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Comment by helsinkiandrew | Hacker News Reader

> What if Apple would put all that money back into developing its own search engine?! That would be beating Google with its own money!

But then they would loose the $18 billion each year they got from Google.

By keeping Google as the default search engine - they get free money and send Apple users to the search engine they probably want to use, without being targeted with the flack Google gets for tracking/mingling ads with search etc.

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This also makes the assumption that simply having money will equal a great product.

It takes the right engineers with the right management, and a lot of focus and iteration. You don’t just throw money in a hole and get a great product back.

A lot of companies have had plenty of VC to try beat Google and they haven’t, Microsoft has been trying forever and they still haven’t and they have billions of dollars.

But given how Google gets worse, at some point it should be possible to overtake them?

Maybe Apple users only probably want to use that search engine because Apple didn't take the money and use it to build a better search engine.

Billions have been invested in making a better Google than Google by other entities but most people just want Google.

Even if Apple did make a search engine, that’s no guarantee iPhone users would want to use it, and if Google and nobody else paid Apple a penny to be the default, there’s better than even odds Google would still be the default.

Yes but those other entities aren't Apple.

Apple does the impossible. Frequently. If anyone could make a better Google it would be Apple.

Look, I like Apple too but don’t get too high on their supply.

Apple does the possible but extremely challenging, frequently. Given enough time and money, they probably could be at least competitive with Google, but how much time? How much money? What are the opportunity costs to doing this and not investing somewhere else where they are either stronger or there’s a more lucrative future business to be had (like their mixed reality headset)?

That's the point of the discussion, how much of that opportunity cost is due to monopolistic behavior on the part of Google?

There would be an opportunity cost even without Google’s money. Google may not be what it once was but it is definitely still the best in the free-tier search engines you can use today and in 2007 it was several heads and shoulders above anything else Apple could have picked as the default on iPhones.

If payment from Google (or anyone else) isn’t a factor in what Apple uses as the Safari default, it is not at all clear that this change alone would make it worth Apple’s time to develop their own search engine. You have an easier argument with that change, but it’s not a slam dunk.

Have you seen Apple Maps?

Have you seen Apple Maps recently? It’s great. I switched over a few month ago.

OSM is still way way better than both.

When I walk in the mountains here I am walking in a big empty green square according to Google :S Same with Apple.

Meanwhile OSM knows every little trail including surface and gradients <3 It's amazing. And I can turn on layers so I only se the things I need and not everything else.

I'm not sure why you're downvoted, but OSM is actually better at nature areas.

And not just there, also when walking in the city. Little shortcuts are often not on Google maps at all. The only thing where I see Google beat it is live public transport information.

And perhaps traffic but I don't drive so I don't know how good that is.

Didn't they try this already with a _much_ easier problem ? How's apple maps doing these days ?

By most reports I'm hearing lately, it's doing quite well, better than Google Maps in a lot of ways. I don't have an iPhone, so I can't vouch for it myself.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38032540

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764369

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37759964

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37750465

You can certainly pick&choose user comments, but aggregate statistics suggest that apple maps have ~10% of the maps market. Although it's not clear what that number would be if they ever released their maps for Android, it's a good indication that they are a distant second at best. Note that this is a _much easier_ problem to solve than search, and they have not been able to dominate it, 11 years after launch, despite their tight control of their platform.

Do you have a citation for these numbers? I'm not at all sure how one would go about measuring that. I see some sources from 2020 claiming ~10%, but it's not clear to me where they're getting that information, and it's old info.

Slight tangent, but I bet apple maps would have a much greater market share if maps.apple.com actually showed something useful. If I go to maps.google.com, I see maps, which is exactly why it's popular.

It’s been better than Google Maps for years for me. Not designed to sell ads (I don’t need to see every McDonald’s on the eastern seaboard) and the directions tended to be safer and more accurate on timing by relying less on dangerous moves like unprotected left turns on major roads.

The bike directions are MUCH safer, too.

I prefer these days while it doesn’t have a feature parody with Google maps. It has a much cleaner interface, doesn’t have ads and half the time gives us better search results.

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