Google reportedly pays Apple $8 billion a year to be the default search engine on iOS
Apple, as Gurman points out, already built its own search engines for some of its apps such as the App Store, Apple TV, Maps, and News. And it isn’t as though Apple hasn’t been working on this. Apple’s senior vice president of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, John Giannandrea, commands a huge search team that has developed a next-gen search engine for the company’s apps that is codenamed “Pegasus.” Gurman says that this technology “surfaces results,” is already used on some of Apple’s apps, and is coming to the App Store.
Spotlight on iOS is a good example of what Apple is capable of in the search game
The best example of Apple’s search capabilities, says Bloomberg’s Chief Correspondent, is Spotlight which scans iOS and macOS to find something that a user is looking for on his device. A few years ago, Apple added web results from Bing and Google and the feature is also used by Siri to show web results. Giannandrea’s team is looking to add generative AI support to Spotlight. Apple also has a web crawler called Applebot that indexes websites that are revealed to Spotlight and Siri users. To access Spotlight, swipe down from the middle of your iPhone’s home screen.
Spotlight on iOS gives users an idea what an Apple search engine might be able to do
None of this means a thing unless Apple can sell advertising and the company does have an ad technology team that, according to Gurman, handles search ads in the App Store, and serves ads to the News app, the stocks app, and the weather app. This team also has a hand in negotiating ads for Apple’s streaming sports content. With all of this experience, you’d expect this team to be able to sell ads for an Apple web search engine.
As Gurman points out, Apple’s current search capabilities are limited compared to Google. Eddy Cue, Apple’s VP of Services, has said that Google’s search engine is the best and that there is no reason for Apple to develop its own. But should Google lose its court battle with the DOJ, the deal between Google and Apple could be canceled and Apple might have to say goodbye to the billions it receives from Google.