> and having the UX for that be monopolized by one player is leaving a huge use case for your phone in the hands of your biggest competitor.
This makes me wonder: where is "Apple search"?
This makes me wonder: where is "Apple search"?
For example, see Safari Suggestions - https://imgur.com/a/uyd20c6
Wait, isn't Spotlight the name for Apple's local search (and maybe it's now used for whatever kind of unified search iOS likes to do?), whereas Safari's feature of treating things entered into the address bar that don't look like URLs as search queries is just a common redirection feature (analogous to the Firefox Awesomebar/Omnibar/whatever it's called now) that has nothing in particular to do with Spotlight?
I would argue that my pushing for more prolific relationships with developers, you sort of chip away at this competitive threat with more specific, vertical-oriented searching experiences.
Example: I'm searching for restaurants nearby, I _could_ open Google, or I could leverage the Yelp/OpenTables of the app store.
Same thing for travel - flights, hotels, etc. all have apps that could, in theory, better serve the user than the catch-all "Google Search" app.
Maps is a slightly different beast; it's almost as ubiquitous as the "Phone" app itself .
But I would be very suprised, if Apple had not a team working on search algorithms, so they could start a search engine of their own, if the need is there.
Anything it can't do directly it punts to Bing.