Apple may launch its own web-based search engine

CyberTech

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Nov 10, 2017
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A new report claims that factors are increasingly pointing to Apple expanding Siri search results and Spotlight Searches even farther, with the company potentially working on a universal search engine.

Apple already has a search engine it uses for Spotlight Searches and Siri. However, if a new report is accurate, Apple may be looking to ditch the financial arrangement it has for Google to be the default on the iPhone, and launch its own full search engine.

The main tentpole to the argument made on Thursday morning by Jon Henshaw at Coywolf says that it isn't clear if Siri Suggestions are using Google at all anymore. Instead, Apple is returning search results with Spotlight Search, and is bypassing other search engines.

In AppleInsider's own brief tests on Thursday morning, some outgoing and return traffic to and from Google for Siri Suggestions in iOS 14 passed through our router. The same search terms in iOS 13 pulled nearly entirely from Google.
 

Ink

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Jan 8, 2011
22,361
Kind of feels like it's a little too late for Apple, going to be Apple Maps fiasco all over again.
The AppleBot was introduced around 2014 (see link), but I don't see it as any Search competitor yet, except for internal use with Siri Suggestions.

They could follow DuckDuckGo and strip all tracking, or a partnership with them.

DDG primarily uses Bing and other sources, but not Google.

Some users rely on Google search algorithm and cannot adjust to DDG.
 

MonSpyder9

Level 2
May 4, 2020
39
I think Apple has a good chance at becoming a decent competitor to Google, similar to DuckDuckGo. A significant amount of people use Apple devices and not everyone would bother changing the default search engine back to Google if the Apple one did it's job. I mean most tech folk like us know of other search engines, but the average person still thinks that searching for something on the internet is only possible by "Googling it".
 

Eggnog

Level 3
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Mar 21, 2018
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The AppleBot was introduced around 2014 (see link), but I don't see it as any Search competitor yet, except for internal use with Siri Suggestions.

They could follow DuckDuckGo and strip all tracking, or a partnership with them.

DDG primarily uses Bing and other sources, but not Google.

Some users rely on Google search algorithm and cannot adjust to DDG.
I started using DDG as my default search engine about six months ago just to check it out. I'm still using it with no complaints. I'd be worried about DDG partnering with Apple because "all your search belong to Apple". Let Apple do it's own thing. Call it Apple Sauce or something. Frankly, I think they may be a little late to the game, though.
 

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