Why don't they invest heavily in DDG? They don't have to have their own.
They don't need DDG for that. They can just use the Bing API like DDG does.
Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine
111–120 of 198 posts
Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, this is the big reason to celebrate this. A duopoly in search is at least marginally better than a monopoly. If Maps is any indication, people will bitch about it for a year or so, but after 2 years, 80%+ of users will be using it. Personally, I'd love if Apple put this out there ad-free. Getting clean, honest search results was why I switched to Google to start with. Google's current platform where almost al…
could you source 80%+ users using apple maps? that is simply an unbelievable number. for me, if this follows the trajectory of apple maps, i will never have any reason to consider using apple search
Article about Google Maps usage on phones in the UK collapsing as soon as Apple Maps was launched - from 2013.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/26/apple-map...
Apple Maps used on iOS 3x as often as Google Maps, from 2015.
https://9to5mac.com/2015/12/07/apple-maps-usage-numbers/
I can’t source the 80% but it’s probably not far off that on iOS these days. Even so, Google Maps still has about 2/3 market share overall. It dominates on Android, and a significant number of iPhone users still use it. However for Apple Maps on iOS if it’s the default, it just has to be good enough and most people will stick with it.
Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's odd. I use Siri with CarPlay in my car and a very low-quality mic from an aftermarket headunit, and it's able to capture probably 80%, if not more, of my voice-to-texts when I'm trying to text people hands-free. The only real issue Siri has there more often is when I ask it a more complicated query for playing music a certain non-trivial way, like "Play music by X from their latest album" or similar.
A lot of it comes down to your accent. It seems like Siri is trained well for a very particular voice, and if you fall in that range it works great. If you fall outside that range... It might get one in three words correct.
For example, the memorable time I was letting my boss know I was running late because of what Siri chose to transcribe as "sick cunts".
(It was my children who were unwell.)
Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine
#114If it's anything like Siri, I'll pass. Went back to the iOS ecosystem last year after being in Android/Google land for the past decade. I used Google Assistant on a daily basis easily 20-30 times and 99% of the time it got me what I needed. Siri can't even do a 1/10th of the things I used GA for, and that 1/10th that it does, it does so poorly that I don't even bother anymore.
I'm a little surprised that Apple hasn't bought DuckDuckGo. Their privacy goals seem to mostly overlap and DuckDuckGo has really gotten good. Lately I've found them to be as good or better than Google for most technical or informational searches. The results are accurate and they seem to have less of a problem with bogus results from content scraping sites.
Google really does shine at location based searches though. If I'm looking for a physical place in any location or region, Google can be scary good (even when I misspell something).
Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly don't like my search results mingled with the advertising industry: there is bias in all results, you can't trust in information if it is not impartial. People used to create content to advance knowledge, but the amount of crap nowadays motivated my money (even if it is good quality) concerns me about the education of the human civilization as a whole. "The love of money (greed) is the root of all evil": G…
I think there's a great opportunity now for a new search engine that evaluates the general spamminess of a site, and then punishes sites that link to spammy sites.
This has already been in place for a long time. So much so in fact that you used to be able to attack a sites rankings by creating, or stealing, many low quality sites and publishing links on them to the victim's site. The victim, if they were lucky enough to know about theses things, would then have to create a Search Console account (for Google) and declare that the sites have nothing to do with them and Google should ignore them for ranking purposes.
These days there are more attributes to add subtlety to your outbound links of you want the search engines to take you seriously.[1] I'm sure other search engines make similar judgements based on them.
[1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en
Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine
#116Scott Galloway talked about this in a recent Pivot Podcast. He predicts it will launch after the US DOJ announces anti-trust actions against Google. If they do it soon, Google will just point to Apple to say "We aren't the only game in town... this $2 trillion dollar company just launched a search engine on a few billion phones/tablets/PCs around the world." They have reason to wait.
I don't get the antitrust against Google search. You can just click on Bing and start searching there as soon as Bing becomes even slightly better. On the other hand, you can't "click" on Android and suddenly switch to Android (or from Android to iOS) if Android this year becomes slightly better. It's designed to be a real uphill battle to switch (re-purchase all the media: apps, movies, shows, etc.), unhook imessage…
I'm no expert, but it's not just that they dominate the search market, it's that they use that position in less than ideal ways. For example, Google Snippets takes away valuable traffic from sites. Google has also been accused of prioritizing their own results over competitors.
Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly don't like my search results mingled with the advertising industry: there is bias in all results, you can't trust in information if it is not impartial. People used to create content to advance knowledge, but the amount of crap nowadays motivated my money (even if it is good quality) concerns me about the education of the human civilization as a whole. "The love of money (greed) is the root of all evil": G…
I think there's a great opportunity now for a new search engine that evaluates the general spamminess of a site, and then punishes sites that link to spammy sites.
Punishing slow complicated sites and sites with annoying newsletter or cookie notifications would be nice too. Promote simple, fast readable sites with no dark patterns.
There's plenty of room for improvement in search. DDG is already edging ahead because it searches for what I want, not what it thinks I want.
Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine
#118No, thanks. Apple is notoriously horrible when it comes to localization: Apple Maps (localization, regional maps, regional traffic data, turn by turn), iOS supported languages, Siri supported languages, their new Apple Translate that only has 7-8 languages, Spotlight suggestions, etc. They're also very slow to expand their services, I think Apple News still only supports 4 countries. Just buy DuckDuckGo
Yeah, as a non US citizen, this annoys me. Every year Apple announce a new cool feature, but I won't be able to use it for years. Like a lot of the Maps features, the News app, the better predictive keyboard, etc.
Apple is the most valuable company in the world, they really have no excuse.
Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine
#119If it's anything like Siri, I'll pass. Went back to the iOS ecosystem last year after being in Android/Google land for the past decade. I used Google Assistant on a daily basis easily 20-30 times and 99% of the time it got me what I needed. Siri can't even do a 1/10th of the things I used GA for, and that 1/10th that it does, it does so poorly that I don't even bother anymore.
I'm a little surprised that Apple hasn't bought DuckDuckGo. Their privacy goals seem to mostly overlap and DuckDuckGo has really gotten good. Lately I've found them to be as good or better than Google for most technical or informational searches. The results are accurate and they seem to have less of a problem with bogus results from content scraping sites. Google really does shine at location based searches though.…
A big part of what makes DDG great for me is that they are NOT owned by a mega corp.
Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine
#120Will this be before or after that Apple car?