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

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

#51

Post by Osmium »

beaner wrote: post #30
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.

I don't think this was a particularly difficult thing to do. they're an almost $800 billion company with one of the most valuable brands in the world and the most loyal followers. They have more of an ability to stand up to these things than anyone. And if they lost, it's not like anything particularly bad was going to happen to them. They'd just have to cede the info. And it was the right thing to do anyway. They ha…

> They had basically nothing at stake.

Except the human cost and resulting PR nightmare if a terrorist attack happened that they could have in principle prevented (e.g. if the terrorist had collaborators, and information on the phone helped find them).

> I don't think this was a particularly difficult thing to do.

Very easy to say when you're not the one responsible for that $800bn company ... if you're a decent human being, you're probably not worried about your own wealth in that situation, but the livelihoods of all your employees and other entities that rely on you. Every decision carries weight. The value of your company is not always empowering; the higher its value, the larger the consequences if you're wrong.

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

#52

Post by yeukhon »

partiallypro wrote: post #48
yeukhon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Yahoo results aren't the same as Bing's; it is merely powered by it, Yahoo still has some control over results and how it uses Bing's service.

It is essentially the same result when the underlying engine is Bing, even though Yahoo can choose how to use the engine.

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

#53

Post by ChuckMcM »

Kiro wrote: post #43
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 cares about having control over the entire user experience. Considering DDG is a wrapper for Bing/Yahoo it would be quite the opposite.

Bing/Yahoo/Yandex but the point that Apple is in the position DDG is in to protect user's privacy if they choose to with Siri/Spotlight etc. They can take the search from the phone, strip it of identifying information and forward it to Google then return the results they get back.

You can test that they are doing that by searching for something directly on Google, and then searching for it on Siri. If the results page differ, there is a chance that Siri is not passing along state information to Google.

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

#55

Post by ChuckMcM »

0xbear wrote: post #47
SyneRyder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And Yahoo, in turn, gets its results from Bing.

Exactly, there are two commonly used english indexes, Bing and Google. Yandex has one but they closed their local data center so it has a lot of lag getting to it from the US.

Tsignal [1] claims to be building their own index, which if they are would mean there was a third index to choose from.

[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/31/deepsearch_tsignal/

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

#56

Post by ChuckMcM »

grzm wrote: post #8
sidcool wrote: post #6

Wonder how much Google paid them.

$3 billion is the number in the article.

And one wonders why it is impossible for a new search engine to get started :-) When Google started paying over a billion dollars a year to buy search traffic it was pretty clear that it was not going to be possible to grow a new full stack search engine organically.

Now they are over $4B/year buying traffic, its pretty crazy.

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

#57

Post by piyush_soni »

rtpg wrote: post #18
beaner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

That was a great 'free' PR boost for them actually, which less informed people take as Apple's great stand on privacy. Apple helped FBI in every possible way for months in their investigation (had also unlocked dozens of phones for them before), even gladly gave away the suspect's iCloud data (so much for customer privacy). It's only when FBI made their next request (to create a backdoor/loophole in brute-force unlocking) public instead of private, when Tim Cook 'had to' show they cared about users' privacy. [0][1]

[0] "Apple had asked the F.B.I. to issue its application for the tool under seal. But the government made it public, prompting Mr. Cook to go into bunker mode to draft a response" : https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/how-tim-cook-b...

[1] : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-20/the-behin...

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

#58

Post by lucaspiller »

xRahul wrote: post #39
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.

Is this because Apple is so bad, or just that Google is so much better than everyone else? I’ve never used physical satnav units, but how do they compare to Apples offerings?

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

#59

Post by toephu2 »

xRahul wrote: post #39
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.

Have you used Apple Maps recently? It's not that bad anymore. Just because they had bad press about it 5 years ago doesn't mean the product is still stuck in 2012.

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

#60

Post by dxhdr »

millstone wrote: post #26
beaner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Disagree strongly. Apple pays a serious price for their privacy stance, which they would rather not pay. Doing machine learning on-device makes it less effective. Apple's directions aren't as good as they could be because Maps randomly segments trips and masks its users identity. Apple's App Store revenues are lower because they limit how apps can identify users. This difference is deeper than business models. Compar…

> Apple's App Store revenues are lower because they limit how apps can identify users.

I think this is less about privacy and more about control. Only Apple apps are allowed to track Apple users.

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