Is Apple About to Revolutionize Search? Apple’s Foray into the Search Engine World
Apple recruited John Giannandrea in 2018, who was the former chief of Google’s search and artificial intelligence teams. Naturally, rumors circulated that “Apple is going to introduce its own search engine.”
Then, in 2020, the rumors became louder. Since Google was the subject of an antitrust lawsuit, the US government claimed that Google had a monopoly in the online search industry. A negative verdict may have impacted both Apple’s bottom line and its customers.
What’s the story behind Google being Apple’s search engine?
For nearly two decades, Google has been Apple’s default search engine. It pays Apple a whopping $15 billion or more every year for the privilege. That amounts to approximately 9% of Apple’s total revenue.
However, if the antitrust committee rules that Google is engaging in unethical behavior in order to maintain its monopoly, it will be forced to cut the connection. And Apple would lose billions of dollars.
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Apple’s search division is thought to include at least 200 personnel and drives the technology underlying Spotlight, Siri Suggestions, and Siri replies. According to one team member who spoke to The Information a couple of years ago, the company is still at least a few years away from producing an explicit alternative for Google search.
Sure, it could move to alternatives such as Bing or DuckDuckGo, but let’s be honest: they won’t pay the same amount of money. Google has a 90% market share in the search business. They make a lot of money through advertising, so they can afford to spend it. However, the others may be unable to justify the expenditure.
What does this imply for Apple?
If Apple wanted to stay ahead of these possible issues, it would want its own search engine. Everything would have to be under its control. And it appears that it has been quietly constructing just that.
Aside from the recent recruiting rush for the search engineering branch, the Financial Times previously mentioned a handful of other noteworthy items.
For example, if you want to be a search monster, you start with a web crawler or a spider. This device crawls the internet and websites, creating a type of index. When someone searches for something specific, the crawler can quickly recognize it and return the result. For a long time, Apple’s web crawler remained hidden in the shadows.
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However, this Applebot has appeared frequently on websites scraping information in recent years. Beginning in 2020, the ‘crawl ‘rate’ or activity appears to have increased dramatically.
Then there’s the reality that Apple has been sneakily slipping in a search tool since iOS 14 was released a few years ago. Swiping right from the iPhone’s home screen to open the search window results in a list of search suggestions from Apple rather than Google.
Conclusion: What is Apple waiting for?
First and foremost, there are billions of dollars in question. Sure, with the rise of ChatGPT and Gen Z going to TikTok and Instagram for answers, Google search is facing an existential crisis, but ad income from search is still raking in big bucks.
And, unless antitrust regulations force Google to terminate the agreement, Apple may not see a reason to give up the money, especially if it is unable to increase its own ad search revenue at a comparable rate.
Second, we’ve witnessed the disaster that was Apple Maps. Everyone despised it since the directions were incorrect. And iPhone users remained loyal to Google for a long time.
The concept of an Apple search engine has been discussed since at least 2015, when Apple first revealed its Applebot and posted a series of search-related job advertisements, and reports about the service’s impending introduction have returned on a regular basis.
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Yet, a decade after its collapse, Apple has slowly but surely re-established itself as a credible competitor. Perhaps Apple did not want to make the same error of introducing an inadequate software product in an area where it lacked experience.
Nevertheless, it appears like most of the parts are in place. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple now has everything in place to launch a competitor. And it’s possible that it won’t be long before Apple users choose its in-house search skills over Google’s. We’ll have to see what happens.
