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 Stephen Withers turns his gaze on the world of Apple, with
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Technology news and Jobs 
Our Blogs Core Dump Apple working on a search engine: rumour
Our Blogs Core Dump Apple working on a search engine: rumour | Apple working on a search engine: rumour |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Friday, 14 November 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 2 But that doesn't mean I think Apple has found someone to build it the next great search engine. If you had a really great idea for search, would you take it to an existing company or would you launch a new business?Featured Whitepaper
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So I'm inclined to agree with Arrington when he says "Apple doesn’t like the search experience on its mobile devices, and may be building a radically different user experience which is much more visual than exists today. It will likely still be powered by Google results, but Apple may present it in a very different way that suits mobile users much better." Notwithstanding any iPhone/Android rivalry, Apple and Google seem to have a pretty good relationship. And Google's huge search share (70 percent according to Compete.com) means it also gets the lion's share of search-related revenue - which benefits Apple in terms of the commission it receives for Safari directing search traffic to Google. So a new front-end for Google makes sense to me. The source of the rumours could be something as simple as a reworking of the Google app for the iPhone, but you'd be brave to completely rule out something more substantial. Just because HotSauce failed to take off a decade ago as a way of navigating the web, who is to say that there isn't room to Think Different about what a user does or sees when searching? A more mundane possibility is that Apple is planning to tidy up search on the Mac. Spotlight, Apple's desktop search tool generally works well. A third-party developer has extended it to collect the top Google results for the specified query, and Google itself offers an add-in to index the user's Google Docs. (There's also Google Desktop, which provides a unified Google-style search of local and web content.) But an honest-to-goodness Apple web search engine? I don't think so. |
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