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Apple Showing Signs It May Soon Launch a Search Engine To Compete Against Google Search (coywolf.news) 109

Posted by BeauHD from the rumor-mill dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report from Coywolf News, written by Jon Henshaw: For several years, it's been reported that Google pays billions of dollars to Apple to remain the default search engine on Safari for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The deal ensures that iPhone, iPad, and Mac users search with Google when they use Safari. That is unless they manually change the default search engine in Safari's preferences. The deal between Apple and Google may be coming to an end soon. In July 2020, Reuters reported that the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority was taking aim at the deal. If the U.K. regulators take action, there may be a ripple effect from the European Union, which has a history of going after Google for anti-competitive behavior. Regulators in Europe may force Apple to remove Google as the default search engine and have users choose which search engine they want to use when they first launch Safari.

Regulatory pressure, a contentious relationship with Google, and the maturation of Apple's Siri and iCloud are presenting an opportunity for Apple to create and launch a search engine. There are several signs right now that indicate Apple may be doing just that:

- Apple doesn't need Google's money: Apple is now the world's most valuable company. They may want the money Google gives them, but they don't need it.
- Apple is pouring resources and money into search: Apple is investing heavily in search, as shown in their job postings for search engineers. The job listings reveal they incorporate AI, ML, NLP, and more into all of their services and apps.
- iOS and iPadOS 14 beta bypasses Google Search with Spotlight Search: It's not clear if Apple uses Bing anymore, as results are labeled only as Siri Suggestions. It is clear that Apple has started to return search results within Spotlight Search and is completely bypassing Google altogether.
- Apple recently updated its Applebot web crawler page: In July 2020, Apple published a significant update to its About Applebot support page. The additions are very similar to the details Google provides to webmasters and SEOs. Here are the changes they made to the Applebot support page: Added how to verify traffic from Applebot; Expanded details on the Applebot user agent, including differences between its desktop and mobile version; Expanded robots.txt rules; Added a section stating that they don't just crawl HTML, but also render pages similar to Google; and Added a section on search rankings and the factors that affect how it ranks web search results.
- Applebot has been busy crawling sites: Checking my server logs on WP Engine revealed that Applebot had been regularly crawling my sites daily, something I haven't noticed until now.
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Apple Showing Signs It May Soon Launch a Search Engine To Compete Against Google Search More

Apple Showing Signs It May Soon Launch a Search Engine To Compete Against Google Search

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  • But you don't get to be hyper-rich by stopping just because you don't need anything.

    Rich people are all psychopaths and rich companies tend to be run by rich people.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      But you don't get to be hyper-rich by stopping just because you don't need anything.

      Rich people are all psychopaths and rich companies tend to be run by rich people.

      Quoted against the censorship mods, presumably from Apple fanbois. However, I would have been tempted to mod it off topic if I ever had a mod point to give. The root of the FP problem is...

  • More like a (Score:3)

    by QuantumLeaper ( 607189 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:20AM (#60449124) Journal
    BING replacement, not Google...

    • Re:More like a (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:23AM (#60449132)

      BING replacement, not Google...

      Whether it's Apple or somebody else, Google Search needs a fierce competitor, it needs it badly and it needs it ASAP.

      • Re:More like a (Score:5, Insightful)

        by arbiter1 ( 1204146 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:47AM (#60449200)
        Well problem with Apple in this case, it will be a search engine you are FORCED to on their devices. They will set it as default cross the board and you won't likely have option to change it unless you manually go to other sites.They force you to use safari as default without ability to set anything else.

        • Well problem with Apple in this case, it will be a search engine you are FORCED to on their devices..

          For about three seconds until I CHANGE the default search engine in the browser settings: https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/30... [9to5mac.com]

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • No, Apple won't force you to use a search engine in any browser, Safari or otherwise. It may default to it, just like they do with Google Search now, but it will still give you an option to change it. Doing otherwise invites the EU regulators to open a monopoly investigation which is bad for business. Just ask Microsoft. For the very same reason iOS 14 now allows you to set a different default browser and email client.

            And that is why I like the EU commission, if corporations don't want to cease abusive anticompetitive behaviour the commission will twist their arm and make them, thus sparing all of us having to wait 30 years until the invisible hand of the free market gets around to it.

            • Sad thing is, that America USED to break up bad monopolies as well as prohibit bad mergers. Starting with reagan, We reverted to be what China is today.
              We need to come back to having regulations that will encourage competition, not remove it. That means lots and lots of companies that compete against each other and encouragement from the government to be so. Google has a natural monopoly, but, they have turned evil on its use. I wish that we would break them up into multiple companies, along with others

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
                Too bad the giant corporations use some of that extra cash to pay off the people who would make said regulations.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Merk42 ( 1906718 )

            No, Apple won't force you to use a search engine in any browser, Safari or otherwise. It may default to it, just like they do with Google Search now, but it will still give you an option to change it. Doing otherwise invites the EU regulators to open a monopoly investigation which is bad for business. Just ask Microsoft. For the very same reason iOS 14 now allows you to set a different default browser and email client.

            iOS/iPadOS browsers are still forced to use the same rendering engine as Safari, Chrome et al are basically just skins of Safari on iOS/iPadOS.

            So I guess they'll have a box that says Google, but whatever you type in there just routes to Apple's search engine.

          • > iOS 14 now allows you to set a different default browser and email client.

            Bit of a shame it took them fourteen revisions of the OS to be able to accomplish that.

            Of course, setting a different browser is an exercise in window-dressing, because browser engines other than Apple's are banned on iOS.

  • Watch it be like the App Store (Score:5, Funny)

    by Merk42 ( 1906718 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:21AM (#60449126)
    Apple will demand a 30% on all transactions from e-commerce sites listed on their search engine.

    • Re:Watch it be like the App Store (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:47AM (#60449202) Homepage

      Actually it all ties to the current iteration of Apple, the country club of computing, you pay a premium and expect the kind of service you would expect from a country club. Your privacy assured, you compute in peace, free from harassment, your privacy never invaded. So adding privacy based search inevitably and by far the easiest way, buy branding from duckduckgo, Apple just pay for the Apple version of it, and require the duckduckgo adhere to the privacy rules it claims.

      All that is left is for Apple to get into multiplayer gaming. Not pay to win rubbish and avoiding PvP but much like a country providing opportunity for more cooperative gaming but again a privacy safe environment, keep relatively free of untoward behaviour, with a more skill based range of games covering a broad spectrum of gaming styles and games that present creative opportunities for apple hardware users.

      • All that is left is for Apple to get into multiplayer gaming.

        Apple doesn't understand gaming even as much as Microsoft did when they launched DirectX, let alone when they launched the Xbox. Apple has zero chance to make any substantial contribution in gaming since Nintendo already owns the portion of the market into which they would hope to insert themselves.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          Perhaps they"ll buy Nintendo?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by JBMcB ( 73720 )

          Apple doesn't understand gaming even as much as Microsoft did when they launched DirectX, let alone when they launched the Xbox.

          Didn't people say something similar when Apple launched the iPod? And iTunes? And the iPhone? Then again, the AppleTV streaming service isn't doing great.

          • Apple has made many attempts to attract games to its platform over the years, and all attempts have failed rather miserably.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      letsth don't be thilly . . .

      that's not how it would work.

      Quite obviously, it would simply keep 30% of the results! :)

      hawk

  • Now, from the makers of Apple Maps comes... Apple Search! Results you can depend on(tm).

    • Maps and the new search share some code. Searching for an oranges recipe will yield a nice page of apple tarts.

    • This is what I came here to say. Apple has never had an original idea. At best they polish someone else's idea and make it more commercially viable. Windowing GUI was Xerox, mouse from The Demo, MP3 players from creaf, smartphones from samsung, you name it they copied it. And sometimes they copy it very badly, like WIMP->iTunes, or as you say, Maps->Maps. The best they can possibly do in search is to create something half-assed that will keep Apple users too dumb to change the default (assuming that's

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Go look at a Xerox Alto sometime, and compare it to the original Mac. Maybe you'll learn something and quit embarrassing yourself.

          You mean the Xerox Alto that Apple outright said [mac-history.net] is where they got the GUI concept? Not stole, since they were invited to see the project again and again, of course? Tell me all about it.

      • “...smartphones from samsung, you name it they copied it.“

        Apple’s genius in this case was copying it years before Samsung released a product.

    • LOL I got a troll mod for this. Does SuperKendall get mod points?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Where independent Apple repair shops are expunged as being "dangerous".

    • Now, from the makers of Apple Maps comes... Apple Search! Results you can depend on(tm).

      I clicked on an Apple Search result and my office chair drove off a cliff! I want my money back!

  • Apple wants it all (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:44AM (#60449192) Journal

    Would anyone really be surprised? Apple has been steadily pushing out partners in pretty much every operational area. Necessity may have sparked some of this (Intel's flubs on CPU improvement, for example), but I get the idea that Apple has steadily been moving in the direction of "own everything" because they like the idea, and in the long run, if they can get buy-in from Apple customers, it'll make them even more money than present arrangements.

    • They love the idea of making cheapest product possible but charge huge overheads. their laptops are around 3x price different for a pc laptop with comparable specs

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by MikeDataLink ( 536925 )

        [Apple] laptops are around 3x price different for a pc laptop with comparable specs

        This has been debunked so many times it isn't funny.

        https://www.aboveavalon.com/no... [aboveavalon.com]

      • I've checked multiple times over the years in response to claims like yours. So far as I've been able to see, that hasn't been true anytime in the last decade. If you check their prices at launch against comparably specced computers from other major manufacturers, I've only rarely found anyone else with a better price than Apple's (though Apple will sometimes keep models at the same price and without any changes for a year or two, at which point they admittedly may go from being a good deal to a bad one), a

    • I get the idea that Apple has steadily been moving in the direction of "own everything" because they like the idea

      It's not so much the idea is immediately appealing, as the partners all suck.

      You are building devices that need processors. Your "partner" is Intel, who languishes compares to competitors and doesn't seem to be bothered to try and improve processors the way the market would prefer.

      Can you see the motivation for Apple to do their own processor work?

      You need a search engine on that device. Your

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
        Normally people would call that sort of vertical integration monopolistic and evil, but in this case it's okay because it's the 2 Trillion dollar underdog Apple!

      • Does Apple have the touch of death? Apple uses 68000, it falls behind. Apple uses PowerPC, it becomes irrelevant. Apple uses Intel, Intel fumbles and looks like it's going to continue to fumble.

        Are vendors failing Apple, or does Apple poison its vendors?

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by SuperKendall ( 25149 )

          Are vendors failing Apple, or does Apple poison its vendors?

          Why don't you ask ARM, who is obviously ailing and doing so VERY poorly... :-)

  • The choice between two evils. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eric Freyhart ( 752088 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:46AM (#60449198) Journal
    I want Google to have more competition, but my disgust for Apple's predatory nature makes me think this is a battle between Satan and Cthulhu. No one wins.
    • Which of Apple's behaviors are "predatory" from the perspective of a user?
      • Try to purchase something in game if you don't want to use Apple Pay and send them 30% of the funds. Try using any of the programs you WANT to use that are available on Android and not on Apple because the developers do not want to pay the "Apple Tax". Try changing the interface or replacing any of the built in Apple programs with competing programs that you like better. Try finding a charging cable when they only use the "Apple" proprietary cable. Try plugging in a 3 dollar earphone you bought at the a

        • It sounds like you have a philosophical disagreement with Apple's tightly controlled ecosystem (but isn't "tightly controlled" just a different perspective on "carefully curated"?). It seems unreasonable to classify something as "predatory" when consumers are fully aware of the walled garden they're walking into. If you buy an iPhone and your reaction is "What?!? This thing doesn't have a USB-C connector or headphone jack? I can't trivially install non-App Store apps???", you deserve it.

          When I think of pre

          • I was there when Microsoft was sued by the US government for doing FAR LESS. Apple has gotten away with taxation of their customers AND app developers without any additional added benefit to either. Just look at what they did today: HERE [slashdot.org]. The removal of the earphone jack gives Apple the ability to charge anyone using a secondary device connected the the bluetooth system (and they do). Every new "feature" they add seems to be another way to lock in their customers to a walled garden. Hell, the Chinese

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by beuges ( 613130 )

        Try to buy an ebook from your favourite online shopping app. You can't. You can buy products to the value of tens of thousands if you like, but try to buy that "digital" item and Apple will demand their 30% cut. Why? What's different? They've already accepted that they have no issue with the app's payment mechanism for all its other products, why prevent the sale of ebooks?
        Because admitting that ebooks, a digital item as defined by Apple, can be sold via an online shopping app via its ordinary checkout proc

  • If it's anything like their maps - it will only work in the dedicated application on macOS, not in a browser - so no access to non-mac users, and need to exit the browser and switch to a dedicated application :)

  • I don't know if anyone has tried searching on the App Store lately, but their search is garbage. Leaving aside that an app can buy search terms that are literally the name of another app, actually trying to find what you want in the store is bad.

    Search is a broadly useful competency for a company like Apple. I don't expect them to launch a search engine because it's more headache than it's worth. It provides no real additional value to their company. If they wanted a search engine, they'd be better off buyi

    • "I don't know if anyone has tried searching on the App Store lately, but their search is garbage. "

      So like Amazon, Google, Bing, ....

      • Ayup - years ago, one would search with AltaVista and then press page down five times before looking at the results. Lately Google is approaching something similar - maybe requiring three page downs now.
  • If Google indeed pays billions of dollars to be the default search on their products, Apple obviously makes income that contributes to their overall revenue to *make them* one of the world's most valuable companies. Revenue from a home-grown search would have to, at the very least, break even for it to make sense. Remember, it's revenue, not expense they would be replacing. I'm not saying it's not a possibility for them to be building their own search engine. It certainly is. But I think Coywolf News is pl

  • The solution to this is pretty simple, on Apple platforms just charge more, if they take a larger cut.

    You could even just split the difference, and charge 15% more on IOS than on platforms where you didn't have to have a cut taken.

    Sure some people would go seek out your other forms of payment but ease of use commands a huge premium for users. Which is why it's so valuable to be on iOS to begin with.

  • Your choice of search engine comes down to whom you trust the most. This does not mean you actually trust them at all, Just trust them fractionally more the the other options. With any luck it will be for apple products only so the rest of us wont be bother with it at all.
  • Just but one of the other ones, like Duck and Go

  • Google's top search results are ads which they make money on.

  • Maybe it'll be like google 10 years ago.

    Google now sucks. Example: I just did a search for static grass applicators (never mind you're not interested in what they are). Then went to shopping, and selected "sort lowest to highest"

    I had the words in quotes, so it should *ONLY* have gotten the applicators. Instead, it gives me pages of packets of static grass.

    The signal to noise ratio (or is that signal-to-ads?) has gone so far that google sometimes is utterly useless.

    • Google now sucks. Example: I just did a search for static grass applicators (never mind you're not interested in what they are). Then went to shopping, and selected "sort lowest to highest"

      You're actually criticizing a different Google product, Google Shopping, not Google Search. It does look like a part of Google Search, but it's not what people think of when they think of search.

      Also, I've never yet seen a product search tool that wouldn't fail in the way that you observed Google Shopping to fail. They all include closely-related products in the results, so if the thing you're looking at is more expensive than something closely related, sorting by price low to high will give you all of th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by whitroth ( 9367 )

        When I put something in quotation marks, it should be looking for THAT.

        Hell, a few years ago, I was looking for high men's boots. I put a ton ( 10) of exclusions, including -"women's"... and there was a sponsored ad, with wo[bold}men's[/bold].

        No, they really are crap.

  • Applebot has been busy crawling sites: Checking my server logs on WP Engine revealed that Applebot had been regularly crawling my sites daily, something I haven't noticed until now.

    Geeze... What would it take to get ONE or Two crawlers industry wide? Let someone do the crawling and sell the data output/indexes to all the search engines to analyze and build out their search capability with. Imagine how many gigabytes and billions of dollars in server resources are going to waste worldwide, because

  • I used to love Google, but they have become the very evil corporation that they were seeking to not become.
    Maybe, just maybe, Apple will force them to straighten up.
  • Apple has a long history of wiping information about problems on their forums, this will be much the same. "Here are your Apple Curated Results" ....
  • ... to help monitor and configure the bot for the sites?
  • Apple is deploying its most vicious attacks against FB and Google. Microsoft will assuredly send in its first salvo soon. These guys are at war! https://payam.minoofar.com/202... [minoofar.com]
  • Sherlock worked well when that was a thing. I used it as an internal search engine for a couple web sites I built. Fast, accurate, and glitch free.
  • IDK about this competitor, but I do know that, after much consideration, and watching the company and its search products closely for over 20 years, I can state clearly: Google search no longer works. When was the last time you searched for something and it gave you something unexpected? A surprisingly helpful result? A new website? Or a website published within the last five years, even? Has it recommended literally any website to you, in the past 3-5 years, that wasn't in the top, say, 5% of most popular

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