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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.)
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
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.
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.
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!
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
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.
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.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
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!
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.
yes, we have no bananas
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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?
Infuriate left and right