Apple and Google used to be great partners in the business. Those were the good ol days as Apple and Google have become huge rivals over the past few years. Once Google created its own Smartphone is when it all started. That’s when Google stepped into Apple’s relm of business and Apple was not fond of it. Apple fired back by launching Apple Maps to push back on Google’s toes.
From some of the job listings Apple has been posting it looks as if they are going to enter into Google’s biggest money maker, the search engine. Job listings have been posted on LinkedIn as well as Apples own website. Some of the job listings include iOS Spotlight software engineers, data scientists for spotlight suggestions on both iOS and OS X as well as an engineering project manager for something labeled as “Apple Search.”
Another sign pointing to Apple developing its own search engine is Apple employee Jamie De Guerre posting this on his LinkedIn page, “I lead the Engineering Program Management team for Apple’s new search engine that provides results as you type in Safari and Spotlight.” De Guerre came to Apple when they acquired Topsy in 2013 which is a social search startup.
The next question would be is Apple ready to develop something this big? It took Google years to build a search engine this big and tons of resources. If there is a company with the brains and resources to be able to pull this off it is Apple. This would open up even more doors for Apple to increase their revenue.
Later this year Google’s deal to be the default search provider for Apple’s Safari Web Browser is set to expire. This could be another reason Apple is pushing for their own type of search engine later this year so they don’t have to renew a contract with Google.
Apple could impact Google’s revenue greatly if they build their search engine right. They may have the money to build a search engine from scratch but there are definitely easier ways to go about this.
Partnering with one of Google’s rivals that already has a search engine is potentially a way of making this happen. The first two that come to mind for this would be Bing or Yahoo. Bing is already being used for Siri’s searches, which shows Apple is already involved in business with Bing.
Apple could go a little different direction and use smaller companies like Yelp and Twitter to make this happen. This would spotlight information from smaller news sources and apps and feature their content. Both of these options would be easier than building this from scratch but it’s still a mystery as to how Apple is going about this.
Truth is we don’t know if Apple is creating their own search engine or if they just plan to make their spotlight feature better. I can assure you once we find out more information on this topic it will be all over Internet. This would be a huge step for Apple as search engines can be a serious money maker but if I had to take a guess, I would say Apple will just perfect their Apple Spotlight rather than build their own search engine.
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