The context for this is that Apple is rumored to be starting their own search engine
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/27/apple-may-launch-...
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/27/apple-may-launch-...
I use DuckDuckGo for search, and do trust them with privacy. But if Apple did a half-decent job at nailing the search experience, I'd switch.
The ads that Apple sells on the app store contribute $2 billion in revenue -- I don't think they'd build a search engine that isn't built around ads.
People thinking Apple aren't going to copy Google's revenue model to some degree are delusional.
[0] https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/26/accusing-apple-of-selling-cus...
I can't see how Apple would even do the kind of search result pollution Google does now. In fact, I suspect the only reason Apple is launching advertising is because they see an opportunity to provide a better experience—namely one where you see organic results immediately.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=San+Francisco&t=h_&ia=web&iaxm=map...
In addition, google has become very aggressive with disregarding words. So a search like (a fake example, not tried the search, not a real place) Jim’s tasty pizza Albuquerque 90s where I’m searching for where a restaurant I remember as a child was located, and has maybe 5 real results from a local history Wordpress blog 15 years ago and Facebook posts, Google will just drop everything specific and give you results for Albuquerque pizza, and then mainly show ads for national chains up top. So I need quotes in the search pretty much always.
I use it for certain types of searches, and not others. I'm conscious of the fact that what I'm typing and searching, and subsequently clicking through will be piled on to the stack Google thinks is me. So it's usually tech searches, real estate/apartments, street view (property or exploring).
Health matters, personal matters, etc I tend to keep out of their search box.
Though more and more I tend to do a lot of cross-searching if privacy is not a concern.
Google's job as a search engine is to provide relevant and quality content. Ads are spam and noise, so if Google does want to provide quality content they should be penalizing ads just like they would penalize keyword spam and similar unpleasant SEO tactics. Given their business model however it is not in their best interests to do so, so it's very unlikely that Google will do it.
Another company that does not make their money on advertising has a better chance of doing this.
Meanwhile, ads are distinct from search. The #1 result refers to the first result past the ads.
My point is that as a user, ads, regardless of how "good" they are, are not what I am looking for when I click on a search result (I am talking about website ads and not ads on the results page itself) and thus a search engine that downranks pages with ads in favor of those without them would be beneficial for me.
It would be against Google's interest to implement that (as they'd also be fighting against their own ad network) but a different company not involved in the advertising business (and making high enough margins on other products) has a higher chance of delivering this successfully.
Google search has gone down the toilet. Most Google search results are ads or SEO optimized junk. It was funny once when I was searching for a medical term, all articles on first page were clearly SEO optimized and all articles were very similar from word usage, sentence construction, verbiage, like written by same person. I am surprised that Google doesn't filter out the results using some sort of similarity analysis to offer variety in results. I don't want to see all links giving exactly the same info.
Reason is that Apple already has a Search Engine. It is called Siri. It is what you get when you ask Siri Questions. What I think Apple hopes to achieve is that get 80% of what you want, From may be Recipes, Simple Answers like Exchange Rate, Nutrients, Sport Scores... etc away from Google.
Letting you to Google the absurd, hard, questions that has less Data value.
All while collecting roughly $10 per user for Default Search Engine Placement in Safari.
And remember the Privacy stand Apple has giving less Data to Google.
Basically Apple is squeezing Google in every single direction. And pitching them against Azure and AWS for Cloud Services for discount.
How does this benefit Apple? They’re a hardware company.
How does a search engine sell more hardware?
Also, Apples main revenue isn’t hardware but services IIRC. They’re not a hardware company.
Services are ca. 18% of Apple’s revenue, after years of huge spending and tons of dedicated effort to grow this segment. The fact that it is as high as a fifth is itself a monumental feat.
Hardware sales of the iPhone alone, excluding all computers, AirPods, and iPads, is over 40%.
They don’t have Google as the default search because of the money, they have it because they think it is the best. Even despite the privacy problems and the control this grants Google.
How does a maps service sell more hardware? Because using their own maps service Apple can completely control the experience.
Now maps was hard and search is much harder still so we may very well never see this released. But even then they can use this as leverage while negotiating with Google, both for money and for control.
Because your claim about them being a hardware company is incorrect.
They market themselves as a privacy focused company. Privacy is all about software and services, not hardware. Search is something they could add to their portfolio to strengthen their privacy stance.
The last 10% quickly gets very expensive tho.
Apple’s view is that you consented to this sort of unaccountable invisible tracking by dozens of third parties (against whom you have zero recourse), when you agreed to the TOS of the App Store.
The data is aggregated, sold, and resold again.
I don't know why anyone would think that Apple would make a web page search engine like Google. Apple has already launched the Apple version in your phones integrated into the software you use.
Apple isn't an ad-supported business. It's not going to look like Google. It looks the way it's already released.
I don't use Siri or any assistant, so I don't seem to use what I'm being averaged into using. Majority opinion here is that Siri is seriously lacking behind the other offerings. Apple won't be oblivious to this. If it is solely due to their back-end search engine, then making that a public search engine website won't do Apple any favors if the results are truly that bad.
Yes I realize that the App Store has ads and it is a stain that should not have ever happened.
That they use their own search for this is not a big headlining marketing feature so they aren’t really evaluated on it.
I do think that’s a direct consequence of their experience with Maps, though I guess their hand was more forced on Maps and they had to tell the world about it.
However, using Siri and search suggestion they can, bit by bit, replace search results from other sources with their own without telling anyone about it. It’s a more careful approach.
A quick google search to see if it was simply because of beta or there is a limited roll out, produced this:
>New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Shanghai and Beijing in China.
Obviously that's not the only reason, haha, it's gotten surprisingly good a few years ago. Public transit and cycling is better in Google (though nothing beats CityMapper for transit if it supports your city). But for walking and driving Apple Maps is my winner.
Mail is definitely a local app, even if they did screw the pooch pretty badly with that gmail bug they had a few years ago.
No. Strictly speaking, iCloud doesn’t even do backups; it syncs data. Difference is that, with backups, you can get a copy back if you accidentally throw away a file. You typically also have multiple ‘old’ copies.
iWork apps (1) kind-of have backups in the form of versions that get synced to the cloud (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205411), but I think that’s implemented independently from iCloud’s syncing (You can use it to have multiple versions of a document locally, too)
(1) Third-party apps can use this, too (https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...), but I wouldn’t know how commonly this is used
There’s literally a switch called “iCloud Backup” in Settings though. This isn’t a per-app data sync, it’s the full device restore that you can use if your phone gets stolen, dropped in the ocean, etc.
Although you should consider not using it for privacy reasons and running backups to a local machine instead, since last we heard Apple has the encryption keys and will happily hand the entire contents your phone to law enforcement given a warrant.
Photos is pretty great too, but I’m not sure how it compares to other photo services.
Most of your issues seemed like the old, rehashed ones from nearly a decade ago.
However, Apple operates many services at scales few companies ever reach, and doesn't seem to have outages much more often than those other few companies. So they're clearly doing a lot of things incredibly well, in the if-things-work-you-don't-notice sense.
They don't seem to emphasize their cloud services like Google does, and Apple charges for theirs at a much lower level than Google does, but I'm starting to think my vague intuition is wrong.
But the SEO market would certainly change if webmasters suddenly have to appeal to more than just Google to be successful.
The big question would be what Apple would gain from a dedicated website for search results. Would people really switch to it from Google? Why would it be a better delivery mechanism for search results than Spotlight? Not sure the answers to these questions has changed much, from 5 years ago to today.
Apple’s hardware sells were also up slightly in every category year over year.
They don't though. There are only a couple countries where they're more popular than Android, and only barely there. There's no country where they have 60% market share.
I believe if anyone can build a search engine that can truly deliver the same quality as Google, the whole market could change. Google is dependent on search ad revenue like nothing else, if they lose that monopoly it could really change the company.
But google pays Apple in billions to keep its search as default, what could be the key motivation for Apple to build its own engine? its a highly saturated market and we have Duck Duck Go for privacy based , bing for alternative and heck, even wolfram alpha for computational! what Apple can improve?