Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by victords » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

mgh2 wrote: post #55

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.

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…

So the 2T dollars company is the decent one?

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

#192

Post by ogre_codes » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #154

saagarjha wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly. They do things that make money. This removes a big source of money, adds a big cost, and worsens user experience. I'd love it if they made Apple Music and Apple TV free too.

Apple implements things which differentiates the iPhone and makes the experience better. If they see search as a way of doing that, they might well do it. There are a lot of services which are accessible to iPhone users which are completely free for years. The App Store, Find My iPhone, Find My Friends, the iCloud APIs (not the storage you buy for backup, but the API servers used by 3rd party developers). Maps is the obvious/ big one which is extremely expensive to offer.

They also offer content services like Music, TV+, and News+... services which they pay 3rd parties to use or develop content for. These are all quite distinct from Apple most other Apple services in that they are about the content someone else creates. Search definitely doesn’t fit into the same bucket as Apple Music and Apple TV+.

Apple News and the App Store itself are the only parts of Apple which get some revenue from advertising platforms.

If they see search the way they see maps, it could be free. It’s possible they will push an advertising platform with search. I don’t think it’s anywhere near a slam dunk though, and it’s possible it will have a small advertising load to support some costs like the App Store does.

Apple doesn’t need Search to be a profit center. They might put advertising on the platform (in fact I’d say it’s likely). But they don’t need it to look like Google’s pile of adverts with a few organic results at the bottom.

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

#193

Post by shard » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

mgh2 wrote: post #173

Ancapistani wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The love of money (greed) is the root of all evil": Google, Amazon, Facebook all are already deep down this hole. Apple might be the only company that still has some decency left. While I largely agree with your impressions, I find it ironic to see Apple mentioned in that context. They are the third most valuable company on Earth, worth about $1.3 trillion: https://fxssi.com/top-10-most-valuable-companies-in-the-w…

There is a difference in how you make that money: the end does not justify the means. You can become rich by righteous means (although harder). Apple is not perfect, but at least for now, they did not sell out yet. Microsoft is a close 2nd, after some redemption lol

Don't forget that Apple is a multinational megacorp, and is user centric only when it suits them. Consider Tim Cook speaking at the conference used by the Chinese government to promote internet regulation, saying that the vision of the conference is one that Apple shares, and also the handing over of user data to Chinese servers (encrypted, but still out of their control).

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

#194

Post by lern_too_spel » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

ogre_codes wrote: post #192

lern_too_spel wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They do things that make money. This removes a big source of money, adds a big cost, and worsens user experience. I'd love it if they made Apple Music and Apple TV free too.

Apple implements things which differentiates the iPhone and makes the experience better. If they see search as a way of doing that, they might well do it. There are a lot of services which are accessible to iPhone users which are completely free for years. The App Store, Find My iPhone, Find My Friends, the iCloud APIs (not the storage you buy for backup, but the API servers used by 3rd party developers). Maps is the…

Apple's choice for Maps was to pay Google or some other service a per user fee to provide turn by turn directions, lose all their users to Android (which had that feature for free), or make their own maps. They didn't provide it for free to differentiate -- the experience was laughably bad at launch. They provided it for free because their cash cow was about to keel over.

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

#195

Post by cblconfederate » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #185

cblconfederate wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's no way they 'll make the premiums they have with software. There isn't even content with such margins.

It's not just software -- it's services of a wide variety of types. I.e. Apple TV+ is not software. Having your own search engine allows you to integrate with services more tightly and enhance that business.

hm, apple tv=low margin industry, not enough market share to capture an audience, lots of competition etc etc. Not the things apple does

the fact that they are not a monopoly is going to be a problem when they enter a highly monopolistic market like search

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

#196

Post by cblconfederate » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

coopsmgoops wrote: post #182

cblconfederate wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's no way they 'll make the premiums they have with software. There isn't even content with such margins.

Guess they should just do nothing then? Diversity in buisness is important. And Google has a whole pie from which apple can steal a big chunk of. Simply set apple search to be the default on safari and you immediately have a huge chuck of the market.

not in a premium business. in fact diversity may be a bad thing there, as evidenced by the highly limited number of apple computer models. I don't think they want to become the next Samsung

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

#197

Post by snowwrestler » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #109

snowwrestler wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the same way they monetize Siri.

Siri is an exclusive feature of iPhones, that's how it's "monetized". This is unlike GA which is available on iOS [0]. So unless this search engine is exclusive to iPhone users as a way of "keeping their privacy intact", I don't see how they can justify running a free search engine for everyone. [0] https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/google-assistant/id1220976145

Yeah, I think if Apple launches their own search engine, it will take the form of a change that results in Apple handling more searches from Apple devices themselves.

Kind of like Apple Maps, which "competes" with Google Maps but only on Apple devices. You can't just point any web browser at an Apple Maps website the way you can with Google Maps. I doubt that Apple would launch a search engine that you can just browse to from anywhere like Google or Bing.

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

#198

Post by elihu » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #115

elihu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sho…

I was aware of that, and it's exactly backwards. Google is punishing sites for having low-quality sites point to them (even if they have no control of them). What I'm suggesting is the opposite, that a site be punished for its outward links, if they point to low-quality sites.

(One could do this separately for various kinds of undesirable content and let the users choose whether they want to avoid spam, hate speech, plagiarized content, nsfw content, misinformation, Rick Astley videos, and so on.)