Apple has no plans whatsoever in making its own version of Google.
It’s not clear if anyone even really wanted such a thing, but if they did, they got bad news this week. Reuters spotted a federal court declaration filed by Apple in D.C. on Monday, and MacRumors honed in on some interesting nuggets. In particular, Apple senior VP of services Eddy Cue laid out in clear terms why Apple isn’t interested in creating its own search engine:
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It would be very expensive
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The recent and growing injection of AI into search has made the business more uncertain than ever
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Apple doesn’t want to sell targeted advertising, as it would conflict with its stated privacy policies
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Apple simply doesn’t have the people or infrastructure to pull it off
There’s also another very sensible reason why Apple won’t develop its own search engine: Google pays Apple a lot of money to make Google the default search engine on Apple’s Safari browser. According to Cue, Google paid Apple roughly $20 billion just in 2022 for this arrangement. This partnership violates U.S. antitrust laws, according to the federal government. Apple filed the court declaration to request permission for Apple representatives to testify when the antitrust case begins in April.
So, in other words, all of those other reasons for not developing an Apple search engine are probably secondary to the fact that the tech behemoth currently benefits financially from the status quo.
