Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 224 posts

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#31

Post by infogulch »

willtim wrote: post #25
rtpg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also made a political stand on the search warrant for that one iPhone that they could have unlocked. A stand that wasn't even popular among the general public ("companies should help police investigate terrorists" polls very well). Being super pedantic, Apple doesn't care about anything, just like a company can't care... but I think it's safe to say that it's not last on the list of things they prioritize.

It seemed more like a marketing stunt to me. The issue was about a single iPhone with a warrant to search it. Apple made it a very public debate about all iPhones.

It wasn't about all iPhones? As soon as this case started there were twenty other cases just waiting in the wings to jump on it as soon as the tool that law enforcement wanted Apple to create existed at all. Most of them were trivial cases: drugs, petty crime etc.

I've never used an iPhone, but I'm glad Apple put their foot down. The government is a terrible custodian of slippery slopes, don't give them any more.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#32

Post by tanilama »

jakebasile wrote: post #2

I really wish they'd let me set Siri to search DuckDuckGo.

For what reason. Apparently, aside from their tight relationship with Google, Bing's result is not good enough for Apple to continue, since DuckDuckGo is using Yahoo, who is backed up Bing, I don't see a legit cause for Apple to switch to it.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#33

Post by Gaelan »

craftyguy wrote: post #15
lemoncucumber wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could almost see Apple buying DuckDuckGo, given that a) Apple cares about their users' privacy, and b) Apple cares about having control over the entire user experience. DuckDuckGo would fit right in with both of those core pieces of Apple (no pun intended). I don't think it'll actually happen, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched.

> a) Apple cares about their users' privacy Well, except for the whole switching-to-google thing..

FTA:

> As is expected with Apple now, searches and results are all encrypted and anonymized and cannot be attributed to any individual user. Once you click on the ‘Show Google results’ link, of course, you’re off to Google and its standard tracking will apply. Clicking directly on a website result will take you straight there, not through Google.

Not perfect, but better than just opening Google directly.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#34

Post by SyneRyder »

dmead wrote: post #14
0xbear wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wouldn't make any sense given that DDG is thin UX veneer around Bing, and it doesn't maintain its own index.

is that true? i thought DDG predates bing?

Apparently DuckDuckGo now gets its web site results from a combination of Bing, Yahoo and Yandex. Its focus now seems to be on aggregating results from hundreds of niche search engines and choosing the best engine for a particular search.

https://duck.co/help/results/sources

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#35

Post by partiallypro »

tanilama wrote: post #32
jakebasile wrote: post #2

I really wish they'd let me set Siri to search DuckDuckGo.

For what reason. Apparently, aside from their tight relationship with Google, Bing's result is not good enough for Apple to continue, since DuckDuckGo is using Yahoo, who is backed up Bing, I don't see a legit cause for Apple to switch to it.

Quality of results had absolutely nothing to do with the decision, Google and Microsoft bid on the right to be the search engine. Since Microsoft had already been on the platform they may have seen poor or negative ROI from the deal. Google outbid them with a $3 Billion deal, simple as that.

Simple searches you would do from your phone would be/are neck and neck between Google and Bing, where they diverge a bit are more complex/technical queries.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#36

Post by tesseract »

azurezyq wrote: post #27
jakebasile wrote: post #2

I really wish they'd let me set Siri to search DuckDuckGo.

DDG has a long way to go on long tail queries. In search industry, you can probably spend 1x time and resources to reach 90% Google's relevance score. However, to reach 95% or more, you probably need 100x in time and resources. E.g., NLP in query understanding; Knowledge Graph in webpage understanding; Much larger corpus; Location awareness, etc.

For true long tail queries it seems to me that often (speaking only as a Google user, not an expert) the NLP really ends up getting in the way by causing the query to be reinterpreted as something more mainstream. But I agree that it's important for getting high quality results for a lot of common queries. And that quality and relevance scoring of results is also a hard problem.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#37

Post by tryingagainbro »

Why doesn't Apple open their checkbook and start their own search engine. I mean, really open it. It's not like they don't have the money and it's not like this is a logical step.

They can't start small, meaning the need users to train the SE? What else can it be. Of course they can't put live a horrible version...

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#38

Post by yeukhon »

partiallypro wrote: post #35
tanilama wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what reason. Apparently, aside from their tight relationship with Google, Bing's result is not good enough for Apple to continue, since DuckDuckGo is using Yahoo, who is backed up Bing, I don't see a legit cause for Apple to switch to it.

Quality of results had absolutely nothing to do with the decision, Google and Microsoft bid on the right to be the search engine. Since Microsoft had already been on the platform they may have seen poor or negative ROI from the deal. Google outbid them with a $3 Billion deal, simple as that. Simple searches you would do from your phone would be/are neck and neck between Google and Bing, where they diverge a bit are m…

Last part: deal breaker for me. I can't speak for others, but I am going to assume many feel the same. I couldn't stand looking at Yahoo search results. I switched back to Google after Firefox made Yahoo the prefer choicd (the deal with Yahoo)

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#39

Post by xRahul »

tryingagainbro wrote: post #37

Why doesn't Apple open their checkbook and start their own search engine. I mean, really open it. It's not like they don't have the money and it's not like this is a logical step. They can't start small, meaning the need users to train the SE? What else can it be. Of course they can't put live a horrible version...

Have you seen their attempts with Maps. I can't imagine how the search would go. They already have so much bad press with Maps, I'm sure they don't want more added to it.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#40

Post by hellofunk »

beaner wrote: post #7
lemoncucumber wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could almost see Apple buying DuckDuckGo, given that a) Apple cares about their users' privacy, and b) Apple cares about having control over the entire user experience. DuckDuckGo would fit right in with both of those core pieces of Apple (no pun intended). I don't think it'll actually happen, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched.

Apple doesn't care about it's users' privacy. It only ever started making a big deal about privacy when people started criticizing Google for hoarding too much personal info and using it to target ads, which people think is evil. Apple doesn't do these things (it's not Apple's business model), so they began heavily marketing "privacy" as something you'd get from them and not the competition. They make sort of okay at…

> but since they don't collect a lot

Apple doesn't need to collect anything at all for privacy to be a concern. The iPhone stores as much of your information as any other phone by another maker. Which is why Apple's devices are notable for privacy-minded folks, since their hardware and software make it much more difficult to crack into the device than with other phones.

There is nothing "magical", as you say, about how Apple does this. The difference is that, for whatever reason, they do in fact seem to care more about privacy than other companies. Whether that is driven by market sentiment or not does not change this fact.

Post reply on HN