Now, it's almost 10 years since that, and a lot of things changed at Apple. Also, not only the US, many countries are now looking into Google’s domination in the search business and many other things. Knowing Apple wants to keep its image clean in almost every aspect of its operations, Apple is well off developing its own Search engine.
The Development
Apple launching its own search engine was a matter of if not now, when? Rumors started to pour in quite a long time ago, 3 years to be precise. At that time Apple was in no hurry to launch a search engine because Google is paying a boatload of cash for Apple to keep Google as Apple devices' default search engine.
If you consider this deal as a service that Apple offers, Apple makes around 20% of Apple services revenue from this deal alone. But now that the US antitrust authorities are locking their heads against the Search giant, Apple might also come under scrutiny for such a humongous deal. For that reason alone, Apple is stepping up its game and put search engine development on the fast track just not fall into another mess against antitrust prosecutors.
Siri Search
Apple bought Siri back in the early days of the iPhones, their sole motive was the company’s resources and they eventually ended up using those resources to develop voice assistant. Until 2016, there was no competition for Siri, then came Google Assistant which completely blew Siri out of the water in every aspect and still does.
The reason behind it being Google’s vast experience in training it’s AI using Google Search and Apple’s persistence towards a privacy-first company. Now that’s might not be a bad thing but is still like cutting your own branch. Last month in the latest builds of iOS 14, Apple started testing the search results presented by Siri instead of Google results, which is a step in the right direction for Siri and Apple Search if they want to beat giants like Google. Will Apple search make Siri any better? It still is a tricky situation for Apple.
Paid or Free?
This tricky situation very well might be Apple’s toughest decision or is it? Apple here has two choices: Paid or Free. As we all by now know, Apple will never leave any chance of making money. If Apple wants to protect the user’s privacy and doesn’t want to collect or track them much more like DuckDuckGo they will definitely charge you at least in some sort of way. Maybe they will include it in the Apple One subscription.
If they want to give it for free, by storing user data on the user’s devices and provide personalized recommendations like what Google does and violate their own stance on privacy. The free option is completely against Apple’s privacy-first way. Making it the least possible choice Apple could take. But who knows Apple might just give it away for free without compromising our privacy and make it available on all devices not only Apple devices. Only time will tell.
To be honest, Apple should surely get into the Search engine business, even though it is hard for any company to beat Google in the search business. With a sprinkle of Apple magic, Apple can slightly pull it off. Ads are fine as long as they’re not intrusive and our data is not tracked or misused.
As long as the user is given the complete choice to set up their own search engine preference, even though most users might pick Google early on, it will be a good start at least in some sort of way. Personally, I think it will be an Apple One addition. Will it be called something else other than Apple Search, probably Siri Search? Will it be the first free Apple Service?
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