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                    Is Apple Building Its Own Search Engine?

   Josh Centers

   Changes to search in iOS 14 have [1]Ars Technica and other outlets
   speculating that Apple could be building its own search engine as an
   alternative to Google. Although some searches still point to Google,
   others bring up direct links to Web sites.

   Google has just been hit with an antitrust lawsuit by the United States
   government, which could also hurt Apple. A detail in the government's
   suit suggests that Google pays Apple $8'$12 billion every year to make
   Google Safari's default search engine, boosting Apple's Services
   revenue significantly.

   But there's more to the speculation than that: in 2018, Apple hired
   John Giannandrea, the former head of Google search. Apple has also
   posted several job openings for search engineers. Plus, observers have
   often noticed more hits from [2]Applebot, the Web crawler that Apple
   announced in 2015. And, of course, Apple prefers to rely on other
   companies for core capabilities as little as possible, Apple Maps and
   the move to Apple silicon being obvious examples of that.

   It's also possible that pundits are reading too much into this. It's
   hard to see Apple enthused about having to give up $8'$12 billion in
   revenue and take on the significant expense of trying to build a search
   engine that meets users' needs. Apple would have to either eat the loss
   and the costs or attempt to expand its ad business to take up the
   slack, neither of which seem appealing.

References

   Visible links
   1. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/10/apple-develops-alternative-to-google-search/
   2. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204683

   Hidden links:
   3. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2020/10/Apple-search.jpg

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