One can witness the firepower of Apple's fully armed and operational search engine today, which is hidden in plain sight: https://imgur.com/a/SThluBm.
That said, Apple should not end its Google Search partnership until one of the following occurs: (1) it's strategically important for Apple to provide Safari's default search engine, (2) a government mandates that Google can no longer pay (or pay Apple) for the privilege of being Safari's default search engine, or (3) people stop preferring Google search by a wide margin.
(1) Making Apple Search the default for Safari would cost Apple $20 million per year, but could open up a bunch of new revenue streams and potentially provide a much better search experience for Apple users (especially if Apple's GPT partner isn't Google).
(2) If the EU mandates that Google can no longer pay-to-play in general, or can't do so with Apple in particular, no problem. Users will choose their search engine on a platform where Apple has a home-field advantage.
(3) In the extremely unlikely event that Google goes from hero to zero in search, boom — Apple Search is ready.
In summary, this is a terrible time for Apple to stop taking Google's money. They should wait until the GenAI players settle down, until the advertising part of the business matures and can capitalize on the change, and until governments stop looking for limbs to chop off.
$20B is a 1/6th of their operating margin for very little effort.
[1] this was revealed in the recent anti trust trial
You mean, it would change Apple's incentives to those of Googles. The customer no longer being the customer but rather who's ever paying these new revenue streams.
Apple knows enough to not use their search engine in place of anything with actual ad dollars attached to it.
Also, concerning the "partnership", it is impossible to configure Google Maps on iOS as a default map handling application. Due to EU legislation Apple must change this (in the EU only) but this is supposed to happen in iOS 18 or something (in 2025).
However, directions on Google Maps has been corrupted by Waze - it tends to save you a tiny bonus of time by sending you in weird paths or simply cheating (using the exit lane on a cloverleaf to bypass traffic). Super frustrating and panic inducing if you aren't familiar with the area.
But the backend is just plain bad. Searching for common landmarks nearby provides suggestions from 1000s of km away.
Should Apple take it for itself and build a search engine? Ironically, this seems like it would make Apple guilty of exactly what many antitrust arguments decry at the moment: a company leveraging its position in one area to give itself a boost in another.
I feel Tim Cook is going down the same rabbit hole as Steve Ballmer, chasing ways to juice the iPhone/iOS cash cow. And now with dividends, it's an aim at spiking the stock price while revenue isn't growing much.
A $15B dip on Apple's earnings would shock their price. Apple seems to have fallen into the trap of chasing quarterly earnings while sacrificing their long term growth.
If Apple changed the default search engine all these people you know would instantly just starting using something new.
This is almost 20% of Apple’s total operating profit for the year.
It’s never a good idea for a company to be so reliant on a single partnership or client.
It distorts incentives, is high risk and sometimes, as in Apple’s case leaves a company blind to other opportunities it could be pursuing.
On top of it all, Apple’s search partnership with Google trades their customer’s privacy for search $ kickbacks.
Based upon all this, it should be time for Apple to end this partnership and pursue their own search solution.
I do think Google has been decreasing in quality over the years, but when I use any of the privacy focused alternatives like DuckDuckGo, Brave or Kagi, I end up using a !g bang every 2/3 searches.
The others just aren't there yet, and they know that.
So was Maps, but Apple committed the time, resources and focus to make it happen. In 2024, I would say the Maps initiative has been an overwhelming success.
As per the article, Apple already has a search solution in Spotlight, which though it hasn't been battle tested as a general web search solution, seems to be a great basis to improve and make better.
My concern is that due to their addiction to the Google partnership money, Apple don't even seem to be contemplating their own Search approach.
This is how we end up with monopolies in product areas as the big tech players, in effect, collude to not compete in core areas of business due to partnership agreements.
That's still a lot for a default URL.
