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Jobs at Apple-Search

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Re: Jobs at Apple-Search

#51

Post by Steko »

abalone wrote: post #39
robotresearcher wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fighting chance of what? Unless they monetize search, it's just a cost. What ad-free business model can monetize search? Unless they are paying Google a fortune to be the current engine, and rolling their own is cheaper. This seems unlikely.

> What ad-free business model can monetize search? The one where you make craptons of profits selling high-margin devices that come bundled with services that offer ad-free user experiences and maximum privacy. And it's Google that pays Apple a fortune to be the current engine, not the other way around. Just to give you an idea of who holds the cards here.

I don't think ad free or privacy is a big winner for sales or user experience. However the future of the platform involves more and more search like actions and iOS's current answer of 100 different services spaghetti'd together under Siri (or use Google in Safari) is kludgey and half-baked today and certainly not a long term solution.

Apple likes to control all the parts of the user experience and search is going to get bigger every year.

Re: Jobs at Apple-Search

#52

Post by Animats »

yeukhon wrote: post #45
Animats wrote: post #43

That job ad doesn't indicate that Apple is going into the search business. Getting into search would need a bigger team. Given the publicity, this may be a bluff by Apple. Yahoo did something similar. In early 2014, Marissa Mayer announced that Yahoo was going to build their own search engine. Nothing happened. That seems to have been a ploy to get a better deal from Bing.

> Nothing happened. First hand or just based on trend?

Yahoo never staffed up to build a search engine. That would have been noticed in Silicon Valley. They hired a VP for search whose previous area of expertise was negotiating with Microsoft.

Re: Jobs at Apple-Search

#53

Post by robotresearcher »

dataminded wrote: post #50
robotresearcher wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fighting chance of what? Unless they monetize search, it's just a cost. What ad-free business model can monetize search? Unless they are paying Google a fortune to be the current engine, and rolling their own is cheaper. This seems unlikely.

Why does Apple need to make money on search?

Why would they do search if it didn't make them money directly or otherwise?

Re: Jobs at Apple-Search

#54

Post by wodenokoto »

abalone wrote: post #19
mmanfrin wrote: post #12

I am doubtful this is to take on Google directly, and I am sincerely doubtful that they'd be able to pull it off if it was. Microsoft funneled billions in to competing, and it has mostly fizzled. Google has had too much of a head start to be competed with head-on.

Apple has two things Bing & Google don't: 1) an ad-free business model 2) control of Siri & Spotlight, the native search functions on a huge swath of devices I'd say they have a fighting chance.

MS had a much bigger advantage on PC in this regard when they started out with search.

Re: Jobs at Apple-Search

#55

Post by abalone »

bobajeff wrote: post #44
redler wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're generating profits at a rate of $200 Million per day [sic]. It's fair to say they make enough to pay for the costs of almost anything, including this. You've identified the one requirement they can in fact satisfy; the hard part is... everything else. Edit: Clarity

You may be right. Assuming you're right about their profits, that's 18B per quarter. Operating cost have been said to be around 5B per quarter for Google and 1.25B per quarter for Bing.

Source please?

Bear in mind they're already running their own competitive map service for exactly the same reasons I say they want to run their own web search. And that's probably not cheap either.

Re: Jobs at Apple-Search

#56

Post by Thimothy »

abalone wrote: post #55
bobajeff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right. Assuming you're right about their profits, that's 18B per quarter. Operating cost have been said to be around 5B per quarter for Google and 1.25B per quarter for Bing.

Source please? Bear in mind they're already running their own competitive map service for exactly the same reasons I say they want to run their own web search. And that's probably not cheap either.

They started running their map service because google was about to start charging for Google Maps.

iMaps already had a rollout that felt improvised and pretty crappy, if the Apple people were suicidal enough to get in a huge business they have absolutely no idea about, such as Web Search, I wouldn't expect a barely usable product in years.

Re: Jobs at Apple-Search

#57

Post by coldtea »

abalone wrote: post #19
mmanfrin wrote: post #12

I am doubtful this is to take on Google directly, and I am sincerely doubtful that they'd be able to pull it off if it was. Microsoft funneled billions in to competing, and it has mostly fizzled. Google has had too much of a head start to be competed with head-on.

Apple has two things Bing & Google don't: 1) an ad-free business model 2) control of Siri & Spotlight, the native search functions on a huge swath of devices I'd say they have a fighting chance.

And tons of cache to spare. They make more in a month than Google does all year around.

Re: Jobs at Apple-Search

#58

Post by coldtea »

bobajeff wrote: post #41
abalone wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What ad-free business model can monetize search? The one where you make craptons of profits selling high-margin devices that come bundled with services that offer ad-free user experiences and maximum privacy. And it's Google that pays Apple a fortune to be the current engine, not the other way around. Just to give you an idea of who holds the cards here.

There is no way they would make enough from iPhones/iPads to pay for the costs of building and running a competitive web search engine. (At least not one built like Google and Bing are) There is a reason they take a cut of profits from App developers; it's to help pay for the cost of running the App store.

>There is no way they would make enough from iPhones/iPads to pay for the costs of building and running a competitive web search engine. (At least not one built like Google and Bing are)

Well, they are like double the market cap of Google, and (where it matters) they have astonishingly higher profits and revenue than it, to the point that it's like corner-store vs Amazon.

Re: Jobs at Apple-Search

#59

Post by coldtea »

robotresearcher wrote: post #53
dataminded wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Apple need to make money on search?

Why would they do search if it didn't make them money directly or otherwise?

The question didn't include "otherwise" (e.g from selling more iphones and macs due to better search services available only for them).

He just asked "why would they have to make money", i.e. directly from search.

If you don't mean that by "otherwise", then we can also ask: "Why would they do Maps if it didn't make them money directly or otherwise?"

Why would they do

Re: Jobs at Apple-Search

#60

Post by maxerickson »

bobajeff wrote: post #41
abalone wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What ad-free business model can monetize search? The one where you make craptons of profits selling high-margin devices that come bundled with services that offer ad-free user experiences and maximum privacy. And it's Google that pays Apple a fortune to be the current engine, not the other way around. Just to give you an idea of who holds the cards here.

There is no way they would make enough from iPhones/iPads to pay for the costs of building and running a competitive web search engine. (At least not one built like Google and Bing are) There is a reason they take a cut of profits from App developers; it's to help pay for the cost of running the App store.

There is a reason they take a cut of profits from App developers: Because they can.

They clear ~$40 billion a year that they can use for whatever.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AAPL+Income+Statement&annual

They use a lot of it to issue a dividend and buy back shares of the stock.

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