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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

#201

Post by bduerst »

throwawaykf09 wrote: post #154
thomasahle wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Bing is still doing this: http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-... In that case, the hacker news interest would probably get the page included in Bing, but it would take some time before everyone would start seeing it.

Did you try the search on both Bing and Google? Looked very different for Bing and Google. Also, that accusation was purely a PR play by Google that IMO Bing refuted convincingly: http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-ac...

> was purely a PR play

Bing said they were using internet explorer to monitor users's activity and copy search results. They're still copying Google search results, just doing it through IE.

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

#202

Post by gunsandnachos »

pls2halp wrote: post #165
ekianjo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no problem selling to a minority of users worldwide. The rest simply enjoy PCs and other options and ignore Apple.

The thing is. Both the Suface Pro and Pixel(shining examples of companies not quite being Apple) have sold at exactly the same price as their Apple counterparts for the past few years.

And neither product (I used both) compares to a Mac. There is an elegant simplicity in using a Mac that isn't there when using a PC or other.

Having been a *nix admin for a hair under 20 years, I prefer only Free & OpenBSD to macOS.

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

#203

Post by [deleted] »

greggman wrote: post #90
millstone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Genius just asked me for my username and password to my MacBook so he could type it into some service form for repairs. I don't think asking for that info is really compatible with "we care about privacy"

[deleted]

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

#204

Post by ChuckMcM »

Kiro wrote: post #72
ChuckMcM wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pag…

Please see the part of the comment I quoted. My reply wasn't about privacy. The parent thinks that buying DDG would give Apple full control of the user experience, but is probably unaware of the fact that they wouldn't be in control at all since it's Bing/Yahoo/Yandex providing the actual results.

I don't understand your comment.

Search engine providers provide results as json page without decoration. Everything about the user experience is controlled by the code converting that json into display. This is what DDG does.

Everything about the user experience is controlled by the 'front end' which is making a call to the search engine service on its 'back end'.

The only difference here is how much tracking/PII is part of the request that is sent to the search engine. I was saying you can test that by comparing Siri results with those obtained through a web browser which is forwarding cookies full of PII and tracking information.

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

#205

Post by tryingagainbro »

macintux wrote: post #168
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...

Sacrifice billions a year from Google to spend billions a year trying to compete, for zero additional revenue? That's a tough sales pitch.

Why zero additional revenue? Once it get good enough non-Apple device users will use it.

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

#206

Post by 0xbear »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #200
0xbear wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem surprised, but it's perfectly predictable. To maintain an index of sufficient quality and size costs billions of dollars a year. Heck, engineering cost alone is probably $500M for MS, and more for Google. DGG doesn't even come close to having the table stakes to play this game. Another area where table stakes are incredibly high is geo (maps).

Actually, at Blekko it cost us about $2M/year to hold an index with 5 billion documents, it would have cost use less than $10M/year to hold an index of 10 billion documents (this is suggested by many to be the 'sweet spot' of coverage) to have that many documents you will create a crawl frontier of between 500B and 1T URIs.

“Holding” an index is the trivial part of a search engine. That’s something a single Google engineer can put together in a week (no crawler, just storing and primitive ranker).

What’s going to kill you is ranking (especially in the tail) and keeping the index fresh, including the tail. Ranking requires human input. Keeping it fresh requires some non-trivial effort in the crawler too. And then there’s also serving all of it at 1M QPS, as a prerequisite for creating enough ad revenue to sustain the effort. That requires predictive caching. As a result you get a couple thousand people working on the thing, each pulling down about $400k on average when you total everything up. That’s $800M right off the bat, unless you cut corners like Bing (cleverly) did by stealing your competitors clicks as weak relevance supervision.

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

#209

Post by macintux »

tryingagainbro wrote: post #205
macintux wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sacrifice billions a year from Google to spend billions a year trying to compete, for zero additional revenue? That's a tough sales pitch.

Why zero additional revenue? Once it get good enough non-Apple device users will use it.

You're right: not zero, but I suspect just a rounding error on their books. Apple's ability to monetize ads, particularly given their stance on privacy, is suspect, and I'm not sure how else one would make money with a search engine.

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

#210

Post by kappel »

bduerst wrote: post #201
throwawaykf09 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try the search on both Bing and Google? Looked very different for Bing and Google. Also, that accusation was purely a PR play by Google that IMO Bing refuted convincingly: http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-ac...

> was purely a PR play Bing said they were using internet explorer to monitor users's activity and copy search results. They're still copying Google search results, just doing it through IE.

When did tracking users become equivalent to copying Google search results?
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