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Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

Source: TechCrunch

Nov 13, 2008

Summary

We’ve received multiple (if thin) reports that Apple is working on a search engine of some sort.

At first glance, the rumors make sense. Apple’s Safari browser has 6-7% market share, and currently uses Google as the search engine for both the standard and iPhone/iPod versions (unlike other browsers, you don’t have a choice). They also have a suite of personal productivity tools through Mobile Me that bring some hard core users to their servers daily. All of that traffic and usage equates to a lot of searches, which can be monetized heavily.

Also, Apple can’t be super pleased with Google’s competition to the iPhone with Android. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who’s also on Apple’s board of directors, sits out of discussions involving Apple’s mobile strategy, and rumor is he may leave the board.

But one important fact that isn’t checking out - if Apple were building a search engine, they’d be hiring search experts and engineers. We’ve talked to a ton of them at all the big companies, and while some of them heard the same rumors, none have lost search employees to Appl

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Comments (4)

Chuckcolby,

Nov 14, 2008

Not sure why they would, when they could buy Yahoo for like CHEAP.

Sethgray,

Nov 14, 2008

Maybe it's totally different, but search in Finder works amazingly well. But to be a viable contender, they'd need to do something totally different than Google...UI?

Bsbnyc,

Nov 14, 2008

@sethgray can't help but agree that Spotlight technology probably provides the search and indexing algorithm...but doesn't google's experience suggest that the network for processing search requests is at least as important? Not sure I trust apple to run .Mac reliably, much less a search engine.

@chuckcolby LOL