The Information wrote a piece that says Apple is at least four years or more away from building its own search engine - Apple Search. We have been talking about Apple's quiet efforts in building its own search engine for many years now and to see they are reportedly this far away, is a bit sad.
9to5Mac covered the paywalled content quoting the article:
Apple is still at least four years away from launching a potential Google search replacement, estimated the person who has been involved with the team. Doing so would undoubtedly require a significant increase in the team’s budget. Apple might also be able to strike a deal with Microsoft’s Bing that’s similar to the one Apple has with Google, as Bing has a relatively small share of the search market.
Four-plus years away!? That is sad.
Most recently Apple was rumored to launch a search engine this year but that did not happen. We covered how Apple has been slowly showing signs of getting into web search over the years. In 2014, yes, 8-years ago, we saw signs of an Apple Spider - Applebot. Then in 2015 AppleBot sightings and Apple listing their own search ranking factors and AppleBot user agent details. They also mention that when John Giannandrea went from Google to Apple in 2018.
The big question is, what does this mean? Will it just mean Siri will get better at answering questions or will Apple be crawling and indexing the web in a bigger way? Then, do you think Apple can compete with Google or Microsoft Bing and if so, will they be able to take away share from Google?
As an FYI, Google paid Apple in 2021 $15 billion to be the default search engine on Apple Safari. It is obviously super valuable to Google to have control over Apple Search. But more recent estimates say Google pays Apple an estimated $18 billion to $20 billion per year to remain the default search engine on all Apple devices.
More: "One person who has been involved w/the Apple team said building a better search engine in-house could increase its leverage in its negotiations with Google over the deal." AND "Apple is still at least 4 years away from launching a potential Google search replacement" pic.twitter.com/Fuq7ffpyZz
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 11, 2022
