Apple Explains Why It Doesn't Plan To Build a Search Engine 32
Apple has no plans to develop its own search engine despite potential restrictions on its lucrative revenue-sharing deal with Google, citing billions in required investment and rapidly evolving AI technology as key deterrents, according to a court filing [PDF].
In a declaration filed with the U.S. District Court in Washington, Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue said creating a search engine would require diverting significant capital and employees, while recent AI developments make such an investment "economically risky."
Apple received approximately $20 billion from Google in 2022 under a deal that makes Google the default search engine on Safari browsers. This arrangement is now under scrutiny in the U.S. government's antitrust case against Google.
Cue said Apple lacks the specialized professionals and infrastructure needed for search advertising, which would be essential for a viable search engine. While Apple operates niche advertising like the App Store, search advertising is "outside of Apple's core expertise," he said. Building a search advertising business would also need to be balanced against Apple's privacy commitments, according to his declaration.
In a declaration filed with the U.S. District Court in Washington, Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue said creating a search engine would require diverting significant capital and employees, while recent AI developments make such an investment "economically risky."
Apple received approximately $20 billion from Google in 2022 under a deal that makes Google the default search engine on Safari browsers. This arrangement is now under scrutiny in the U.S. government's antitrust case against Google.
Cue said Apple lacks the specialized professionals and infrastructure needed for search advertising, which would be essential for a viable search engine. While Apple operates niche advertising like the App Store, search advertising is "outside of Apple's core expertise," he said. Building a search advertising business would also need to be balanced against Apple's privacy commitments, according to his declaration.
LOL "Apple's privacy commitments" (Score:1, Troll)
So it's fine for Apple to accept huge amounts of cash to send their customers to someone else's site to violate their privacy... some commitment to privacy.
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Apple isn't sending anyone anywhere, and Apple isn't under any obligation to provide any product or service it doesn't want to.
Yes, it's fine for Apple to accept huge amounts of cash, it's not violating any trust despite your take. Apple makes clear what your searches use and it's makes that choice configurable.
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Apple makes clear what your searches use and it's makes that choice configurable.
I agree that they aren't doing anything bad themselves, but let's not try to pretend that they make things clear. Nobody, not even Google themselves, really understands the implications of all of the data these companies control and use for manipulation. It might just be a bunch of people buying products they don't need and somewhat damaging the environment. On the other end, it might be the lever Russia and China need to overturn the US (and more generally "Western") political ideas of freedom and replace
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Apple is not an llc, it’s a publically held corporation. It’s liability is not limited, and for that matter neither is any llc’s. Investors liability is limited to the amount of their investment in most cases.
You and I probably agree that investors should be liable for all damage their investment causes, but we should be careful to accurately understand the existing system.
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I was fundamentally trying to say what you said. The problem is that the investors are protected even in times when they shouldn't be. However it's not that simple.
You and I probably agree that investors should be liable for all damage their investment causes.
I believe that investors should be liable for the consequences of the decisions they make unless those decisions have been agreed, in a situation of full information, with the people that will be liable instead. That's similar but subtly different. Your typical worker has a pension scheme which invests in shares which then finance companies like
Apple likes (Score:5, Insightful)
Google should have paid them to not build maps.
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Apple likes the $20billion that gets sent their way every year. That's why they're not building a search engine.
Duh. Everything every business does is to make money.
There is no benefit to society for every OS vendor to spend resources on duplicate infrastructure to create their own search engine.
An Apple search engine would add even less value than Bing.
Google should have paid them to not build maps.
Indeed.
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An Apple search engine would add even less value than Bing.
That really depends on how good their search engine is. I'm told everything Apple is better, after all.
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Google should have paid them to not build maps.
Didn't Apple's Google Maps clone flop on release and then die? Or does it still exist?
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Apple Maps is still widely used by iOS device users in particular, because it is tightly integrated eg with Calendar and CarPlay.
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Apple Maps is a lot more recent I've found. Google Maps has places that haven't been mapped for years but Apple has had them for just as long.
The problem was that Google demanded Apple hand over user data to get stuff like turn-by-turn navigation, and Apple didn't want to do it.
The thing with Maps though is there are sources you can buy map information so you don't have to do all the legwork yourself. You can't buy a map of the Internet to form the basic start of your search engine - you have to basically
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apple maps isn't even good.
they don't care
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Apple likes the $20billion that gets sent their way every year.
Apple likes making money. Their point of TFA is that outsourcing search is more cost effective than attempting to compete with it. If Apple thought they could develop a search business quickly enough to turn over $20bn then they would kick Google to the curb in an instant.
Linux phone (Score:1)
As a non-citizen I'd rather not circulate money from one mega corporation to another to contribute to your country's hegemony. It benefits you, the taxpayer but not me.
If only there were a commitment to from Pine64 to ship a PinePhone 2 since Rockchip seems a technological dead end or Fairphone would do global shipping outside of Europe.
The main thing tethering me to Android is 2 factor authentication but that could be handled by a $50 wifi only tablet rather than a $500 flagship in my pocket.
Never mind why they wouldn't. (Score:4, Informative)
The real question is why *would* they. Really, there's no reason for them to. Google search works perfectly fine on everything Apple, with no missing or crippled features. So does duckduck go. And while I've never tried Bing to find out, I really don't see where even microsoft could effectively cripple what is, at the end of the day, a bog-standard website based on who made the device.
When Apple *HAS* chosen to roll its own in the OS X era, it has usually been because a partner has decided to screw them over. Safari came about because, after the much-ballyhooed "alliance" with microsoft that made IE the default browser on the Mac; the house of gated proved to be it's usual duplicitous self and let the Mac version stagnate with features and compatibilities withheld and bugs left unfixed. Mozilla had yet to get its shit together on the Netscape to Firefox transition. So what else was Apple to do? It was the same thing with Apple Maps. Remember that, as with IE on the Mac, Google Maps was the default... and, at first, only... map app for the iPhone. But then Google started pulling the same thing with Maps that MS did with IE. They let the iPhone version stagnate versus what they built into the Android version of the app. Bugs were left unfixed. Optimization were not shared. And features were withheld. The latter was the breaking point. Specifically, it was turn-by-turn navigation directions that Google withhold from the iPhone. Thus Apple Maps became a half-baked-at-first thing. There are other examples... rumors abound that Intel was unwilling to sell Apple chips that could meet both performance and power efficiency targets, for example... though that one's not confirmed so far as I know. But that WAS the reason for Apple's switch from PowerPC to Intel in the first place. So it seems similarly likely. But in any event, Safari and Maps are the elephants in the room on this topic.
But Google has never tried to screw Apple with search in the way they did with their Maps shenanigans. So why would Apple need or want to bother rolling their own search offering in the first place? For all of their reputation for not-invented-here syndrome. They are generally willing to work with others, so long as they're not neglected or stabbed in the back.
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Bullocks. Accepting money or services in exchange your own goods or services is not collusion, it's commerce. And I "colluding" when I pay H&R Block do my taxes for me?
This is ridiculous. (Score:4, Insightful)
BTW, none of this is new. Both companies are recidivist offenders in the realm of anticompetitive behavior. These guys have already figured out the math. They make more money by breaking the rules and paying the fines. Competitive markets are a myth.
Corporate Scorecards:
Google - $2.7 Billion in Fines - 45 Penalties - 2 for price-fixing or anti-competitive practices
https://violationtracker.goodj... [goodjobsfirst.org]
Apple - $1.4 Billion in fines - 27 Penalites - 3 for price-fixing or anti-competitive practices
https://violationtracker.goodj... [goodjobsfirst.org]
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they're publicly promising to never compete with them on their core business. Tech monopolists are being accused of engaging in anti-competitive behavior so what do they do? They team up with each other...yikes.
This isn't a yikes situation anymore than an electrician will pay a plumber to do plumbing for them. It would take a huge amount of effort for Apple to enter a new business and the point is it isn't clear if this could ever pay off for them, so they outsource it. That's perfectly normal behaviour and not in any way anti-competitive, not just for monopolists, but for anyone, including small companies who pay a catering company to run a canteen for them, or pay a building services company to provide janitors
Stay in your lane (Score:2)
You don't know what you do until you know what you don't do.
They don't have to do everything.
Well ... (Score:2)
AI would have a chance to do that. Except that it wasn't designed to remember where it found the "knowledge" that it scraped from the Internet while model building. And provide proper references.
Apple would make 20b in the first q of an new SE (Score:1)
So. you are left with the question, why doesn't apple *really* make a search engine.
It all smells like back room deals to
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How, exactly, would Apple make all this money?
I presume you mean through selling advertising? Which would immediately and strategically undermine its privacy promise to consumers, and result in a significant decline in its device market share. This would be a shit idea.
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One thing you've gotta admit, when it is relatively easy to spend 10 bn dollars on something, you can accomplish a LOT. It's enough to *already* have a search engine built, *and* driving their home-grown AI. Enough to fund a startup to original Google levels. Currently the 20bn to google plus their privacy enhancements are enough to deliver an acceptable experience to every iPhone customer, and gives them buffer time to focus on the next thing. I expect they already have one or two solutions waiting in the
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P.S. Yes all the LLM limitations, being based on thievery, etc.? Sure. But I am guessing 10 to 100 billion is enough to invent a reasoner that is minimally useful as long as you have not already sunk all your intellectual capital into bullshit. If they can't hack it, they can license it anyway, is the mindset.
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Just look at how Google us using the muscle of the search engine to keep a death grip on users. Docs, Gmail, YouTube, YouTube TV, App Store...etc, it is a clos
Even more space filler (Score:2)
What precisely makes the choice not to piss away money on a free piece of software news? Trifles not changing remain trifles.
Corporate distraction (Score:2)
Company has huge revenue numbers and avoids a distraction which might have a slight chance to increase revenue a percent or two.
Not Apple (Score:2)
I can't seem them in a place where they would build something and not be curating/controlling all the content. Their app store is a bad example but also a good example of this.
If they had been in the right place at the right time, they may have built a Yahoo-style web directory. But that wasn't exactly their best time.
AI might replace any task/action. (Score:2)
Why work on a specific task when AI is assumed to be shifting to take over all tasks?
Why would we need lots of pre-written software if people can just ask the AI they like to make a tool?