Talk of an Apple Search Engine To Thwart Google 276
Hugh Pickens writes "eWeek reports that the data Apple collects about users from its iPhone is so valuable that the company may build its own iPhone-centric search engine just to keep Google from gleaning insight from that data. 'The data generated on the iPhone OS platform must become an increasing priority for Apple and we believe the company has the resources to develop its own products in both maps and search in the next five years,' writes analyst Gene Munster. Google is currently the default search engine on the iPhone, but Google has increasingly encroached on Apple's mobile turf, offering the Android operating system and several mobile applications. As the search provider for the iPhone, Google sees what iPhone users are searching for, which can help it tailor software and services for its own mobile smartphones — a competitive advantage that has not gone unnoticed by Apple. Apple lacks the experience and engineering wherewithal to build a large, scalable search engine, but Munster says Apple could buy a search startup with a Web index, such as Cuil or Taptu, and use its index as the seed for its own search engine. 'Apple is in an inside position to tap into the current pent-up demand for better mobile search, and add a new competitive differentiation from other search providers and device makers,' adds IDC analyst Hadley Reynolds."
No Way (Score:1, Insightful)
This will fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Bing was created mainly as an attack on Google and an attempt to get into the search business, not because Microsoft had something new to offer in search. This is being done in the same spirit, and it will also turn out bad, with many users going to google.com to search just because Google is that much better.
Re:Balderdash! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're two months late with that. [informationweek.com]
Re:No Way (Score:5, Insightful)
No way is Apple going to be able to take on Google in search. Bing failed
Bing hasn't 'failed'. Not taking the top spot is not 'failure'.
and Microsoft has a lot more power than Apple.
Good point. I guess Apple should give up on portable music players too. ;)
People will just end up using the google website instead.
Sure. A fraction of the user base. Some of the time. Odds are anything apple throws in as the built in search will be good enough most of the time for most users. Who knows... they may even partner up with Microsoft/Yahoo. Of course apple has serious NIH syndrome, so probably not.
Disregarding core competencies always ends badly (Score:4, Insightful)
It probably is possible to build a company that does many widely disparate things well -- and certainly, there are a few successful examples -- but it is very, very hard. Most of the time, when a company wanders outside of its core competencies, the venture crashes and burns, and sometimes takes the company down with it. Microsoft (and yes, I am using the term core "competency" very loosely here) has managed to get a lock on PC operating systems and office software, but its ventures elsewhere have not been very successful: IE is the dominant browser, but the goal of using it to dominate the internet was a failure, and the Xbox, while reasonably popular, is not profitable for Microsoft. Google's ventures outside search and advertising have been ignorable so far. Even IBM's foray into personal computing, historically important though it was, is history. Combine such an expedition with a challenge to a competitor whose dominance borders on monopoly, and the odds definitely don't get any better.
Now Apple wants to enter a field in which they not only have no experience, but also lack experience in the entire underlying field of large-scale, massively parallel computing? And they think they're going to do this by buying an unknown and unproven startup?
Well, good luck with that. The odds of it going anywhere are not good, and if it pisses off enough iPhone owners, it might damage the core company as well. (I know, I know, if iPhones crapped every fifteen minutes like parrots, Apple enthusiasts would be the first to boast that Apple had crapping phones way ahead of everyone else, but Apple is no longer operating in a market where the majority of its customers are diehard fanboys.)
Change the game! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple does well when they change the game, rather than simply trying to win a race on somebody else's terms. They also seem to have a good understanding of where their own strengths lie. I can't see them trying to compete head-on with Google but if they can find a way to make Google's strengths less relevant then I can see them doing that. That said, it's not like Apple doesn't have a few flops / vanity projects under its belt and it is sometimes seen as a company that would potentially set business decisions based on personal feeling. Their compass on business decisions is fairly good overall though, even though I'm not at all keen on the direction they want to take the industry.
Re:This will fail (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No Way (Score:3, Insightful)
No way is Apple going to be able to take on Google in search. Bing failed and Microsoft has a lot more power than Apple. People will just end up using the google website instead. Or, alternatively, they'll start saying it's a feature and that they don't need a good search engine anyway.
Did Bing really fail? I still use google to search for things; but when I'm ready to buy I use Bing for the cash back rewards. Since click-throughs are how search engine companies make money, I'd think that they will bring in a lot of cash, relative to their market share.
Re:Not a chance in hell (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's only Apple's "cult" that bought 54 Million iPods last year, 20.5 Million iPhones, and 25% of all music sold in the US?
Considering that Apple only sold around 13 million Macs last year, I find that unbelievable.
Besides that, why should Apple care about search engine market share? As the article stated, the prime goal would be to keep Google from being able to data mine information from iPhone/iPod Touch users.
Re:Not a chance in hell (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, decent products too. Not to mention killer marketing. Can any other company manage 8 stories on the front page of http://cnet.com/ [cnet.com] as Apple has at the moment as well as front pages of CNN, BBC, New York Times etc etc, just because they released a tablet?
Failure (Score:2, Insightful)
Bing hasn't 'failed'. Not taking the top spot is not 'failure'.
$6B and running to buy 12% market share that will disappear once they stop dumping money in. That's not failure? Then what is?
Re:No Way (Score:1, Insightful)
Microsoft's internet division is currently losing about $2 billion a year. Sure looks like failure to me.
Yeah and MS internet division == Bing? Even if MS is burning money on Bing and their other online products, they're thinking long term. You sound like one of these investors who are only interested in quick short term product, after which the company is ran to ground. MS sure has the money to be thinking years afterwards.
Re:Disregarding core competencies always ends badl (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you'll find that it's some "analyst" who is saying there is a "70% chance" that Apple will do this. Apple themselves have said nothing of the sort, and probably quite rightly have determined that search engines are non of their concern.
Apple don't want to do anything - some analyst desperate to validate his existence and paycheck decided to make up a wild claim that he cannot possibly prove. What is he basing his 70% figure on? It's not like he has any prior history of a computer maker being suddenly successful with a phone and then deciding to release a search engine. It's just nonsense.
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
The data generated on the iPhone OS platform must become an increasing priority for Apple and we believe the company has the resources to develop its own products in both maps and search in the next five years
Why must it become an increasing priority for Apple? Because it's a high priority for other popular companies, and Apple needs to catch up to Google and Microsoft if it wants to remain trendy? Because raking in cash hand over fist from the sale of shiny new hardware isn't adequate; they need to start datamining too?
Traditionally, Apple has entered markets where the existing offerings sucked ass. When Apple introduced the Macintosh, WYSIWYG text editing was unheard of. When Apple introduced iTunes, nobody had a single app that could "Rip, Mix, Burn." When Apple introduced the iPod, existing portable MP3 players were difficult to use. When Apple introduced the iTunes Store, existing online music stores used cumbersome and intrusive DRM that wasn't Mac-compatible. When Apple introduced the iPhone, most people didn't browse the web on their cell phone, not because it was impossible, but because it was so awkward that it wasn't worth the effort. When Apple introduced Safari, it's because the best browser for the Mac at that point was Internet Explorer, which was already at the end of its life. When Apple introduced Keynote, it's because the visual presentations that Steve Jobs likes to do just can't be done in PowerPoint.
If Apple thinks they can do something that's so far above and beyond the capabilities of Google Search and Google Maps, they'll do it. If Apple thinks they can do something that sort of approaches the usability of Google's offerings and might be an adequate alternative, but isn't really mind-blowing and revolutionary, there's no way in hell.
Since they do everything better than everyone else (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish Apple would open a hamburger stand.
I sure could use an insanely great cheeseburger right now.
Apple Search Experience (Score:2, Insightful)
USER - search "{any song}"
RESPONSE - "You don't really want to search for that. It' hasn't been approved in iTunes. Here's what you want : {results}"
Re:Not a chance in hell (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This will fail (Score:3, Insightful)
You're overestimating the importance of that. All the other aspects of marketing work too. For example, theres one store that imports all kinds of hot and exotic spices, chili, and anything related you don't find on normal stores. I never really search for them on Google and most other people have heard about them by word of mouth, and they seem to be doing just fine. Sure they do have their sites indexed in Google which most likely brings them extra customers, but it's not like it's really needed for a successful company. Only time a company would fail if they were dropped from a search index would be if they were a shit company to begin with.
Talk of an Apple Search Engine To Thwart (Score:3, Insightful)
Talk is cheap.
Re:This will fail (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't know. When has Apple just followed the crowd? I think if Apple wanted to get into the search biz (and it might be a great idea) they would do it from the point of view of creating a new user experience rather than just a replacement - what Microsoft did.
Pay out more "cash back" than ad revenues (Score:4, Insightful)
That'll build market share and ad revenues. Until you stop paying people to pretend to use your search engine to find stuff to buy. Then they abandon you and you'll find you've flushed a bunch of cash for absolutely nothing.
Re:This will fail (Score:2, Insightful)
I happen to like Bing better than Google but Microsoft's China policy sucks. Therefore I continue to use Google.
Um... Their policies are the same. Google capitulated. Hong Kong is still China. In fact the PRC suggested to Google to redirect to Hong Kong. Given Article 23 [wikipedia.org], the CPC is still in control.
If Google really wanted to make a statement, they would have shutdown, or better yet opened up google.cn and let the CPC shut them down.
But they didn't. They kept sucking at that tit.
Re:No Way (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple won the portable music market for the same reason they won the smart phone market, because they're competitors had gotten lazy and/or lost vision and were releasing unusable crap or products not intended for the consumer market(blackberry). They jumped into an established market where all the existing players had failed to give consumers what they actually wanted, most of those players are still failing to give consumers what they want so Apple is doing very well. This isn't a criticism of their products, it's just the facts, they came into the market with a product which was vastly superior, but most of that vastness was due to the complete and total mediocrity of the competition.
The search engine market on the other hand, is not a market full of companies delivering mediocre products, it's a market full of Google. It's a market in which the main players brand name has become a verb, and which has no upfront cost to users so you can't compete on price.
Now it's possible that Apple could swap the search on their iPhoneOS products to something non google and survive it, people will use what they're given I guess, but I'd put my money on them bringing Microsoft on board for their petty hate fest with Google rather than building their own money pit.
Re:Balderdash! (Score:4, Insightful)
4. Their business model of focussing on the OS and letting other phone makers worry about the hardware is smart. Phone makers were praying for an opportunity to have a phone with functionality to compete with the iPhone, and google gave them the OS to do just that. You can now get a samsung that is on at least an equal footing with the iPhone in many respects.
Incidentally, that's also their biggest technical weakness. There are many handsets available now, all with different hardware, different software versions (most aren't upgradable to the latest version, because the manufacturer doesn't care). That's a nightmare for software developers. Over time, this will be a larger and larger issue, just like it already is for mobile Java applications.
As a contrast, all iPhones ever released are upgradable to the latest OS version, and there are only five different types of hardware (including the iPod Touches).
Re:Not a chance in hell (Score:3, Insightful)
In the mid-90s Apple wasn't doing well despite the fact their cult was still around. It wasn't until Steve Jobs came back that things turned around. Do you think it is just because he improved Apple's marketing?
Re:why do geeks think Bing has failed? (Score:2, Insightful)
Same here. "site:example.com" always seems much better than a given website's own search that I just use it as a default instead of fighting with the site's search.
Bet you UDP packets to donuts that MS employees do the same.
Iphone search data = Pornography for Advertisers (Score:2, Insightful)