Yeah, the calculus is simple. You just lose 20 billion in potential pure profits. Google is paying you 34% of all search revenue originated by you. You have all the financial structure of your own search engine right there.

Just make your own damn search engine. You could even put Google's own ads on it to make some money that way.

God forbid their advertising looks anything like it does in Apple News. But with their recent Taboola deal it would seem like their standards are falling, not rising.

Tim Cook is merely out to keep the stock price going up just like every other business. Because they had a longer runway from the era of Steve Jobs, they look better by comparison but they will try and do every trick that everyone else has done to keep the next quarter going up.

If apple wanted to or thought they could make a profitable search engine, wouldn't they have already done it?

The question is not whether Apple could make a profitable search engine. The question is whether they could make a search engine more profitable than the billions they are getting paid each year by Google to make Google search the default.

Also the cost opportunity.

If Apple decides to make a search engine and eats $100 billion out of Google's $500 billion profit (made up numbers), Google will just spend back $100 billion (or whatever constitutes a blank warfare check) for year into completely annihilating Apple's presence. They will literally stop people from finding any page that even remotely mentions their 'AppleSearch' and also deprioritize a bunch of other products too unless if you type out, exact word, 'AppleSearch' or whatever it'd be called.

So now you're Apple, here's a question: Will you spend $200 billion fighting back? When will this stop? You're Apple, and this is a stupid move.

They've been trying to make a car for the past decade, arguably an easier task than making a search engine.

A car is definitely not easier than a search engine. Also they canceled the car.

It absolutely is much harder to make a search engine (at least a good one). The dominance of Google in that space for so long should have made that obvious.

or it makes it obvious that Google has had a monopoly for reasons other than the difficulty of making a search engine (this is the truth.)

That’s bullshit, Google came after a bunch of other worse search engines and ate all of the market share because it was so much better.

If you think they got it some other way, you weren’t using the Internet in the early 2000s

How they took over is a completely different subject from how they maintained dominance.

how exactly do they maintain dominance on the desktop, with Edge / Safari being the default browsers on a new machine ?

that was the point. a car is much easier to make, and they couldn't even do that after 10 years.

Not as profitable as monopoly. Sharing monopoly profit with Google is more profitable for both and loss for the consumers.

Both Apple and Google make less profits if they compete against each other, but consumers benefit from two search engines trying to compete against each other.

Apple does not like to compete. They would rather call it spatial computing and price their product in an astronomical band than risk being seen as yet another VR headset competitor.

They will never make a search engine.

On the other hand, they have already made a search engine. Which you don’t think of as one, and which provides a boost to their ecosystem tie-in.

They've been making the iPad calculator for years, who knows how many years they could have spent on developing the search engine

We forget that there was at least a decade of several "Google killers" a year [1]. It's a graveyeard. That was 2009 too. The volume slowed down but people are still trying (and failing) [2].

Microsoft has of course tried but Bing is only really propped up by Microsoft's deep pockets. It's not a profitable enterprise (AFAIK). And this is with Microsoft using every trick they can to bypass EU and US consent decrees and legislation to trick users into Bing. Microsoft has poured billions into Bing.

Apple rejected Google Maps and launched their own Maps product in 2012. Obviously they consider this core to their business so I get it. But even with Apple's resources, it's taken more than a decade for Apple Maps to reach some parity with Google Maps.

It's really hard for a goose to lay a second golden egg. With Microsoft, it's their Windows/Office monopoly. With Apple it's the iPhone. Google is an outlier among outlier because they do have several golden eggs but one is much bigger than all the others (ie search).

Think about it. If Apple makes $300 billion in revenue selling iPhones (made up number), how would as an internal leader try and build a search engine? The iPhone will always take absolute priority, mainly because your search engine is such a drop in the revenue bucket. But without these resources and this priority it'll never grow big. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sometimes just throwing money at a problem just isn't enough.

[1]: https://technologizer.com/2009/05/19/a-brief-history-of-goog...

[2]: https://searchengineland.com/neeva-shutting-down-427384

> [Bing]'s not a profitable enterprise

It makes $10+B per year, pennies next to Google of course, but non-negligible. https://backlinko.com/bing-users#

That's a revenue number, not profit. Also the linked article says $6.24B AFAICT.

If you scroll down a bit you could fine this

> In the 2023 fiscal year (ends on June 30), Microsoft reported $12.2 billion in search and news advertising.

Agree it is important to note this is not net, net seems to be about half according to article.

Fascinating links, I had almost forgotten about these engines.

> We forget that there was at least a decade of several "Google killers" a year [1]. It's a graveyard.

Yes, that's called a monopoly.

The big difference is that at that point of time Google search used to be really good but now Google search is really bad so if there is a chance for another competitor in the market, that time is now.

Yeah Bing really isn't bad. And LLMs are basically search engines for most use cases.

I think Mozilla should just run an ad auction to choose the search engine. Bing/MS would pay to capture market share, and Google would pay to prevent Bing from gaining ground.

So let them fight it out.

> I think Mozilla should just run an ad auction to choose the search engine

This is not exactly what’s happening? Google is just willing to pay more.

An exclusive deal is different from an auction.

IMHO that’s mainly because the modern open/public internet kind of sucks. The ratio of content to garbage is extremely bad

Maybe. I recall searching the heck out stuff from 2000-2004 for CompSci looking for solutions to homework problems in code. There were a lot of spam sites.

Circular problem I think, considering a lot of the garbage is a product of SEO and exists solely to game Google’s increasingly poor ranking algorithm.

> Google is an outlier among outlier because they do have several golden eggs but one is much bigger than all the others

What "golden egg" do Google have besides an ad-selling business? Last time I looked into it ads of various forms accounted for basically all of their revenue, somewhere around 85% or more.

>What "golden egg" do Google have besides an ad-selling business?

Google search, Maps, and GMail are the big 3 web services. These don't bring in revenue all by themselves, but they bring users to look at ads which is where they make all their money. There's also Chrome (directs people to Google services and facilitates their use of those services). Finally, there's Android, which is a little different but like Apple, they get revenue from the Play Store on it, and again push users to use their own search engine and browser.

> These don't bring in revenue all by themselves Thus they're not eggs at all, either golden or otherwise

> but they bring users to look at ads which is where they make all their money Ad sales is their golden egg. Practically everything else is an egg truck to sell that one thing.

They're absolutely golden eggs, they just don't bring in revenue directly the way other products do.

Ads by themselves aren't a golden egg. Users don't want to look at ads, and certainly aren't going to pay for them. That's why they came up with those other products, to sell ads to advertisers.

It's just like newspapers: historically successful papers like the NYT didn't get rich by doing great journalism and selling papers to people, they got rich selling ads, with the journalism being a way to get people to subscribe to the paper.

You're making the mistake of thinking the pair of eyeballs viewing the ad is the customer/user in this.

The pair of eyeballs are an integral part of the ad product that is sold to customers who buy ad spots.

Cows don't want to be eaten but burgers are absolutely McDonalds golden egg.

Yeah, less golden eggs, and more golden funnels (Chrome, Android).

Youtube, gmail, photos, etc etc etc - absolutely everything consumer facing is a channel for the ad business.

The only potential outlier is the cloud stuff, but even then I think it's essentially a 'economies of scale' thing, for the same reason Amazon started AWS, rather than a real revenue centre.

You can't seriously bring 2009 as a proof the situation now is the same. In Internet terms, it's like arguing current politics with examples of the time of Charlemagne.

Well search engines were actually useful back in those days and there was room for competition.

How a search engine looks hasn't fundamentally changed since then. I'd argue the same about other products, like phones, excel, word, or operating systems like Windows. Yes, the newest versions of these have more sophistication than earlier iterations, but they are just extensions of the original basic idea. Sure the iPhone 15's camera is way better than the original iPhone's, but it's still a phone with a camera and a maps app.

Also, states are different than they used to be, but there is still a lot to learn from history, and you often see that similar struggles get fought over and over, or similar mistakes get made. Verdun has been a major battleground in WW1 because that's where Charlemagne's legacy got split up. As another example of a phrase still relevant today, there is "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...

> It's really hard for a goose to lay a second golden egg. With Microsoft, it's their Windows/Office monopoly. With Apple it's the iPhone. Google is an outlier among outlier because they do have several golden eggs but one is much bigger than all the others (ie search).

No, in fact, Azure's revenue is higher than that of Windows and Office combined [1]. Microsoft is far more diversified than Google is. Google has been trying for a decade to achieve Microsoft's diversification and has not succeeded (Bard being the latest such failure).

[1]: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/microsofts-revenue-by-produ...

Apple could make a search engine but by the same logic, they wouldn't be able to make it default on their devices.

Why not? They did it for Maps.

Even though Apple hasn’t been sued for Apple Maps, they are not safe from such antitrust charges. The antitrust cases move slowly so it’s possible that they just haven’t gotten to there.

Apple Maps is now on the web ( https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24205449/apple-maps-web-b... )

So far, Company + Map hasn't caused any problems with even bigger players and tighter interegration (Google + Google Maps and Microsoft + Nokia ( https://news.microsoft.com/2013/09/03/microsoft-to-acquire-n... )).

Interestingly, Apple Maps' new beta doesn't work on Linux at all, even with Chrome, so I can't see it. They say it works on Chrome on Windows or Mac, but apparently Apple doesn't like Linux very much.

> Apple Maps is now on the web

Just tried it and Chrome isn't supported!

The problem isn’t that Google has search and makes Android. It’s that they have search and paid android phone makes and Apple oodles of money to make Google search the default.

Apple would not need to pay anyone to make their search (or maps or browser) the default. It would be the default on Apple devices and not used much outside of that.

> It would be the default on Apple devices and not used much outside of that.

Would that bother Apple? Their platform is the most valuable to advertise on. They’ll make money. The question is, will it make as much as Google was paying?

One would argue that Apple is abusing their monopoly on iOS devices to advance their map business. One could also argue that iOS is not a monopoly since Android has greater market share. Who will win is not settled yet. Right now, the DOJ hasn't come this far, but it is not given that they won't ever go there.

Creating a search engine without stepping in the patent / licensing minefield that Google and Microsoft have put down for each other is not necessarily a profitable or worthwhile venture.

Sure, they could write their own search engine (they also don't do large compute - so they'd be getting it from someone they'd be paying) but Apple would be paying for compute and licensing ... and not have any revenue from it ... and get in trouble with anti-trust or monopoly issues in Europe to boot.

Writing a search engine isn't likely worth the headaches that it would bring to Apple.

and they'd run it on...AWS or GCP?

So long as they don't prevent users from switching to Google, I'd honestly like to see that search engine. And on the grand scheme of things, maybe it's good for Google to have some pressure against making choices that lead to search results quality decline.

> [Apple] already have search engines for App Store, Maps, Apple TV and News and Spotlight.

This is completely different than a general-purpose search engine.

and they even completely fail at this easier task

It's both easier and harder. The scale part is easy (the index is <1TB), but there's almost no training data for feedback.

Search is dead anyways. It’s all SEO nonsense. I would rather have a curated list of validated sights. Like recipes only from actual chefs or publications, news from newspapers and networks, be absolutely sure the address I am looking at is my BANKS website.

All the Reddit, twitter, Pinterest, and blog stuff can stay in the Google wasteland and gotcha ad links.

Oh the irony. You know that:

> Like recipes only from actual chefs or publications, news from newspapers and networks

are the first-party garbage on the Internet? It's all content marketing written to push ads. Yes, including "recipes only from actual chefs" - chefs have better things to do than to maintain an on-line presence; if you see one, it's most likely a brand where the chef gets paid for the rights to their name, and any actual writing is done by marketing interns mashing together whatever they can find on social media.

In fact, if you really want authentic recipes from real chefs, your best bet is Reddit - there's bound to be a few bored chefs hanging around relevant subreddits, exchanging ideas and providing expert tips, just because it's a fun thing to do.

So yeah, search is bad and the web is a SEO wasteland, but the brands big and small aren't victims here - they're the ones who caused it, and who perpetuate it, because it's easier money than actually delivering something of value.

Append reddit to searches is the secret weapon. Use it all the time

Enjoy it while it lasts. Marketers have been wising up to that trick.

By actual Chefs I mean like Bobby Flay or Matha Stewart. I don’t expect working chefs to give away their crafted recipes on a website. I am looking for like a simple crepe and meatloaf recipe, and end up with some really odd SEO boosted directions.

> I am looking for like a simple crepe and meatloaf recipe, and end up with some really odd SEO boosted directions.

Pretty sure wanting a "crepe and meatloaf" recipe is the problem there.

I waiting for someone to reinvent Yahoo! (aka human groomed site lists). In my mind I can see a browser plugin (or something similar) that users can Up/Down vote specific sites. You can then follow users and see what they think is cool/useful.

Search is only dead because it's more profitable for Google this way. They don't care that you end up on an SEO farm as long as you are looking at their ads.

I maintain that the point that Google started going down the drain was when they embraced SEO instead of seeing those that try to game the search engine as adversaries.

   > They already have search engines for App Store

if their Internet search engine was as good as their App Store search engine then we would need to wait half a minute to get oranges if we search for tomatoes

They already have a tiny instant search engine which shows 1 result of a url at top.

I’d say its pretty accurate and impressive 95% of the time to the point im impressed at how good its suggestions are considering it’s just the top 1 search.

Funny you're showing up as downvoted, but this is absolutely right. Apple is testing their search abilities with URL autocomplete and it's surprisingly good. It's gotten much better in the last 6 months in particular.

Now you’re downvoted too. I dont know the logic behind us getting downvoted just discussing about a search feature present in apple’s browser

There are some weird people in this thread

Honestly, I'm surprised to see anyone talk explicitly about Apple internal works. Is that public knowledge?

Yes, all info here:

[9to5Mac article on apple search engine](https://9to5mac.com/2023/10/02/apple-pegasus-google-search/)

Apple is under anti-trust investigation too. Adding a search engine to their monopoly isn't going to help their case either.