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> "I would love to see Apple build a search engine just as a feature for their products rather than something to stuff to the gills with advertising and make money from. That would completely change the incentive structure. Apple would be much better positioned to make search better for users instead of the conflict of interest Google has (redirecting users toward ads). I would love to see search get back to what it’s meant to be: information retrieval"

Although what would Apple's model be? Have it as a sort-of loss-leader, a bit like their OS is effectively a loss leader for their hardware sales? That would of course suggest a search that would require Apple hardware.

4 comments

DuckDuckGo uses Apple Maps, so it wouldn't be uncharacteristic for Apple to sell usage of it's search API to other companies, and compete with Bing and Yandex in that market.

Is more of the cost burden on creating and maintaining the index or serving queries? Is it possible that serving queries to everyone would be worth it just to build the brand?

Arguably, and this would be an antitrust concern, IMHO, but they could serve ads... but only to non-Apple devices.

That anti-trust concern could easily be wiped out by giving non-Apple devices the chance to opt-out by paying a flat-fee of maybe 100$. Then they can say that Apple devices include this upfront cost already (which they kinda do, since they are ridiculously overpriced).

Considering the large amounts of money Google pays Apple to be the default search engine we are talking about one hell of a loss leader.

15-20% of net income. No way they will ditch that.

They also have app store search. So odds of it being ad free are zero.

Plus 'Get the new iPhone 12 Pro!' and intercepting android device search queries. Can rapidly become not a loss leader.

Depends on what you mean by "intercepting". You can do that now on Google AdWords if you're will to out spend anyone else for those keywords like 'Android'. In that instance, all it means is that an ad for your product appears when someone searches your rival. In fact, I'm pretty sure this SOP for marketing teams.

If you mean replace any relevant search results for 'Android' with 'iPhone 12' and/or 'iOS 14', then yeah, that would be pretty egregious. However, I can't see that actually happening for a couple of reasons. 1) it would be so obvious it was happening that there's no denying it, 2) it would be so damaging that it would be a service killer as it's all anyone would talk about and never trust it

You are assuming this would be operated at a loss. Apple could sell their own advertising. Or if it's good enough, just use it to make the iPhone experience better. Ad free search would be a pretty nice feature if results are top Q.

Also assumes the DOJ/ court systems/ legislation isn't going to block this kind of deal regardless.

(The press has been talking about an Apple search engine on and off for 5 years so I'm skeptical).

Same as Maps etc. With their phones etc they are in the business of building a personal digital assistant. If they managed to couple search with a decent ontological model of the world, they might be able to build something quite special. "Search" is one, rather simple application for the knowledge they are spidering.

This is not a new idea - it was pretty much Google's original mission statement, ISTR.

“To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” is Google’s current mission statement.

The difference is that Google funds that search engine by ads and the only reason Apple's engine would be worth using is to reduce the ads, which means raising the price of Apple's already expensive products, or giving away profit.

Apple funds the search engine by selling more hardware product. It sells more hardware product by doing things well - including search

> Have it as a sort-of loss-leader, a bit like their OS is effectively a loss leader for their hardware sales?

Seems reasonable!

> That would of course suggest a search that would require Apple hardware.

People performing actual searches has to be one of the lower cost factors of creating a search engine, at least for a long time. Unless it completely explodes, which I find very doubtful considering Googles position, and also considering Apples deep pockets, I don't think Apple will be in a big hurry to shut the gates. Additionally I can totally see Apple doing heavy integration with it's systems and actually using this potential search engine to upsell people into their ecosystem.