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Apple Deal Responsible for Google's Dominance in Search, Says Microsoft CEO

Search engines are increasingly irrelevant. You have your major retailers, your major portals, Youtube, social media. I'd guess 99% of web traffic has nothing to do with searching. If I need info about Cincinnati Zoo, it doesn't matter which search engine I use. My browser will probably auto complete the address if I start typing in the address bar.

There's nothing to really "find" on the Internet anymore.

Many older people at my office don't know how to go anywhere on the web without putting it into Google. Every time they visit Facebook, they get there through a Google link. Mind boggling. I have to wonder how this affects Google's web traffic.
 
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Guys, it's about money. Plain and simple. Yes, Google pays Apple "billions" to keep Google as the default search engine, but it's not $2 or $3 billion. The reports have been between $10 and $20 billion PER YEAR. That's a *lot* of profit for Apple and their shareholders.
 
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I moved even faster to DuckDuckGo when Google and Bing became crowded with **** search results.

Google and Microsoft didn't learn a lesson from complaints. Now AI generated BS is crowding their search results with even more en********ation.

So people are now forced to add the word 'reddit' at the beginning of their search terms so that actual people/redditors can provide answers.

Otherwise you end up with search results showing AI and spam on Quora.
 
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I use DuckDuckGo on all of my devices by default. I also use Google by choice sometimes.

Bing is something I only use by mistake.
 
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Don't think Apple will change the default search engine in the near future. Besides privacy issue, Google search is good.
 
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I can't imagine Apple ever being able to compete in search. In the past I used to go to Apple.com to search for technical support. Even after wading through dozens of linked pages it was rare to find the answer I needed. So I switched to using Google. It would find official Apple support pages with the exact information that I was looking for, usually in the top 3 hits, that Apple's own search engine failed to locate using the exact same search terms.

If Apple can't find its own support documents, what chance does it have of finding relevant information on the internet?

A few years back I switched to DuckDuckGo. At first it seemed like a downgrade, but then I left the software industry and my searches became more generic. DDG is good enough for me now.
 
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I get up in the morning, scare the network engineers away from the left over pizza so I can get something for breakfast, and try to figure out what's wrong with Stupid Azure Gov AD and Sentinel Security (which is "Sag A55" because yous gots ta git you a acronym)... And I have to use google (or duckduckgo) to search for solutions because, for over a decade, frigging BING behaved like it never indexed (or cannot access) Microsoft's own technet, KB and open source intel. It's gotten better.

But, seriously, Microsoft can just shut right the _ _ _ _ up about somebody else gaining dominant market share. After defeating Netscape (by bundling an app in as system default!), the internet was theirs to lose. Beginnings only happen once.
 
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Microsoft lost any chance of dominance in search engines several years before iOS came out. Blaming Apple and iOS for Googles dominance is just silly. They might as well just admit that they just missed out on the mobile revolution.

Microsoft always was a laggard in the search engine space. Even before Bing its predecessors Live search and MSN search were never that popular even on Windows machines. Though Microsoft might have had a better chance if they kept up with their Internet Explorer and used that to build their search engine market share.

Prior to 2003 MS Internet explorer was the default browser on Macs. I still used Internet explorer for a couple of years after Safari was released out of preference. However MS dropped the ball on IE development and Safari, Firefox, most importantly Googles Chrome became the better and dominant web browsers. If anything Microsoft has only itself to blame. It ain’t just Apple who has Google search or Chrome as defaults. Almost every Android phone brand has Google as its default.
 
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Walkir said:
I use DuckDuckGo on all of my devices by default. I also use Google by choice sometimes.

Bing is something I only use by mistake.
Click to expand...
Do and agree with all that! I use "!g"+[search terms] in DuckDuckGo to use Google if I really think I need to - very rare, and doesn't usually help me anyway.
 
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Velli said:
I guess it sucks when one product has world domination, and it’s not yours. Didn’t see Microsoft complaining about every PC being shipped with Windows.
Click to expand...
Quite. They're forcing their AI down my throat now - all time I'm fighting in Edge to block or stop their 'Copilot' or other AI intrusiveness.
 
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jayducharme said:
It also helps when you produce a really good comprehensive search engine.
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I've tried changing the default search engine on my phone and in Chrome but always come back to Google. Google returns the results I find useful more often than the other search engines do (Bing, Duck Duck Go). I even use Google on Edge over Bing
 
Microsoft Bing sucking at search has been the main reason for Google's dominance. Of course now that Google likes to censor search results, this is slowly changing. New Bing is better, but it's so loaded with nonsensical garbage all over the screen nobody asked for that it's still not the preferable choice. That and the bloated AI integration is obnoxious.
 
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Apple probably doesn’t want to go to war with Google either. Jobs was already pissed off that Google got into phones after Apple stayed out of search. Apple cutting Google out, even with the billion dollar sweetener, might provoke Google to go thermonuclear.
 
Why does even the microsoft ceo get to testify. Its obvious he is biased and have an opinion about it.
 
If setting a default option is so powerful, then why don’t I know any Windows users using Internet Explorer? Microsoft even made it purposefully harder than ever to switch the default browser, but to no avail. Everyone is on Chrome. People aren’t dying to use Microsoft products. Why would I willingly use software from the maker of computers that restart themselves to then take ages to update in the middle of something important, are filled with ads especially in search-related areas, feel clunky and have menus that look straight from 1995, and the list goes on. Even though Edge is a completely different browser from IE, people still hop on Chrome because they know ‘Microsoft browser bad’. Same with Bing.

Microsoft should enjoy their monopoly in enterprise/business computing and MS Office, and let us regular consumers have a good experience with services that have been preferred long before they were “default”. They chose to focus on enterprise and legacy solutions while disregarding the user experience of regular consumers, so they shouldn’t act surprised by the results. iOS is a mass market consumer platform and not test ground for whatever new AI b******t they’ll start pushing by the end of next week.
 
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kjvmartin said:
Search engines are increasingly irrelevant. You have your major retailers, your major portals, Youtube, social media. I'd guess 99% of web traffic has nothing to do with searching. If I need info about Cincinnati Zoo, it doesn't matter which search engine I use. My browser will probably auto complete the address if I start typing in the address bar.

There's nothing to really "find" on the Internet anymore.

Many older people at my office don't know how to go anywhere on the web without putting it into Google. Every time they visit Facebook, they get there through a Google link. Mind boggling. I have to wonder how this affects Google's web traffic.
Click to expand...
What if you want information, or even images, of an animal and you can't remember which zoo website has that info?
 
You know I kind of doubt whether the Apple deal makes that kind of an impact, it’s worldwide not that big a percentage of the total number of devices. Of course with Android also using Google search, they have the mobile search market more or less sown up, and that may well be larger than the computer search market.

Just as an example, my 74-year-old mother does nearly all her searching on her iPhone, she rarely uses her MacBook Pro for anything other than her administration.
 
If I wanted to use Bing I would, but clearly I don't, has nothing to do with a cheque sweetening Apple's bottom line. Did set it to DuckDuckGo there for a period, but preferred Google in the end.
 
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