Apple Search Engine !!

Surprising right!? Apple is making its own search engine. Let's start from the bottom. 

What is a search engine? A search engine is a program that allows to search and identifies items in a database that correspond to keywords or characters specified by the user, in this case, 

a web search engine is a program that used to identify particular web site or web sites. 

What are the popular search engines? Why we consider popular? 

Goof questions, Google's google search engine is the world's most popular search engine with over 75% of the overall market share. Then there is Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, Duck duck go and etc.

Also, the defining fact of "popular" in this case is the majority of users.

As mentioned in the popular search engines, there are search engine giants like Google and Microsoft. Reports are suggesting that the latest member will be Apple. And you might wonder why? Why now? After all these years? Again!! Good questions. Will elaborate on those.

And you might wonder why? Why now Apple? After all these years?

 

Apple has grown into this giant tech organization with an active user base of billions with hardware that they offer to customers. They also make their own software to run on them and they all can access the internet to accomplish a better user experience and for last few years it has been reported that Google pays billions of dollars to Apple to be the default search engine of safari which is the apple's own browser that used in all of the Apple products such as iPhones, MacBook, iPads and etc.  

And you might wonder why? Why now? After all these years?

 

This is a healthy partnership between Apple and Google that benefitted them both. But the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority have few concerns regarding this partnership. Back in July from their U.K. Competition and Markets Authority Report, They stated that 

 "Given the impact of pre-installations and defaults on mobile devices and Apple’s significant market share, it is our the view that Apple’s existing arrangements with Google create a significant barrier to entry and expansion for rivals affecting competition between search engines on mobiles." 

If U.K. regulators take action regarding this, they will force Apple to end the partnership with Google and let users decide the default search engine that they use on safari when they first launch the app. 

As we all know this Apple Google partnership is not based on the money because Apple is the world's most valuable company right now and this partnership provides Apple users a better search engine and a simple user experience with Apple's software. It is clear that Apple wants money from Google but they don't need the money from Google. With the pressure that building upon Apple by regulators and the growth of Apple's own iCloud and Siri usage, there is an opportunity for apple to create a search engine of their own. 

Let's bring up a what-if question! What if Apple creates its own search engine; what are the advantages of having a search engine of their own? Let's discuss this.

what are the advantages of having a search engine of their own?

 

Improvements to Siri

When we ask something from Siri it basically Googles the thing that you have asked for and presents to you on the same screen. Which is not so smart actually when comparing to Google Assistant it's straight out useless. The reason is google is the internet giant in search engine and they have a lot of data to train their algorithms with the help of data like people google search pattern and improve their assistant to be way more smart and helpful. On the other hand, Apple doesn’t have a data source since it won't offer any free service with the model of free to use to collect data such as Google Photos. 

Currently, Siri is useless comparing to Google's Assistant.

More Revenue

When we search on Google, most of the time search will show various websites, but you might have already noticed that there are sites that have been promoted to be the first on the search result list since there is a really high probability of users' view those sites. Google charges for these promotions and it's a direct income. What if Apple also implements that system of generating revenue?

What if Apple also implements that Google's system of generating revenue?

More security

Apple can verify sites. There are a lot of phishing sites SCAM sites on google, also there are sites that not secure. Apple can create a more safe and more reliable search engine for users.

There are a lot of phishing sites SCAM sites on google

 

Less Reliance on Third-Parties

Apple has a great set of default apps for its an ecosystem, such as Mail, Safari, Apple Music. Every iPhone user most of the time uses Safari as their web browsing experience since it's built-in and UI is very minimalistic and easy to use. Apple preset a search engine on their browser and they call out to all search engines every year to compete in getting a chance of becoming the default search engine of Safari. Google holds the crown and they pay billions of billions to be the default browser of the Apple devices since it's worth it. Apple has a user base of billions and billions and paying them to put Google search to be the number one will easily harvest more data for google and Apple can offer their customers a better search engine and earn some money. It's a win-win situation. But if Apple had their own search engine, they can put it everywhere so they can cultivate their own data set with more focus on user privacy and as apple is known forever, they can optimize their own apps to the software architecture of their own search engine to increase performances in a major way. Just like they do with their iPhone, iPad, and Apple watches. The current reliance on Google search engine is like their reliance on intel with MacBook and you already know the issues that they face. 

the current reliance on Google search engine is like their reliance on intel with MacBook and you already know the issues that they face

 

Apple needs control over the things they offer to their customers and that's a good thing because as customers we pay compared to a large amount of money to their products and we expect them to be good. 

Improvement to the user experience

This will happen when we consider the current issues with the Google search engine.

First of all, let's talk about the current Google search engine UI, it's mostly texts, green text, grey text, purple text same old UI for like last decade or so. Apple could implement in a more user eye-pleasing manner. Since there are pretty good at it. 

current Google search engine UI is.. boring

 

Another issue is that anyone can promote their site to be more SEO (Search Engine Optimized) by paying and they will be shown at the very first of every search; this doesn’t mean that users will get quality and direct content form the promoted link, sometimes it could be a totally irrelevant topic or content. Apple could maintain good information quality with their take on a search engine. 

Apple could maintain good information quality with their take on a search engine.