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Apple speeds up work on its own search engine after DOJ questions its deal with Google

By Anam Hamid

Published: Oct 28, 2020, 12:24 PM

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Apple speeds up work on its own search engine after DOJ questions its deal with Google

Apple has accelerated its work on a proprietary search engine, possibly because of regulatory pressure, per a new report from Financial Times.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on Tuesday over the alleged annual payment of around $8 billion to $12 billion made to Apple to be the default search engine on its devices.

The payment allegedly makes up 15 to 20 percent of the iPhone maker's profit. Apple's devices were apparently behind 50 percent of Google's search traffic last year.

Although the Justice Department’s lawsuit hasn't accused Apple of wrongdoing, it apparently wants to have an in-house alternative ready in case its partnership with Google is blocked by regulators.

iOS and iPadOS 14 have already started bypassing Google Search

Apple is really secretive when it comes to internal projects, but this isn't the first time we are hearing about its efforts to launch a rival to Google’s search engine.

With iOS 14, Apple seems to have taken a step towards that aim. The latest version of the iPhone operating system shows Apple's own results when users type queries from the home screen.

The company also poached John Giannandrea, Google’s head of search over two years back, and is also actively looking for search engineers.

Its web crawler Applebot has increased its crawling activities recently. Crawlers browse the internet for web indexing, something which forms the backbone of a search engine.

That said, creating a search engine that matches Google's is no mean feat. Dan Wang, associate professor of business at Columbia Business School, says:

Google’s advantage comes from scale. Google gets hundreds of millions of queries every minute from users all over the world — that’s an enormous advantage when it comes to data.

At the same time, Apple is one company that has the finances to make the long-term investment required to create a search engine and it is also in line with its strategy of having control over the most important components of its offerings.

A search engine would also bring a new source of revenue. Since the company controls the default browser on its devices, it should not be too hard to attract users to its own search engine.

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Anam Hamid is a computer scientist turned tech journalist who has a keen interest in the tech world, with a particular focus on smartphones and tablets. She has previously written for Android Headlines and has also been a ghostwriter for several tech and car publications. Anam is not a tech hoarder and believes in using her gadgets for as long as possible. She is concerned about smartphone addiction and its impact on future generations, but she also appreciates the convenience that phones have brought into our lives. Anam is excited about technological advancements like folding screens and under-display sensors, and she often wonders about the future of technology. She values the overall experience of a device more than its individual specs and admires companies that deliver durable, high-quality products. In her free time, Anam enjoys reading, scrolling through Reddit and Instagram, and occasionally refreshing her programming skills through tutorials.