Hacker News Reader

Comment by taylodl | Hacker News Reader

People always get excited over what Apple does. Supposedly Apple is working on an EV. And a VR headset. And a search engine. They're probably doing that and a whole lot more. It's called R&D. Apple doesn't want to be surprised by anything and their investors don't want Apple to miss opportunities.

So Apple runs a lot of projects to better understand the item in question, its manufacturing and/or maintenance, customer profiles, and so on.

What I read in a headline like this is Search was one of those items Apple has been researching. They've probably decided it's not worth their effort. The staff have learned that, whether officially or through the grapevine, and are now going back to a firm where search is worth their effort.

The news for us is Apple sees no viability in search, at least not in how we've become accustomed to thinking about search.

View on HN

> They've probably decided it's not worth their effort.

I think The Information's intel is probably true — that Apple is years away from launching web search product — but I don't think that means there's been any loss of momentum. Building a generalized search engine better than Google is hard.

We know that Apple absolutely bristles at dependencies for core capabilities. For now they'll continue to begrudgingly take Google's $15 billion/year, but Google will not be the default search engine for iOS by 2030. I can understand core team members not wanting to wait that long.

>Building a generalized search engine better than Google is hard.

True, however, through a combination of advances of general tech/stack accessibility over the long term, and regressions in Google's feature set in search in respecting a user's specific query, and falling victim to its own SEO-anti-SEO cat-and-mouse, the thirst for a search input box that can respect the anything more than the very most basic "advanced options" grows. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels the growing gap between "show me 10 links that have something vaguely to do with <str> that have been hyper-gamified with next-gen DL personalization" and "SQL for the whole internet". This feels like a ripe field for apple. Probably the hardest part would be branding. Apple search could imply just local or user-uploaded files. Apple web search sounds like it's for geezers. iSearch is too on the nose. Binoculars would tie it too much to Safari.

While I think the HN audience is definitely on the 'SQL for the internet' side of that gradient I don't think very many people (on the scale of the whole internet) are at all interested in that. I think if you were to graph the level of 'nuts and bolts' level interest among internet users it would follow an exponential decay and I don't see that turning around any time in the future.

The internet is not for tinkerers any more, it's for regular humans with regular human interests. We had our brief, glorious time when the internet was for people who liked to know how things work. That time is over and I don't think there's much money to be made targeting that market in general search. The average person not only doesn't mind if they see listicles in their results, they often look at them!

That doesn't preclude a specialized search engine for 'tinkerers'.

The doesn't seem like Apple's usual market.

Maybe not, though beats by Dre also didn't seem like Apple's usual market. So they may yet have more surprises.

No? I think that's exactly Apple's usual market - sell some hardware with (maybe) some small difference, attach some marketing mystique to it, and sell it for a premium.

I can’t think of any new apple product launch in the last 15 years, since the iPhone, that had only a small difference in hardware compared to incumbent offerings. With the exception of Beats and some accessories.

Even some of their dongles were groundbreaking, like the lightning to hdmi video adaptor with a full ARM computer inside to compress and decompress the video stream in real time.

I was at Google, although not in Search. Search-adjacent, you might say.

Like Maps, it's much, much harder than it looks. They have whole teams that concentrate on one particular vertical, and there are a lot of verticals.

That said: they're also heavily invested in solving problems of 15 years ago that have gone away. Someone taking a fresh look can probably do a lot better, but it would take enormous resources. It would make more sense to build "what Search is going to be" rather than "a better version of what's already been done."

Just call it Siri.com

For the public, web search is just text-mode siri/alexa

Idk, maybe they would just call it Spotlight like they do currently?

Then what is Finder?

You don't have to build a search engine that is better than Google's - you may only need to build one that is roughly in the running and keep it around until such time as you have to divest from Google.

And working for years on a project that may never see the light of day can be hard.

> You don't have to build a search engine that is better than Google's…

You're right, of course — most companies would be happy with a "perfectly fine" DDG-like offering. I'm presupposing that "best" is Apple's bar for an M1-like slam dunk launch, since an underwhelming launch (think Apple Maps 1.0) can be hard to recover from.

> And working for years on a project that may never see the light of day can be hard.

For sure! Moonshots require a level of faith that I'm not sure could maintain for a decade either.

I think, much like maps, a search engine requires an iterative development process. I don't think you can reasonably launch either product (search nor maps) and surpass the quality of Google on day 1 because there is so much user feedback on both products which you can not capture without actual users. Apple, with Maps, has shown an ability to stick with things and iteratively grow them to be really great (Apple maps IMO now far surpasses google maps and except for some specific data layers it's far and above OSM).

It's a great point. Apple Maps was pretty rough when it launched but they've stuck with it and iteratively improved it. It's not like this is a self-driving car where you have to get it right and any mistake from the get-go can be fatal, so there's no reason not to apply the same iterative approach to search.

A colleague who trusted Apple Maps 1.0 a bit too much once found himself driving towards the edge of a cliff because his actual destination was at the bottom of that cliff down a mountain road. So yeah, maybe not at the same level as self driving cars but Apple Maps 1.0 could have been fatal for people less situationally aware than my colleague.

Tesla certainly didn't feel the need to get their Fake Self-Driving right from the get go.

Apple Maps are plain useless. Google Maps are bad but bearable. OSM is miles ahead Apple Maps which is surprising because they could just pull data from OSM and not being that bad.

Is this because of your area? Apple Maps has been tangibly improving over the last few years.

I assume that's because of my area. Doesn't make it any better for me. It doesn't even have names of villages around (which OSM does have).

That's very interesting, where are you located? I'm in north NJ in the US.

I'm in Kazakhstan, Astana. City itself is not that bad, but surroundings are bad.

Nobody's tried Brave Search?

I pretty much only use brave. It seems to give me more relevant results.

> I'm presupposing that "best" is Apple's bar for an M1-like slam dunk launch

Well Apple has been iterating Ax Series Chips, M1 is no different to previous A(n)X Chip. i.e M1 wasn't really a "launch" for the M Chip. And Search could easily have been something else in the mean time before a "Google" launch.

Apple already does a lot of "Searching" with Siri Suggestions. And arguably it is the 2nd largest search engine on the planet.

> Well Apple has been iterating Ax Series Chips, M1 is no different to previous A(n)X Chip. i.e M1 wasn't really a "launch" for the M Chip.

Through an engineering lens, yes — one can look at the M1 SoC in a vacuum and characterize it as a logical evolutionary step in Apple's 20 years of silicon design. What made its introduction shocking (and its launch a slam dunk) is that Apple leveraged its experience in silicon design, OS design, hardware design, emulation, etc. to create new products, based on a completely new architecture for the desktop/laptop market, that definitively trounced their Intel-based predecessors.

You may have seen the clues before the M1 launched (which are crystal clear in retrospect), but for most people the unveiling of the M1 was as much a surprise as learning the identity of Keyser Söze.

> Apple already does a lot of "Searching" with Siri Suggestions. And arguably it is the 2nd largest search engine on the planet.

Exactly! What will be "Apple Search" exists in a nascent state today, making its eventual launch as a branded product very analogous to the "develop secretly in plain sight" strategy Apple used for the M1.

The money doesn't come from search quality, it comes from selling ads and Apple is a long way away from building up ad inventory and an ad salesforce like Google's. They absolutely are making money on ads today, but they're a long way from swapping out Google.

Yeah, I suspect part of it is keeping an emergency option if Google were to not only stop paying them but actively blocking them (it's unlikely to happen, but if you have infinite money you're going to be paying to reduce unlikely risks).

Apple will start using their own search tools in smaller places that they can monetize better, I suspect, things like "Siri find a good restaurant".

There’s plenty of other search engines eagerly waiting to take googles space on ios, should google decide to block ios users

First impressions matter. Has Apple Map's reputation caught up to the reality after the initial launch was underwhelming? Apple might be trigger shy.

General consensus in this thread seems to be it's better than Google now, and for me (at least) I never bother opening Google Maps anymore; I did often early on.

That may be true in the US, but for example in Berlin, cycling directions are still unavailable and POI search is still behind google maps. I would prefer to use Apple Maps, but it’s lacking.

There’s also no way to share a route with someone else.

Although apple maps has had the better client for quite a while, it can still be whack sometimes in actual directions.

I have not found this to be the case in my couple of years since I moved to Apple and would never have guessed Google was better at some point.

Google maps had been a pain point coming from a pretty rural area, Apple does not have this problem.

Rural is a huge issue and Apple surprisingly seems to actually respond and fix issues - I reported one once and it was fixed the next time I bothered to check, so good on them.

Google still routes you to the middle of a cornfield there, and I don't know how to get that fixed.

Very much dependent on the country. Where they have rolled out their “new” maps based on their own mapping (and not licensing a mix of others like TomTom), they are much much better than people think.

https://www.apple.com/au/newsroom/2021/12/apple-rolls-out-al...

In Australia, I rarely go for Google Maps anymore. Apple Maps search and driving UI is cleaner, the LookAround streetview equivalent is great, and spoken directions are more natural. Google Maps still has the edge in business location data though - like finding “a barber nearby”. As more people use it, it’s clear Apple Maps is catching up there too.

But when I was in southern Europe, which I guess haven’t been upgraded yet, I found they’re a long way behind Google Maps in terms of routing, detail map data, and updates to business locations.

Apple's turn by turn instructions are 10x better than Googles.

With them working so much on building up their ad business, having a search engine and switching the iOS default search to it might make up for the loss in Google money they get right now.

Just like with Google Maps / Apple Maps it doesn't seem very Apple-like to depend on a partner this heavily for such a core feature.

> Google will not be the default search engine for iOS by 2030.

Definitely going to put this on my quote wall for later, thank you! I love seeing inspiring confidence.

According to an interview I watched recently, Steve Jobs wasn’t even sure they’d launch the iPhone a year before they did.

There’s a relatively well-known exchange where he flat-out tells an interviewer there’s no phone, and post-launch admits he was lying. The truth was in the middle - if they couldn’t control the product enough (due to then-standard carrier influence over design and experience), then they wouldn’t make a phone. Eventually they found a launch carrier that would let them do it.

If apple can’t make “the best search in the world” (by someone’s subjective definition), then they’ll never launch it. Simple as that.

Sort of the anti-Google.

Whereas Google will release something, get user traction and then try to make it 'best in the world'. If it doesn't get to world class status, then it cancels it and moves on, pissing off the early adopters in the process.

The problem is that this becomes counter-productive just like serial dramas in the TV world. If people think you're going to cancel something, they're not going to get emotionally invested in your product. Then it almost certainly gets canceled because it doesn't get enough user traction. Rinse. Repeat.

Apple will pull the plug on things that aren't panning out too though. The MacBook Pro's Touch Bar came and went in a pretty short period of time, for example.

Though I suppose in that specific example at least, the people whose trust was damaged are mainly developers who invested in building for it, and probably less so users who invested in learning it or relying on it. Maybe there are better, more Google-like examples where user/community trust bears the brunt of it.

Mostly went. My 2022 13" MacBook Pro still includes it. Whether or not it should is a different question, of course.

From the perspective of employees it's also terrible to see the product being worked on for years get cancelled.

Sometimes there are no easy choices. My takeaway is that Apple wants its customers to be happy even at the expense of its employees, but Google wants its employees to be happy (product launch => promotions) more than it wants its customers to.

It doesn't have to be "best in the world", just good enough and justifiable to themselves - many of the Apple in-house products kinda sucked when first released (I'm thinking of Apple Maps).

They were greatly embarrassed by the Apple Maps launch, leading to Scott Fortall's firing. It's definitely not a strategy they want to repeat.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/executive-reportedly-fired-ap...

It's Apple -- the best technology company in the world, known for making the best computer and smartphone in the world. Their standards are different.

IMO, looking at the state of Siri, I'm not quite sure about that. Siri has always been not as good as alexa or google and has been getting worse over the years with weird ass bit flip bugs interpreting a 'turn off' as a 'turn on' or similar and the rest of the 'smart assistant' stuff throughout the OS usually not being very useful.

Siri launched in 2011 with a live demo of untrained speech recognition which was unheard of at the time.

Alexa launched in 2014 and Google Assistant in 2016.

Siri has not always been ‘not as good as Alexa or Google’, it existed way before either of them were released.

Siri was a lot better when it was being run by a tiny startup as opposed to once Apple started taking control of development isn’t much of a defense of Apple.

In fact, the Siri Apple released was significantly gimped compared to the Siri that was available on the App Store before Apple bought it.

And none of that matters? As a product to do basic things like 'turn off lights' and 'whats the temperature' and such it fails horribly, while alexa and co at least are very reliable on the basics.

You can argue all you want that Google and Alexa have surpassed Siri but the thread is about Apple not launching poor products. Siri wasn’t a poor product, surpassed by Alexa and Google, at launch because they didn’t exist when Siri launched.

I specifically remember telling Siri “Read my last SMS” and it doesn’t work anymore. “Start the chronometer” (in French) doesn’t work either.

I’m at the point where I wonder whether they flagged me as a bad person, on which they make Siri do the opposite of what I ask.

Probably true. I find all of them annoying almost to the point of uselessness though. I generally use them for some specific incantations like setting an alarm but mostly don’t even try to think of them as any sort of true voice assistants.

Apple is already doing search on a huge scale and will continue doing it -- that's what the "Siri Suggested website" is that shows up when you type in Safari's search bar, on both iOS and the Mac. It's under the radar a bit, but it is absolutely the same search.

Yep, Apple apparently runs the largest Solr search cluster in the world.

It’s caught me off guard as I assumed the search bar went to google, but it doesn’t do that till you hit enter.

The news for us is Apple sees no viability in search, at least not in how we've become accustomed to thinking about search.

I don't think you can read much about Apple's strategy from this. Apple might well see search as an important priority, they just don't feel spending the sort of money necessary to keep these particular people around is the best way to get there.

Or they feel these are not the people worth keeping around, so letting them go on their own is just fine?

Google is paying apple $14 billion a year to not build a search engine. Gotta be hard for them to say no to that, and even more cynically having a team building a google competitor probably helped them negotiate a bigger bribe from Google.

Google is paying for default IOS search eyeballs. That's it. It would make zero sense to be paying Apple billions a year "to not build a search engine" when Apple is openly working on Search. Search is also ridiculously hard with the constant battle against SEO/Spam industry so I don't think Google is worried about a similar platform. Bing is 13 yrs old and has 3% market share. Where they are actually probably worried about losing search usage is social outlets like Tiktok and Reddit where people look for answers.

> constant battle against SEO/Spam industry

I'm pretty sure this is a self inflicted injury. Google started relying on metadata as a signal for its search algo and the SEO war was on.

1. Nothing is forcing Apple or any other search engine maker to use the same signals

2. In any case, the era of general purpose web search seems to be ending - most things we care about is in walled gardens like Insta or WhatsApp. E.g., millions of people get their Ukraine war news from Telegram channels which Google is blind to.

Any general purpose search engine is hoovering up less and less relevant content

You're extrapolating a lot from just a title. Apple has had various search engines and crawlers for almost a decade now. Their first major investment was the Topsy's acquisition, in 2013. They've continued to invest through acquisitions and organic growth to reduce their reliance on Google Search. There is no indication that Apple will stop.

Apple doing R&D doesn't mean Apple won't ever make a search engine, electric car, or VR headset. It means that Apple is waiting to get a mature enough product in any of these areas to create one.

If you want to see how hyping products before they are fully mature can go wrong, look at Meta and Horizon Worlds.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com