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Talk of an Apple Search Engine To Thwart Google
Hugh Pickens writes "eWeek reports that the data Apple collects about users from its iPhone is so valuable that the company may build its own iPhone-centric search engine just to keep Google from gleaning insight from that data. 'The data generated on the iPhone OS platform must become an increasing priority for Apple and we believe the company has the resources to develop its own products in both maps and search in the next five years,' writes analyst Gene Munster. Google is currently the default search engine on the iPhone, but Google has increasingly encroached on Apple's mobile turf, offering the Android operating system and several mobile applications. As the search provider for the iPhone, Google sees what iPhone users are searching for, which can help it tailor software and services for its own mobile smartphones — a competitive advantage that has not gone unnoticed by Apple. Apple lacks the experience and engineering wherewithal to build a large, scalable search engine, but Munster says Apple could buy a search startup with a Web index, such as Cuil or Taptu, and use its index as the seed for its own search engine. 'Apple is in an inside position to tap into the current pent-up demand for better mobile search, and add a new competitive differentiation from other search providers and device makers,' adds IDC analyst Hadley Reynolds."
Bing was created mainly as an attack on Google and an attempt to get into the search business, not because Microsoft had something new to offer in search. This is being done in the same spirit, and it will also turn out bad, with many users going to google.com to search just because Google is that much better.
Apple isn't going to put together a search engine. Come on, people, pitting Apple against Google, Google against Microsoft, Microsoft against Apple ... it's all just a game of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' depending on whose market you're playing in.
Just because Google is making real inroads into the mobile phone market doesn't mean that Apple is going to counter by trying to start a search engine. What's next, a rumor of Google's new Android based gPad?
I bet Yahoo would be more than happy to provide search technology to Apple (not the powered by Bing stuff, their own capable search). Yahoo's not going to make a competing phone anytime soon, and the cost of a Yahoo deal might well be worth it against the cost of Apple developing their own (the latter obviously being more expensive, but meaning Apple gets full control).
No way is Apple going to be able to take on Google in search. Bing failed
Bing hasn't 'failed'. Not taking the top spot is not 'failure'.
and Microsoft has a lot more power than Apple.
Good point. I guess Apple should give up on portable music players too. ;)
People will just end up using the google website instead.
Sure. A fraction of the user base. Some of the time. Odds are anything apple throws in as the built in search will be good enough most of the time for most users. Who knows... they may even partner up with Microsoft/Yahoo. Of course apple has serious NIH syndrome, so probably not.
It probably is possible to build a company that does many widely disparate things well -- and certainly, there are a few successful examples -- but it is very, very hard. Most of the time, when a company wanders outside of its core competencies, the venture crashes and burns, and sometimes takes the company down with it. Microsoft (and yes, I am using the term core "competency" very loosely here) has managed to get a lock on PC operating systems and office software, but its ventures elsewhere have not been very successful: IE is the dominant browser, but the goal of using it to dominate the internet was a failure, and the Xbox, while reasonably popular, is not profitable for Microsoft. Google's ventures outside search and advertising have been ignorable so far. Even IBM's foray into personal computing, historically important though it was, is history. Combine such an expedition with a challenge to a competitor whose dominance borders on monopoly, and the odds definitely don't get any better.
Now Apple wants to enter a field in which they not only have no experience, but also lack experience in the entire underlying field of large-scale, massively parallel computing? And they think they're going to do this by buying an unknown and unproven startup?
Well, good luck with that. The odds of it going anywhere are not good, and if it pisses off enough iPhone owners, it might damage the core company as well. (I know, I know, if iPhones crapped every fifteen minutes like parrots, Apple enthusiasts would be the first to boast that Apple had crapping phones way ahead of everyone else, but Apple is no longer operating in a market where the majority of its customers are diehard fanboys.)
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I'm an Apple user and long-time developer for their platforms, and this seems highly unlikely. No, no for fanboi-ish reasons, but because Apple aren't adept at multitasking. Most companies would be able to bring out a new product, such as the iPad, without having half their product line fall into obsolesence -- their PowerMacs are now over a year old, and MacBook Pros are 10 months old. And as for search engines, have you tried the iTunes/App Store? It pales in comparison to what Amazon had 10 years ago; it is the main reason why apps see sales drop-offs that are at the very extreme end of a common phenomena. (It's also why, even as an App developer, I shop at Amazon and only go to iTunes occasionally for a price check. I actually don't buy apps because the store is so painfully useless.)
Apple's scope is very limited, their expertise is definitely not in search engines, and they have so far shown little interest in data-mining their customers -- it would seem beneath them in its most common usage. In short, there's very little reason to believe Jobs has any interest in pursuing it, much less that they'd be able to spare their focus on other things to work on it. They might slap together something as an off-hand type of thing, sure.
Apple does well when they change the game, rather than simply trying to win a race on somebody else's terms. They also seem to have a good understanding of where their own strengths lie. I can't see them trying to compete head-on with Google but if they can find a way to make Google's strengths less relevant then I can see them doing that. That said, it's not like Apple doesn't have a few flops / vanity projects under its belt and it is sometimes seen as a company that would potentially set business decisions based on personal feeling. Their compass on business decisions is fairly good overall though, even though I'm not at all keen on the direction they want to take the industry.
No way is Apple going to be able to take on Google in search. Bing failed and Microsoft has a lot more power than Apple. People will just end up using the google website instead. Or, alternatively, they'll start saying it's a feature and that they don't need a good search engine anyway.
Did Bing really fail? I still use google to search for things; but when I'm ready to buy I use Bing for the cash back rewards. Since click-throughs are how search engine companies make money, I'd think that they will bring in a lot of cash, relative to their market share.
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So it's only Apple's "cult" that bought 54 Million iPods last year, 20.5 Million iPhones, and 25% of all music sold in the US?
Considering that Apple only sold around 13 million Macs last year, I find that unbelievable.
Besides that, why should Apple care about search engine market share? As the article stated, the prime goal would be to keep Google from being able to data mine information from iPhone/iPod Touch users.
Apple relies entirely on their cult to fund its sales.
Well, decent products too. Not to mention killer marketing. Can any other company manage 8 stories on the front page of http://cnet.com/ as Apple has at the moment as well as front pages of CNN, BBC, New York Times etc etc, just because they released a tablet?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Bing hasn't 'failed'. Not taking the top spot is not 'failure'.
$6B and running to buy 12% market share that will disappear once they stop dumping money in. That's not failure? Then what is?
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Seems someone was smart enough to register isearch.com...
BUT there may be some others available...
yikes, even based on this short list I drew up from memory the isearch domain name is hot!
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I think you'll find that it's some "analyst" who is saying there is a "70% chance" that Apple will do this. Apple themselves have said nothing of the sort, and probably quite rightly have determined that search engines are non of their concern.
Apple don't want to do anything - some analyst desperate to validate his existence and paycheck decided to make up a wild claim that he cannot possibly prove. What is he basing his 70% figure on? It's not like he has any prior history of a computer maker being suddenly successful with a phone and then deciding to release a search engine. It's just nonsense.
The data generated on the iPhone OS platform must become an increasing priority for Apple and we believe the company has the resources to develop its own products in both maps and search in the next five years
Why must it become an increasing priority for Apple? Because it's a high priority for other popular companies, and Apple needs to catch up to Google and Microsoft if it wants to remain trendy? Because raking in cash hand over fist from the sale of shiny new hardware isn't adequate; they need to start datamining too?
Traditionally, Apple has entered markets where the existing offerings sucked ass. When Apple introduced the Macintosh, WYSIWYG text editing was unheard of. When Apple introduced iTunes, nobody had a single app that could "Rip, Mix, Burn." When Apple introduced the iPod, existing portable MP3 players were difficult to use. When Apple introduced the iTunes Store, existing online music stores used cumbersome and intrusive DRM that wasn't Mac-compatible. When Apple introduced the iPhone, most people didn't browse the web on their cell phone, not because it was impossible, but because it was so awkward that it wasn't worth the effort. When Apple introduced Safari, it's because the best browser for the Mac at that point was Internet Explorer, which was already at the end of its life. When Apple introduced Keynote, it's because the visual presentations that Steve Jobs likes to do just can't be done in PowerPoint.
If Apple thinks they can do something that's so far above and beyond the capabilities of Google Search and Google Maps, they'll do it. If Apple thinks they can do something that sort of approaches the usability of Google's offerings and might be an adequate alternative, but isn't really mind-blowing and revolutionary, there's no way in hell.
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I wish Apple would open a hamburger stand.
I sure could use an insanely great cheeseburger right now.
USER - search "{any song}"
RESPONSE - "You don't really want to search for that. It' hasn't been approved in iTunes. Here's what you want : {results}"
That's a testament to their marketing powers, not to their products. I'm of the opinion that Apple could market human waste, and we'd all hail it as revolutionary. That said, their products are fairly decent, just not as awesome as they are made out to be.
SSC
The problem Apple has with the iphone is they just farmed out too much. There's not enough Apple controlled stuff in the iphone for Apple to maintain control. Apple controls email, but that's not hard. Apple doesn't control the voice or data circuits, but those are commodities, so not a problem. Apple farmed out maps. That's more of a problem; only MS and Google do maps reasonably well. Apple farmed out search. That's a problem.
Apple controls the browser, but that's more of a bug than a feature because the browser is so feature-limited that most functions that could be done by websites on a full-featured browser (for example, IMDB or shopping at Lands End) need a dedicated app on the iphone. Apple is rightly afraid of an infection vector thru the browser, but the result is thousands of 'apps' that simply substitute for websites on a fully functional browser.
The upshot is the features of the iphone are too easy to duplicate on other machines. Websites do the job of most apps, and maps and search are already controlled by google. What's left?
Actually there is one thing left, but it's also the kind of hard job that Apple doesn't handle well. Right now we pick phones based on how easy it is to enter data without a keyboard. That's pretty ludicrous when you think about it. If we could input data to a phone by speaking into it how amazing would that be? Yeah, I know, voice rec is hard, but when it comes along it's going to be the only kind of smartphone worth owning. And Apple isn't even working on it.
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Microsoft's internet division is currently losing about $2 billion a year. Sure looks like failure to me.
Makes me think of that line from Citizen Kane.
Kane's bookkeeper: But we're losing a million dollars a year!
Kane: Then in 60 years, when I am out of money, we will close our doors!!
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I don't see how this would be useful - an Apple search engine would only return ONE result.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
This is the same guy who says Apple is going to put out an HDTV, too.
He's like a stopped clock that tweets two times a day -- everyone should stop paying any attention to him. Just don't look!
Talk is cheap.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Not going into all the rest, but IBM's "foray"? Just off the top of my head, IBM more or less invented the "Personal Computer" as such, as the smaller version of mainframes and minicomputers (hence the term "microcomputer". Note: Altair, Apple IIe, etc. were "hobbyist/home computers" in their day). Microsoft originally supplied exclusively to IBM, and Intel was a spin-off, too. And this is consistent with IBM's strategy throughout the last decades: as soon as something looks as if it's heading in the direction of becoming a commodity, they drop it. Hard disks, for example. And they always do it early. IBM drops PCs - enter Dell; IBM drops hard disks - enter SSDs; always quite a few years down the line. IBM appears not the be interested in playing the margin game with n different competitors.
OK, now back to the rest: bullshit. Disregarding core competencies is a necessary part of progress. The Newton was closer to Apple's core competence that the iPod, when they came out, and we know which failed and which succeeded. Or the iPhone - damn, was that a saturated market when they started out, never having built a phone before.
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Bill Gates is still chief software architect and non-executive chairman of Microsoft and I'm sure he has some saying over things. He only stepped down from the chief executive officer position and maybe day to day activities and left those for Ballmer.
when we start hearing that Apple created search too.
That'll build market share and ad revenues. Until you stop paying people to pretend to use your search engine to find stuff to buy. Then they abandon you and you'll find you've flushed a bunch of cash for absolutely nothing.
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Search is also incompatible with Apple's closed-box approach. I can't see Steve Jobs avoiding the temptation to cook the results in some petty way, even if not directly against those who have crossed him. Look at how closed his app markets are. His ego is too big to let a search engine escape his control.
People who think Google might drive a company out of business by biasing the search results against them should consider who would be more likely to do that -- Apple or Microsoft or Google?
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Actually Android, at least on the Nexus One, has integrated speech recognition. It's done server side and the quality seems to have improved a lot lately. If you use it for phrase-at-a-time speech it can be remarkably accurate. It doesn't work so well in very noisy environments or if you string together several phrases with pauses to imply commas, etc. At least not yet.
I'm tired of Google's 10 obfuscated links per query. You have to do a lot of mental calculation to determine if that's the link you want in many cases. It's actually really opaque. Apple would create a search engine for consumers and make it a much better experience. Guaranteed they would come in with some kind of twist that make Google Search look like a hand-cranked antique. They would likely also leverage their very extensive video knowledge (not just selling in iTunes, but also QuickTime, which is like the Unix of video creation) so that you could find video effectively. They might even promote it as being for users who want to find video.
Apple's Spotlight client search is much better than what you find on other platforms, so it isn't like they're starting from scratch. And iTunes has its own built-in search engine. A Web index is really just expanding their search.
Google's weakness is that they're all Ph.D computer nerds and most consumers are not. That's why you see that Android is used overwhelmingly by computer nerds. Google has almost no designers and artists. Ask yourself why the 10 results don't show me a little thumbnail of the page, even if that comes in after the results, that would be much more helpful in a lot of cases. Why isn't there an option at least to turn that on? Apple's search would likely be very, very graphical.
If you remember the flap recently where people were trying to login to Facebook from a page that was not Facebook but was the #1 Google result for "Facebook login" then realize that is a Google Fail right there. That is people just typing words in and taking the first result. They're not even pressing "I'm feeling lucky" which would take them right there, they're going to the 10 results and just picking the top one without reading. I've seen this behavior again and again when training users. That's how most people "use" Google. They barely scratch the surface. Apple doesn't have to compete with the whole thing, just that surface 0.01% that most users are using.
Google is vulnerable on privacy with Eric Schmidt recently saying you don't have any, and with them turning on Buzz the way they did. In the same way that Apple doesn't have to make very much money on iTunes Store (because it sells devices that they make money on) they don't have to make very much money in search and ads. They can out-privacy Google easily.
Google is vulnerable on copyright, where they recently pissed off every book author in the world, just as Apple is opening a bookstore.
AdWords is great but it's a lot of work for the advertiser. Apple's customers are a very desirable demographic. If they can make an ad platform that lets you reach Apple users for less work and less money than AdWords, many people would be very interested in that. Only 1 in 10 PC's is a Mac, but 9 out of 10 high-end PC's is a Mac. What if there was some link to Apple's credit card database, so that if a user comes in to your site via an ad on Apple's search engine, they can pay with their iTunes account?
Google is obviously just searching the Web. Apple can offer the iTunes Store, their native app platforms, for example, enabling you to find something in the print/iPad edition of TIME. They could even do some kind of peer-to-peer from their client platforms, where you find what you're looking for in the public folder of somebody else's Mac. Which every Mac already has. The Web is the common space of the digital world, not the whole digital world.
And Apple has a higher market cap and more money in the bank than Google. You can't dismiss it when any company that is bigger than you comes into your space. When that company is on such a roll that people who want to knock them point to the Power Mac G4 Cube as their awesome failure, that is really something to be concerned with. The Cube predates the iPod that is so long ago, and it was a profitable product (although not very) and it enjoyed a very loyal and even cult following even years after they stopped making it. Many companies would love to
as a disabled user living with speech recognition full-time are high-powered PC, I can tell you, nobody does it right. All (nuance, Microsoft) suppliers fail big time. Replicating their work is a 5 to 10 year process and since corporate management rarely thinks on that long a time frame, speech recognition is not easy and all of the Sphinx systems are just toys to keep grads students busy.
One could purchase, or more accurately, rent, recognition engines from nuance and Microsoft but the problem is, there are so many annoying little bugs inhibiting usability that you will still spend a year plus making it ready for real people and then, need to reapply all your bug fixes in the next release comes out.
Speech recognition is a dream for some and a nightmare for those who live with it (especially for those of us who try to use it with open source applications). On the other hand, I would be living off of Social Security disability if I didn't have speech recognition even in its current crappy state.
I can only image what features an Apple map is going to lack. Street names, actual Roads!!!
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Apple won the portable music market for the same reason they won the smart phone market, because they're competitors had gotten lazy and/or lost vision and were releasing unusable crap or products not intended for the consumer market(blackberry). They jumped into an established market where all the existing players had failed to give consumers what they actually wanted, most of those players are still failing to give consumers what they want so Apple is doing very well. This isn't a criticism of their products, it's just the facts, they came into the market with a product which was vastly superior, but most of that vastness was due to the complete and total mediocrity of the competition.
The search engine market on the other hand, is not a market full of companies delivering mediocre products, it's a market full of Google. It's a market in which the main players brand name has become a verb, and which has no upfront cost to users so you can't compete on price.
Now it's possible that Apple could swap the search on their iPhoneOS products to something non google and survive it, people will use what they're given I guess, but I'd put my money on them bringing Microsoft on board for their petty hate fest with Google rather than building their own money pit.
In the mid-90s Apple wasn't doing well despite the fact their cult was still around. It wasn't until Steve Jobs came back that things turned around. Do you think it is just because he improved Apple's marketing?
Same here. "site:example.com" always seems much better than a given website's own search that I just use it as a default instead of fighting with the site's search.
Bet you UDP packets to donuts that MS employees do the same.
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No kidding that data is valuable. I mean iphone users have proven that they are easily led bandwagon jumpers with plenty of money to spend on crap they don't need. Advertisers are jizzing all over themselves to get at that data.
Actually, we don't know what sort of voodoo Steve Jobs used on the media heads to get them to put their content on iTunes under fairly reasonable terms. They were still working PlaysForNow at the time. It must have been some persuasive stuff. I'm thinking Quicktime video of studio executives snorting heroin off the nether parts of recently dead OD'd boyband members, but that may be my imagination getting the best of me. Maybe it was simple consensual human/gerbil interaction. I'm sure it wasn't reason though - they don't understand the term.
This part of the Book of Jobs will probably never be written. Some things are best left a mystery.
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