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Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine

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Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine

#131

Post by bllguo »

simonh wrote: post #112
bllguo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

thank you, pretty impressive. sounds reasonable for them to think they can accomplish the same with search, then

Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine

#132

Post by lern_too_spel »

ogre_codes wrote: post #83
dividedbyzero wrote: post #14

I hope they do – Google is far, far, far too dominant in this space, and small-ish incumbents don't really stand a chance. If they keep up their privacy-friendly stance, this could really become something neat. I'd like for at least a little bit of competition in the gatekeeper-for-human-knowledge space.

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…

> Personally, I'd love if Apple put this out there ad-free.

Apple isn't a charity.

Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine

#133

Post by Barrin92 »

gerash wrote: post #105
giarc wrote: post #10

Scott 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…

>You can just click on Bing and start searching there as soon as Bing becomes even slightly better.

I think the central problem is that 'getting better' is mostly a function of having more users in the first place because that is the very data that helps Google improve the service, it's probably one of the most simple cases of network effects.

Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine

#134

Post by frio »

nostrademons wrote: post #98
punnerud wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My toddler can’t turn Google Home on. He have probably tried over 300 times the last year. Seems like it is not trained on enough child voices in foreign languages. I had to record my voice for him on the iPad, so he can use it. Just with the short “Hey Google”, in Norwegian. He pronounces it correct. The only difference is the high pitch/tone of a child.

I've had reliability problems with my toddler as well, and I suspect it's the treble voices. My primary device (for him) is an LG TV, though, which is push-to-talk. As long as he holds the mic up to his mouth properly it'll usually get what he's saying. (It probably also helps that he's speaking American English). I don't think my Nest Hub Max or Google Home Mini has ever caught the "Hey Google" when he says it, but…

I wonder if it's by design? If I was building a home assistant product, one of the cases I'd build defensively against would be kids saying "hey google delete all emails"...

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but when Alexa/Google/Siri started coming out in home-accessible versions, I did think there was a beat missing in terms of recognising a voice-print (if such a thing is possible) or similarly requiring some form of authentication.

Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine

#135

Post by saagarjha »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #132
ogre_codes wrote: post #83

Earlier 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…

> Personally, I'd love if Apple put this out there ad-free. Apple isn't a charity.

They aren't, but they make a decent amount of money from other things.

Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine

#136

Post by ksk »

gerash wrote: post #105
giarc wrote: post #10

Scott 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…

Google also has a monopoly on online advertising. Where else do you suggest advertising your product?

Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine

#137

Post by saagarjha »

FreakyT wrote: post #54
Hamuko wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked Siri to turn on my lights today. I was told that I did not have any lights set up. Then I rephrased my request to turn on the lights. "Coming right up". Of course, there's also the regular "I'm sorry, but some of your devices did not respond" response from my Watch, forcing me to issue the same command to my iPhone for it to work.

I also get this one with HomeKit all the time! The underlying implementation must have basically no error case handling, because half the time I open the controls I'll get "device not responding".

Or perhaps it throws errors far too often, because often I will ask for it to do something, it will do it, and then claim than an error occurred.

Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine

#138

Post by lallysingh »

three_seagrass wrote: post #126
ehsankia wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is surprisingly good at answering questions like that. The rise of voice assistant really has pushed them into improving their knowledge graph and condensing search results into a single sentence. The conciseness has been getting even better too. I notice often it'll actually give a one word answer, followed by a 1-2 sentence context. For example, I asked "what kind of soap can I use on my cats" and it gave a…

I mean, assistants are basically voice UI's for any service. Google has a huge knowledge graph so naturally they'd be better at answering questions, but I think between Google Assistant and Alexa the race to win will come down to integrations/partnerships with third parties.

So Amazon, then.

Re: Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine

#139

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

core-questions wrote: post #59
adoxyz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic things that I feel like should be trivial for Siri to handle. The biggest issue by far is how bad the voice dictation is for sending messages. It almost never gets it right. I'm not opposed to an Apple search engine if it works. Would happily use it. But the way Siri has stagnated doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence for me.

> But the way Siri has stagnated Well, maybe most people just don't find it that useful, as an idea, rather than as an implementation? I don't personally find myself wanting to talk to my phone, and I certainly don't want smart speakers listening to everything I say and giving it to intelligence agencies or whatever.

Personally I agree. But other people are happy with that interface, so IMO Siri could have been a game changer. It had the potential to eat a big part of the web and give Apple dominance over it.

Failing to take advantage of that early lead has been one of the biggest failures of the Cook era.

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