Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine | Hacker News Reader

Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine

coywolf.news

197 pointsziodave188 comments

I hope they do – Google is far, far, far too dominant in this space, and small-ish incumbents don't really stand a chance. If they keep up their privacy-friendly stance, this could really become something neat. I'd like for at least a little bit of competition in the gatekeeper-for-human-knowledge space.

I honestly don't like my search results mingled with the advertising industry: there is bias in all results, you can't trust in information if it is not impartial. People used to create content to advance knowledge, but the amount of crap nowadays motivated my money (even if it is good quality) concerns me about the education of the human civilization as a whole. "The love of money (greed) is the root of all evil": Google, Amazon, Facebook all are already deep down this hole. Apple might be the only company that still has some decency left.

Agreed totally

there are parts of Microsoft that are also very honest

For that matter there are even divisions within Google that want to do good stuff

However, Amazon, Facebook and 90% of Google are basically just the precursors of The Matrix now

Their ideal is that all people are mindless zombies, living on universal basic income, like vegatbles/animals, and spending all their money on AmazooogleBook

I think there's a great opportunity now for a new search engine that evaluates the general spamminess of a site, and then punishes sites that link to spammy sites.

This has already been in place for a long time. So much so in fact that you used to be able to attack a sites rankings by creating, or stealing, many low quality sites and publishing links on them to the victim's site. The victim, if they were lucky enough to know about theses things, would then have to create a Search Console account (for Google) and declare that the sites have nothing to do with them and Google should ignore them for ranking purposes.

These days there are more attributes to add subtlety to your outbound links of you want the search engines to take you seriously.[1] I'm sure other search engines make similar judgements based on them.

[1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en

I was aware of that, and it's exactly backwards. Google is punishing sites for having low-quality sites point to them (even if they have no control of them). What I'm suggesting is the opposite, that a site be punished for its outward links, if they point to low-quality sites.

(One could do this separately for various kinds of undesirable content and let the users choose whether they want to avoid spam, hate speech, plagiarized content, nsfw content, misinformation, Rick Astley videos, and so on.)

Punishing slow complicated sites and sites with annoying newsletter or cookie notifications would be nice too. Promote simple, fast readable sites with no dark patterns.

There's plenty of room for improvement in search. DDG is already edging ahead because it searches for what I want, not what it thinks I want.

I’d be interested if I could alternate which sort of weights to apply-like you and sibling comment suggest.

Google already does this. It's an NP hard problem for sure.

I wonder if there'd be any value in a search engine that recognized popular third-party ad networks and simply did not add to its index any page which includes them. (Or, at least, provided users an option to filter those results out.)

It's a constant high stakes cat and mouse game though. A good idea for sure but the ad networks will expend incredible effort to avoid the filters

How would a search engine that doesn't have pretty much any major publication and a lot of content-driven websites gain any traction at all? There is so much it couldn't find, and while you may be fine with that, I doubt many people would be.

Buy books then.

> "The love of money (greed) is the root of all evil": Google, Amazon, Facebook all are already deep down this hole. Apple might be the only company that still has some decency left.

While I largely agree with your impressions, I find it ironic to see Apple mentioned in that context. They are the third most valuable company on Earth, worth about $1.3 trillion: https://fxssi.com/top-10-most-valuable-companies-in-the-worl...

There is a difference in how you make that money: the end does not justify the means. You can become rich by righteous means (although harder). Apple is not perfect, but at least for now, they did not sell out yet. Microsoft is a close 2nd, after some redemption lol

Don't forget that Apple is a multinational megacorp, and is user centric only when it suits them. Consider Tim Cook speaking at the conference used by the Chinese government to promote internet regulation, saying that the vision of the conference is one that Apple shares, and also the handing over of user data to Chinese servers (encrypted, but still out of their control).

They are currently the most valuable company in the world: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/apple-now-wor...

So the 2T dollars company is the decent one?

Maybe they should build their own indexing backend and buy up DuckDuckGo for the frontend/user base/etc.

Apple doesn't buy companies for their user base.

And while DDG's front end was innovative 20 years ago when Google did it, it's pretty basic (which I love) and shouldn't be too difficult to copy.

The big challenge with search is the index.

I spent a lot of time digging through all the oft-mentioned search engines here, and the interfaces between G, B, DDG and the others (Runnaroo, Startpage, etc) are all surprisingly similar. And they're all pretty unappealing (to me).

Visualizations of results have improved so much in the last 10+ years, hopefully "visualization of search results" can also be advanced.

As the creator of the upstart search engine on that list (Runnaroo), I do try to differentiate it from the the search providers, but there is a risk of being too different from what people expect.

Take a look at the below search [0], it is distinctly different from the SERPs of the other search engines for the same query, but you are correct that we still focus on just listing information vs. visualizing it. Maybe something for us to explore.

From a search visualization perspective, check out Carrot2 [1] for something more innovative. Swisscows [2] also has some nice visualization elements.

[0] https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=full+text+search+php

[1] https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=carrot2

[2] https://swisscows.com/

I don't think the index is the challenge. Anyone with enough machines and gigabits can index a big enough portion of "the web". The real difficult part is ranking and understanding web pages themselves.

> The real difficult part is ranking and understanding web pages themselves.

This is what I was referring to.

Why would they? If Apple makes it the default search engine on iOS they immediately dwarf the ddg user base. And the front end is the easy part of a search engine.

UX is what has always set Apple apart. I don't see any universe where they would off-load that to a 3rd party.

What we really need is a spider/database that's publicly-funded like PBS, with an open API that anyone can write search engines on top of. That's the way forward for search innovation.

For me, this is the big reason to celebrate this. A duopoly in search is at least marginally better than a monopoly. If Maps is any indication, people will bitch about it for a year or so, but after 2 years, 80%+ of users will be using it.

Personally, I'd love if Apple put this out there ad-free. Getting clean, honest search results was why I switched to Google to start with. Google's current platform where almost all search results above the fold are paid for is what we switched to Google to get away from. DDG is piles better in this regard now.

Apple maps is probably a good example because outside the US it is still useless, 8 years later. I don't expect an Apple search engine to be any different.

In the UK it’s broadly as effective as a mapping tool, in my experience. Better in many ways, even; Google Maps is rammed full of adverts to the point it’s actually kind of distracting.

That’s not to mention the desktop app - it’s a step change in performance versus Google Maps being a sluggish browser experience.

In many parts of the world Apple maps is incapable to even give directions. I kid not. Go to e.g. Colombia and try to make directions between two places. It won't let you.

It just seems that Apple doesn't invest much in maps if they don't see a profit motive. They are very much capable of competing with Google Maps but they choose to build a more limited product that only works well in certain parts of the world where there are high concentrations of iPhone users. That's fine but it's not what I want in a maps app, I want consistency.

Depends where you are, I guess? I'd've thought NZ's little backwater roads would be useless still, but Apple Maps has been fine for me for a long time now. I still occasionally use Google (Apple doesn't integrate cycling information where I live), but it's very very rare these days.

NZ coverage is pretty decent in Apple Maps. I went to the Far North a few weeks back. Was staying with family. They just moved into a new house in a new area--maybe say 6 months to a year ago. Apple Maps had their address, whereas their street was nowhere to be found in Google Maps (just an outline which I assume they derived from satellite images?). Overall I find both have gaps--so neither have perfect coverage. As a Android owner I use Google Maps, and my husband has an Apple and uses Apple Maps. We consult with each other's maps on a regular basis since we don't really trust either!

I switched to Apple Maps a few months ago and haven't run into any issues using it in various cities in Germany.

The main missing feature for me used to be public transit routing, but they added that a few updates ago and it generates pretty much identical itineraries to Google Maps.

It doesn't seem to have cycling directions in Munich, that's a pity, lots of nice spots there you can't very well get to by car or public transport

Is only just now adding cycling directions in limited places. One of the big places (IMO big) they've really lagged Google.

could you source 80%+ users using apple maps? that is simply an unbelievable number.

for me, if this follows the trajectory of apple maps, i will never have any reason to consider using apple search

Article about Google Maps usage on phones in the UK collapsing as soon as Apple Maps was launched - from 2013.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/26/apple-map...

Apple Maps used on iOS 3x as often as Google Maps, from 2015.

https://9to5mac.com/2015/12/07/apple-maps-usage-numbers/

I can’t source the 80% but it’s probably not far off that on iOS these days. Even so, Google Maps still has about 2/3 market share overall. It dominates on Android, and a significant number of iPhone users still use it. However for Apple Maps on iOS if it’s the default, it just has to be good enough and most people will stick with it.

thank you, pretty impressive. sounds reasonable for them to think they can accomplish the same with search, then

> Personally, I'd love if Apple put this out there ad-free.

Apple isn't a charity.

They aren't, but they make a decent amount of money from other things.

Exactly. They do things that make money. This removes a big source of money, adds a big cost, and worsens user experience.

I'd love it if they made Apple Music and Apple TV free too.

I could see apple adding “Apple search” as a value add for a subscription service which includes music/tv...

Apple implements things which differentiates the iPhone and makes the experience better. If they see search as a way of doing that, they might well do it. There are a lot of services which are accessible to iPhone users which are completely free for years. The App Store, Find My iPhone, Find My Friends, the iCloud APIs (not the storage you buy for backup, but the API servers used by 3rd party developers). Maps is the obvious/ big one which is extremely expensive to offer.

They also offer content services like Music, TV+, and News+... services which they pay 3rd parties to use or develop content for. These are all quite distinct from Apple most other Apple services in that they are about the content someone else creates. Search definitely doesn’t fit into the same bucket as Apple Music and Apple TV+.

Apple News and the App Store itself are the only parts of Apple which get some revenue from advertising platforms.

If they see search the way they see maps, it could be free. It’s possible they will push an advertising platform with search. I don’t think it’s anywhere near a slam dunk though, and it’s possible it will have a small advertising load to support some costs like the App Store does.

Apple doesn’t need Search to be a profit center. They might put advertising on the platform (in fact I’d say it’s likely). But they don’t need it to look like Google’s pile of adverts with a few organic results at the bottom.

Apple's choice for Maps was to pay Google or some other service a per user fee to provide turn by turn directions, lose all their users to Android (which had that feature for free), or make their own maps. They didn't provide it for free to differentiate -- the experience was laughably bad at launch. They provided it for free because their cash cow was about to keel over.

> Apple isn't a charity.

I don't necessarily expect this will be the case, I was just saying that I would very much prefer it. Apple doesn't charge for or have advertising on quite a few services so it's a crap shoot which way they will go. But if they want large-scale adoption, they need a big differentiation and zero adverts is a good start.

I do doubt Apple would launch a search page that is as buries organic results below the fold the way Google does now though.

For me, the clean look DDG sports is Apple's big competition at this point. If they don't deliver as-good-as-or-better results and interface as DDG, then I'll stick with DDG as my default (and Google as my "I can't find it on DDG" backup).

Google is also really bad these days. Sure they have impressive trivia features but searching for solid, reliable information is really crappy. The first page is always blogspam that seems like it's generated by a AI or someone who's being paid $5/h to write filler that doesn't quite count as SEO.

The only way I can find (non-programming) information that is 50% reliable rather than 10% reliable is to append "reddit" to any queries.

If it's anything like Siri, I'll pass.

Went back to the iOS ecosystem last year after being in Android/Google land for the past decade. I used Google Assistant on a daily basis easily 20-30 times and 99% of the time it got me what I needed. Siri can't even do a 1/10th of the things I used GA for, and that 1/10th that it does, it does so poorly that I don't even bother anymore.

What sort of tasks were you using GA for?

I use mine to turn a smart plug on or off, and set a timer when cooking.

Nothing else I've ever wanted to do via my Pixel 2 is reliable enough to waste time trying.

Sending a WhatsApp while driving is the one thing I keep wanting to do, but it's hopeless.

Basic things that I feel like should be trivial for Siri to handle. The biggest issue by far is how bad the voice dictation is for sending messages. It almost never gets it right.

I'm not opposed to an Apple search engine if it works. Would happily use it. But the way Siri has stagnated doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence for me.

That's odd. I use Siri with CarPlay in my car and a very low-quality mic from an aftermarket headunit, and it's able to capture probably 80%, if not more, of my voice-to-texts when I'm trying to text people hands-free.

The only real issue Siri has there more often is when I ask it a more complicated query for playing music a certain non-trivial way, like "Play music by X from their latest album" or similar.

A lot of it comes down to your accent. It seems like Siri is trained well for a very particular voice, and if you fall in that range it works great.

If you fall outside that range... It might get one in three words correct.

For example, the memorable time I was letting my boss know I was running late because of what Siri chose to transcribe as "sick cunts".

(It was my children who were unwell.)

> But the way Siri has stagnated

Well, maybe most people just don't find it that useful, as an idea, rather than as an implementation? I don't personally find myself wanting to talk to my phone, and I certainly don't want smart speakers listening to everything I say and giving it to intelligence agencies or whatever.

Personally I agree. But other people are happy with that interface, so IMO Siri could have been a game changer. It had the potential to eat a big part of the web and give Apple dominance over it.

Failing to take advantage of that early lead has been one of the biggest failures of the Cook era.

I suspect the search engine effort is actually part of making Siri better. To do that they need the data to analyse, which means scraping and indexing, which is search. Might as well wraps that in a UI and nail two birds with one stone.

Siri often fails even switching lights on and off, it can be very idiosyncratic in how it does and interprets stuff

It also sometimes takes 10+ seconds to respond when I'm at home with a great internet connection. You'd think Apple would have that down by now...

I asked Siri to turn on my lights today. I was told that I did not have any lights set up. Then I rephrased my request to turn on the lights. "Coming right up".

Of course, there's also the regular "I'm sorry, but some of your devices did not respond" response from my Watch, forcing me to issue the same command to my iPhone for it to work.

I also get this one with HomeKit all the time!

The underlying implementation must have basically no error case handling, because half the time I open the controls I'll get "device not responding".

Or perhaps it throws errors far too often, because often I will ask for it to do something, it will do it, and then claim than an error occurred.

I ask my google assistant random questions. "How long does Orange Juice last in the fridge?", "What is ____". I'm pretty sure it just uses Google Search's featured snippets, but it's usually correct and understands me. Like the other poster, I wouldn't bother asking Siri the same questions.

Adding stuff to lists is definitely super useful when you remember something as you're cooking or hanging around.

I used to use GA to set reminders, then Google killed that for paid users for some reason.

Yes, this annoys me so much still. THAT was my one killer use for it.

The effort of migrating an email address I've used for over a decade just to get this one feature back doesn't quite make sense, but I'm considering it...

[Disclaimer: I work on Google Assistant. I just started though; I'm much more of a user than an engineer at this point.]

I use it a lot for media stuff. "Play <song> by <band>", "Watch <TV show> on Netflix", etc. My wife is very fond of the combined alarm + YouTube functionality: "Wake me up at 7:00 AM with deep meditation music". My toddler has learned to say "Hey Google watch videos of dump trucks". I use it a bunch for basic productivity stuff too: "What's my agenda for today?" "What's my agenda for tomorrow?" "Check my e-mail".

I have a lot of Google Nest Minis and Hubs throughout the house and love the experience. There isn't much it can't do and I'm constantly impressed by how well the GA can match intent to action.

My toddler can’t turn Google Home on. He have probably tried over 300 times the last year. Seems like it is not trained on enough child voices in foreign languages. I had to record my voice for him on the iPad, so he can use it. Just with the short “Hey Google”, in Norwegian.

He pronounces it correct. The only difference is the high pitch/tone of a child.

I've had reliability problems with my toddler as well, and I suspect it's the treble voices. My primary device (for him) is an LG TV, though, which is push-to-talk. As long as he holds the mic up to his mouth properly it'll usually get what he's saying. (It probably also helps that he's speaking American English).

I don't think my Nest Hub Max or Google Home Mini has ever caught the "Hey Google" when he says it, but it doesn't really matter for our use-cases with him.

I wonder if it's by design? If I was building a home assistant product, one of the cases I'd build defensively against would be kids saying "hey google delete all emails"...

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but when Alexa/Google/Siri started coming out in home-accessible versions, I did think there was a beat missing in terms of recognising a voice-print (if such a thing is possible) or similarly requiring some form of authentication.

Do you really want your toddler to be able to turn it on though?

My 4 year old daughter can get Home to play her favorite rhymes and cartoon on our TV using chromecast. We are non-native English speakers(desi) and dont use English as our primary language at home

On what planet is talking to your phone easier or faster than taking 2 seconds to tap the your email app and skim the headers O_o

Some phones and earbuds have dedicated buttons for this, making it faster to use that than switch between apps.

On my Pixel 4 it's just "squeeze to talk", which is super convenient (and also doesn't interfere with the "Hey Google" on my smart speaker). It's marginally faster to open e-mail by voice than by tapping, although not hugely so.

Does it need to be faster or does it just need to feel faster?

Google Assistant really wow'ed me when, to settle a dinner table debate, I asked "Ok Google, on the TV show 'Friends', what was the name of the game show Joey hosted?" Before that, I'd never engaged with this device, which we got for free as part of a promo, and which sat on our bookshelf doing nothing.

It truly amazes me that GA is able to give a relevant response here. First, Joey never hosts it, he just auditions for it. Second, GA reads a paragraph or so from IMDB's summary of the one episode where this happens.

Very impressive, IMO

(It was called 'Bamboozled')

Google is surprisingly good at answering questions like that. The rise of voice assistant really has pushed them into improving their knowledge graph and condensing search results into a single sentence. The conciseness has been getting even better too. I notice often it'll actually give a one word answer, followed by a 1-2 sentence context.

For example, I asked "what kind of soap can I use on my cats" and it gave a one word "castile soap" followed by the sentence. (I actually Googled it, and it's like that on Search too).

It's super useful when you quickly want an answer to something you were wondering. A nice touch is also how it sends the link to your phone to look deeper into it.

These are things that seem obscure, but thousands of people are probably asking already. Try asking it something that would easily be answered by a traditional keyword-based search engine, like how to install the alsa-firmware package in Ubuntu. The entire result set will be about alsa-firmware-loaders.

I mean, assistants are basically voice UI's for any service.

Google has a huge knowledge graph so naturally they'd be better at answering questions, but I think between Google Assistant and Alexa the race to win will come down to integrations/partnerships with third parties.

So Amazon, then.

>and which sat on our bookshelf doing nothing.

I seriously doubt it was doing nothing. I has been listening the entire time you had it connected. You might not have utilized it, but it has utilized you.

Yep. The GA is basically our household's sole interface for Netflix at this point, among other uses like lights and thermostat.

I use mine to set timers and "navigate to X"

Depends on the phone. Bought a Pixel 3a to use after I lost my Pixel 2 in a car accident. The 3a picks up way less than the 2. But honestly, using my Google Home is super pleasant.

"Hey Google, turn on the lights"

"Hey Google, good night" -> reads me my agenda, asks me for an alarm time

Wake up, walk to the bathroom, "Hey Google, play the Economist podcast" while I brush my teeth. "Hey google, shuffle my thumbs up playlist" as I walk to the shower.

"Hey Google, set a timer for x seconds" while I'm cooking.

Fantastic tool.

i've learned to use siri by knowing the select few commands it understands and memorizing the wording. modifying myself to conform to the tool.

This is interesting to me. As someone who works at Google, and is a huge Android fan (and Apple hater), I am constantly astounded at how bad Assistant seems to be for me, and how good Siri seems to be for my friends.

Maybe I just speak really unclearly? Unfortunately, basically all of my friends have iPhones (even at Google), so it's hard to know if it's just me.

Grass is always greener on the other side. If you used siri you would be confronted with the bad instead of only seeing the good (this goes for anything which you are not using)

As iPhone users, your friends probably have learned exactly what Siri is and is not capable of and only use it publicly for things they know Siri can handle. Privately, you’ve all seen how badly your phones’ assistants fail, but you’re only aware of the times Assistant has failed on you.

Very interesting. I can confirm the parent comment. I've got a kind of mumbling voice and am not a native English speaker, so Siri would not understand 60% of what I'm saying. While GA got everything I was saying every time, even when using a wired headset mic while riding a very noisy underground train.

I've got a Pixel 4 for work and an iPhone 8 for personal. (I work at Google now, but had a long stretch where I was trying to de-Googlify.) It's no comparison - Assistant seems way better than Siri. About the only advantage Siri has is in the personality department...she seems a bit nicer, while Assistant literally has the personality of a robot.

I'm a little surprised that Apple hasn't bought DuckDuckGo. Their privacy goals seem to mostly overlap and DuckDuckGo has really gotten good. Lately I've found them to be as good or better than Google for most technical or informational searches. The results are accurate and they seem to have less of a problem with bogus results from content scraping sites.

Google really does shine at location based searches though. If I'm looking for a physical place in any location or region, Google can be scary good (even when I misspell something).

A big part of what makes DDG great for me is that they are NOT owned by a mega corp.

Duck Duck Go is a reskin of Bing Search. It's not a real search engine in the 2020 meaning of the word.

Apple would be better off just using the Bing API too.

No, thanks.

Apple is notoriously horrible when it comes to localization: Apple Maps (localization, regional maps, regional traffic data, turn by turn), iOS supported languages, Siri supported languages, their new Apple Translate that only has 7-8 languages, Spotlight suggestions, etc.

They're also very slow to expand their services, I think Apple News still only supports 4 countries.

Just buy DuckDuckGo

ddg is 99% bing.

Man that 1% of icing is pretty amazing then.

Do you see large differences between ddg and bing? I get close to the same results on both sites especially for images

That icing is Yandex, so no thank you.

And by icing you mean Yandex, right?

Yeah, as a non US citizen, this annoys me. Every year Apple announce a new cool feature, but I won't be able to use it for years. Like a lot of the Maps features, the News app, the better predictive keyboard, etc.

Apple is the most valuable company in the world, they really have no excuse.

I mean they are doing something right if people are willingly buying their products while fully knowing they are deficient in features.

You can’t compare them to Google, almost everything they do is exclusive to the US. They seriously treat the rest of the world as an afterthought

Yep, they have the Designed for California mindset down.

Maybe Apple could use it to search for wherever their developer documentation went.

Scott Galloway talked about this in a recent Pivot Podcast. He predicts it will launch after the US DOJ announces anti-trust actions against Google. If they do it soon, Google will just point to Apple to say "We aren't the only game in town... this $2 trillion dollar company just launched a search engine on a few billion phones/tablets/PCs around the world." They have reason to wait.

Monopolist in one market refrains from competing in another market in order to weaponize antitrust investigation into competitor from a third market.

im for it in this case. in the absence of perfect solutions, i'll opt for the best one available.

All rules will be gamed. No exceptions.

There is not guarantee that Apples search engine will succeed. It would be suck if it stuck around just long enough for Google to use it as a fig leaf.

Exclusive access to a walled garden will certainly help.

Wouldn’t the same logic apply to bing today?

yes but Apple being in the game would be another instance of a competitor - One that is the most valuable company in the world.

How is it any difference than having Microsoft as a competitor?

I don't get the antitrust against Google search. You can just click on Bing and start searching there as soon as Bing becomes even slightly better.

On the other hand, you can't "click" on Android and suddenly switch to Android (or from Android to iOS) if Android this year becomes slightly better. It's designed to be a real uphill battle to switch (re-purchase all the media: apps, movies, shows, etc.), unhook imessage, transfer photos out of iCloud photos, etc. etc.

I'm no expert, but it's not just that they dominate the search market, it's that they use that position in less than ideal ways. For example, Google Snippets takes away valuable traffic from sites. Google has also been accused of prioritizing their own results over competitors.

You're conflating topics. I'm saying the cost of switching is trivially low for search engines. The moment Bing becomes better I can switch to it with a "single click". The moment I like something about Android or iOS I can't switch with a "single click".

Whether or not a search engine should be barred from showing snippets is a different topic IMO.

>You can just click on Bing and start searching there as soon as Bing becomes even slightly better.

I think the central problem is that 'getting better' is mostly a function of having more users in the first place because that is the very data that helps Google improve the service, it's probably one of the most simple cases of network effects.

Google also has a monopoly on online advertising. Where else do you suggest advertising your product?

> It is clear that Apple has started to return search results within Spotlight Search and is completely bypassing Google altogether.

This isn't new in iOS 14, Spotlight has had a basic web search (supported by Apple's crawler) for several years.

Same with Siri Suggestions, although they may be taking on a larger role in iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur.

Right — this article seems pretty uninformed. I don't think there's a reason to believe Apple is any closer to launching a search engine now than they were 3 years ago.

There is. They’ve started crawling much more aggressively, similar to how Googlebot and Bingbot crawl. Coincidentally, I mentioned to a friend that I thought Apple was preparing to launch a search engine just yesterday.

Too bad Siri is developmentally challenged (“special”)

It's always a tempting story - Apple have the resources, they could make a lot of money from making it the Safari and iOS default, and they're pushing in to services for growth, but people have been suggesting that Apple will launch a search engine "soon" for at least a decade. It hasn't happened yet and there's no particularly significant reason to believe it'll happen now.

That said, it would be nice if Google had some proper competition to drive innovation for once. Search really hasn't changed in any fundamental or even noticeable way for a long time.

My take is that the timing is perfect, so the rumor is likely true, but that Apple is going to screw it up royally.

This is a great time for a big competitor to start a search engine. Google's reputation and search quality aren't what they used to be. Google is also in a MS antitrust situation, where they have to fight with a hand behind their back.

If Apple were to work with others to set up some sort of "search foundation," I'll bet its search product could mop up a lot of the search market. As a result, Apple would have more leverage over Google, and more momentum. They'd have some measure of control over the user experience, even via a shared "foundation".

But that's not what is going to happen!

Apple management is going to release some weird, overly strategic product with Apple-branding all over it. Users don't want a "Siri" or "Spotlight" or "Apple" branded search engine (assuming Apple isn't so deliriously drunk on "clever strategy" that they don't make search an "app" instead of a webpage). It will also detract from Apple's "privacy" messaging, because they'll not only be pushing users aggressively to store all their data in iCloud, but also appear to have access to users' search histories.

I think Apple's search engine is going to fail horribly, despite fate giving them a golden opportunity to plough into Google's market. Apple is going to "sherlock" itself.

Unless they also build an ad network to go with the search engine this will be a money sink and nobody good will want to work on it. Internal incentives will line up such that it will be guaranteed to languish.

"for at least a decade"

I remember the rumor that Apple was going to get into search back when altavista was a thing.

Apple is one of those companies that is seemingly “about to launch” a product in dozens of categories which aren’t their core competencies (Project Titan?). People fail to realize this is what these massive R&D budgets are for...not just the products you see, but the many many projects which don’t get approved. Apple shows impressive restraint in their endeavors. Search would be interesting, though perhaps unwise.

Microsoft has very deep pockets and created a solid search platform in Bing but they still struggle against Google. Microsoft used ownership of Windows to push their Edge browser (both the original and new flavor) but still struggled against Chrome. For Apple to succeed, they don't need to be "as good," they need to be significantly better or differentiated. One way might be to focus on privacy and play on fears. Combine fear of being tracked with default search engine status one a billion iPhones and you might have a shot at some market share.

I disagree. Apple maps is worse than competition but they push it to their consumers because it's not bad enough to be worth switching away from iOS.

> Search really hasn't changed in any fundamental or even noticeable way for a long time.

Perhaps I’m cynical but I do think search has changed in fundamental and noticeable ways in the last five years but none of the change has been for the better. More ads, more “personalized” with more tracking, more results based on what the algorithm thinks I mean instead of what I’ve actually typed. I much preferred Google circa 2006 when it was much more intuitive and much less “innovative.”

>I much preferred Google circa 2006

2000 to 2002 was "peak Google" (and "peak internet") according to my preferences.

But Apple's model is selling premium products and a search is a massive expense for apparently zero benefit to them (they wouldn't launch ads would they?). Plus their web results will probably be strictly censored and say goodbye to open web. It would be a nice dream though, google having some serious competition.

They are transitioning as iPhone sales stabilize.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/apple-stock-services-busine...

It’s not all about the hardware anymore.

there's no way they 'll make the premiums they have with software. There isn't even content with such margins.

That’s not a reason to not expand the business.

Guess they should just do nothing then? Diversity in buisness is important. And Google has a whole pie from which apple can steal a big chunk of. Simply set apple search to be the default on safari and you immediately have a huge chuck of the market.

not in a premium business. in fact diversity may be a bad thing there, as evidenced by the highly limited number of apple computer models. I don't think they want to become the next Samsung

It's not just software -- it's services of a wide variety of types. I.e. Apple TV+ is not software. Having your own search engine allows you to integrate with services more tightly and enhance that business.

hm, apple tv=low margin industry, not enough market share to capture an audience, lots of competition etc etc. Not the things apple does

the fact that they are not a monopoly is going to be a problem when they enter a highly monopolistic market like search

How would apple monetize this search engine?

I don’t completely trust Apple with doing ads as they already do plenty of self-dealing with their own ad system.

If anything, they should jedison their ad product altogether.

Presumably the same way they monetize Siri.

That’s good enough for basics then, and nothing for Google to worry about.

Or a great way to make it so no one competes with their partner google — by offering a totally free (and ad-free) search that’s good enough for many use cases but not great.

Siri is an exclusive feature of iPhones, that's how it's "monetized". This is unlike GA which is available on iOS [0]. So unless this search engine is exclusive to iPhone users as a way of "keeping their privacy intact", I don't see how they can justify running a free search engine for everyone.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/google-assistant/id1220976145

Yeah, I think if Apple launches their own search engine, it will take the form of a change that results in Apple handling more searches from Apple devices themselves.

Kind of like Apple Maps, which "competes" with Google Maps but only on Apple devices. You can't just point any web browser at an Apple Maps website the way you can with Google Maps. I doubt that Apple would launch a search engine that you can just browse to from anywhere like Google or Bing.

For example, in iOS 14 they added a Tracking permission and a slider in Settings > Privacy > Tracking. Except to have them not track you requires a separate setting in Settings > Privacy > Apple Advertising > Personalization.

Apple's MO is vertical integration. So this only makes sense in the context of a vertical integration play. The article talks about some of ways a search engine could integrate with existing products, but they don't seem very compelling.

On that score, this doesn't look like it will happen, despite appearances.

On the other hand, if Apple is also working on another, secret, project that would integrate well with search, that would be a different matter.

It’s going to suck for the e-commerce sites who have to pay Apple 30% commissions to be listed in their web directory.

Finally, a way to opt out of AMP links on Safari -.-

DuckDuckGo my good human

Yay! no AMP!

Every news article will be exclusively published to Apple News, all websites will have to switch to Apple Sign-in, users will need to pay $100 / yr to "cover the cost" of running Apple crawlers and all websites will pay 30% of their revenue to Apple to stay listed.

Apple News links are the worst. They hide the source of the article and make me wait for a redirect before I can read the article. Why does Apple News share that apple.news link instead of a link to the underlying article? Just to track me? What are they hiding in that path string?

Google Maps is slightly superior to Apple Maps but the gap continues to narrow and it's possible that Apple will pull ahead. The competition between the two means that it's important for new features to be added and incorrect data to be fixed.

On the other hand, Apple's search in the App Store app is so bad that I use DDG or Google to search for apps.

>Google Maps is slightly superior to Apple Maps but the gap continues to narrow and it's possible that Apple will pull ahead.

How many places does Apple Maps have their version of Street View for?

Not sure, but at least for me street view is the least useful part of a map application. Battery usage is much better in Apple Maps, the turn by turn directions are on average better now (Google maps used to lead by a longshot maybe a year or so ago), and it's less invasive to my privacy.

Android does not even have an app for Apple Maps. I certainly don't wish the success of Apple search if they are going to follow the model of Apple Maps and many of their other attempts with the closed ecosystem.

Would they likely just tie it tightly to Apple devices, or would they also expose it as a regular web site?

Have a feeling this is just syndication taking cue from Scott Galloway's recent podcasts. He has been saying at least over his last two pods that Apple is going to launch a search engine.

I hope they do so that aggregate searchers have another option.

I want a search engine I can use the search term "rockets" to get me actual fire breathing rockets rather than some US sports team...

I want a search engine that is optimized for completing my task and leaving quickly rather than ever-increasing engagement. When I search for something and its not there I don't want pages of unrelated-but-popular garbage, I just want to see a 'no' so I can move on.

If privacy is the focus, could Apple acquire Duck Duck Go and get a head start? Or is there no reason to get a head start when you have virtually unlimited resources?

Duck uses Bing's index, for the most part...they should just partner with Microsoft if they were wanting to do that.

Oh god I hope not. I use DDG as my full time search engine. I don't need Apple coming in, limiting it to their walled garden and ruining it.

You might be onto something though since DDG and Apple signed a deal on the default maps for DDG.

DDG is just bing reskinned for the most part so I sincerely doubt Apple would be interested in it

~1/5 of Apple's Services revenue comes from having google be the default search ($9-10B per year), so I wonder if this new search will coincide with them ramping up their own search ads business [https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/15/apple-ad-revenue/]

Could be that contract is up for renewal? Google seemed like it was going to stop paying Mozilla this year, then changed their mind. Threat of building a search engine competitor could just be part of contract negotiation (a BATNA).

Might be, since you can swap out default apps in iOS 14.

Or they could just say they'll use Bing instead. That's cheaper, provides a better experience for their users than their own search engine, and is a stronger threat to Google if they want Google to increase payment by encouraging more ad dollars chasing big spenders to go to Bing.

If this eventually bears out in reality, will not be surprised if they make an attempt to buy DuckDuckGo since they align on privacy as a business model. However, I'm not certain how I would feel about the concentration in a few large players, which would be the outcome of that, although it sounds like it might increase rather than decrease the level of competition...

I doubt they would buy ddg since it is entirely reliant on Microsoft’s bing.

I feel like this will hurt small companies developing Bing-based engines more than it will hurt Google.

Apple's spellchecker/autocorrect is horrible compared to google's.

When you type anything in google, very often with very high accuracy suggests the correct spelling.

I believe the search engine data can go a long way in helping apple improve basic stuff like spell checker and auto correction.

Why don't they invest heavily in DDG? They don't have to have their own.

They don't need DDG for that. They can just use the Bing API like DDG does.

This is so silly. It’s already launched! It’s the “Siri Suggested Website”. It’s already there in spotlight and Safari. Those links come from an Apple crawler! There’s no mystery.

Will Apple curate, police, and censor their search results like they do the App Store? While I welcome competition for google, I really wish it was from some other players.

re: ""iOS and iPadOS 14 beta bypasses Google Search with Spotlight Search""

I just updated my iPad Pro to the latest 14 beta this morning, tried Splotlight search, and I didn't see this effect.

EDIT: I forgot to add that I look forward to a privacy respecting search from Apple.

Makes sense. If they're really serious about Siri they need a high-quality search engine.

Assuming Apple is going to let go the $12B+ that Google pays to remain as the default search.

The article covers that.

Cool, do I have to pay 30% of my revenue to show up in the search results?

Wish Apple would release a GPU line. A man can dream right?

Apple Silicon will use an Apple-designed GPU.

Uh, they have? It's in every iPhone and iPad and iPod and Apple TV and Apple Watch, and coming soon to Mac. Of course you'll never be able to get it in a PC.

30% for all transactions done on Apple search

Will this be before or after that Apple car?

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