get the damn app to give me directions, then I give up and go back to Apple Maps, because while search is filled with nonsense, once I’ve found my destination, it’s non-search UX doesn’t make me want to scream in irritation and confusion.
Possibly worth noting, if you’ve never actually used Apple Maps, you might not know that if you change your routing to transit from the default (car), it will change its POI highlights to emphasize transit stops at the expense of businesses. Might improve your experience, if you felt like giving it a shot.
It's odd - Google does have a great mapping product: it's called Waze. That's great on a phone! But Google Maps? Christ... it's so bad. All of their iPhone apps are downright user-hostile but Maps is the worst.
Waze is an independent company.
That said, there’s a lot to be said for concentrating on strengths.
Also they probably lack the skill to do this.
all solved by money, virtually unlimited money as Apple makes $45+ billion in income each year and has some $200+ billion in bank. They can bid against google for google's top search engineers and Google will run out of money first..
There is a lot of money in search, maybe not as much as Google is making now (90% of their page is ads) but still a lot money, more than enough to make the investment worthwhile.
So I agree. I don't see how Yahoo double or triple spending what Bing spent helping. Especially if they start out in 2017. On the other hand, if they work with Bing and have some sort of search engine Joint Venture with money and smarts poured in, maybe they can put a dent into search. I doubt Apple who care about profits so much would be down for such an endeavor.
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 100 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.
But, my god, would it kill them to implement a few different search engines and let us choose?
And if you revoke any permission to any Google apps, all of them will refuse to do shit, and you can’t even place calls without giving Google access to your location, body sensors, bluetooth, etc.
Now they are over $4B/year buying traffic, its pretty crazy.
Search needs to be fast. When you click search you want the page to then pop up with your 10 blue links. The physics of light suggest that your index files all need to be close together, both physically and with high bandwidth to support a couple of round trips for distributing the query and returning the results.
While I learned how search worked while I worked at Google, it was a brilliant engineer named Keith Peterson at Blekko (now at Google :-) who taught me some of the more subtle issues involved in balancing indexes, shards, and query processing in order to maximize utilization.
That requirement of closeness and high bandwidth, makes federation hard. Even forwarding a search to Bing (via the Yahoo APIs) to check for additional "long tail" results really challenges your ability to deliver fast results.
Unlike CMSes where they could run independently in parallel, search is a 'talk to everyone all the time' sort of problem, you don't know apriori which indices may have relevant documents (which is why it is called "search" ;-))