Apple Reportedly Intensifies Efforts To Build Google Search Alternative

Apple’s long-awaited in-house search engine might soon become a reality. According to a report by The Financial Times (FT), Apple may be stepping up its efforts to develop its own search engine technology as US antitrust authorities are closely inspecting the multibillion-dollar payments that Google makes to secure prime placement of its engine on the iPhone.

The report further states that the US Department of Justice launched a case last week accusing Google of strangling the competition. Google could be paying Apple between $8 billion and $12 billion per year to push ‘Google Search’ as the default search engine on Apple products. If regulators end up jeopardizing the agreement, Apple should have something ready to keep showing results for users’ internet searches on its iPhones.

The report also mentions the increased activity of AppleBot, the web crawler that indexes and builds the database for users’ web searches. As per the FT, digital marketing consultants have reported a surge in Applebot’s activity over the last few weeks. The more information the search engine has, the better the results.

Apple Could Very Well Challenge Google’s Search Monopoly

Apple’s increased efforts to develop an in-house search engine aren’t entirely surprising. In 2020, Apple started showing its own results or website links when users enter a search term on the home screen. The iOS 14 feature was only a test run for a full-blown in-house search engine.

Apple is the only technology company with the resources to contend with Google’s long-standing monopoly over search results on the Web (WWW). Apple has the capable hardware and the most refined mobile operating system to support users’ queries over the internet. If not from a business perspective, Apple should do it to kill the monopoly that Google has had over the search engine market for over a decade.

Apple can surprise the world with a full-blown search engine technology embedded in the upcoming iPhone 14 lineup running on the iOS 16. Apple’s search engine technology could offer enhanced privacy and security features to users’ data and queries over the internet. The new iPhones will arrive in September 2022 and are expected to bring a series of upgrades in the display, camera and battery performance.

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