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Report: Apple 'Stepping Up Efforts' to Develop Alternative to Google Search
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DuckDuckGo has ~100 employees. Google has ~100.000 employees. I understand that the relationship between search accuracy and employee number may not be linear, but I doubt DuckDuckGo will be anywhere near Google even in 5-10 years.
Not really an issue. Google Maps didn’t exactly light up the world when it came out either. It took years for it to become the dominant mapping service. There was a point when mapquest dominated google maps.
And maybe DDG doesn’t need to catch up to google. They just need to be good enough for users to be indifferent between using them and google, and maybe the promise of better privacy just may be enough to sway these users over.
Just like apple maps may never be as good as google maps, but it’s good enough to get me to where I need to go, and that’s enough for me to not even have google maps installed on my phone.
99% of the time, when people say a potential Apple purchase is obvious, I can clearly see why Apple doesn’t do it.
DuckDuckGo is the exception. It makes perfect sense to me, other than Apple is de-motivated by the reputed 10 billion or so it gets paid by Google each year.
I don't think anyone expects DuckDuckGo to become Google as a whole, but rather just as good as Google Search, which only one of many products that Google offers. Today, a large % of Google's 100k employees have nothing to do with search. Moreover, from my perspective, Google search stopped "improving" about over decade ago when they forced "personalized search" on everyone, and it has actually become a bit worse since then. So DuckDuckGo needs to match Google's search quality as it existed in ~2009 to become better than Google Search is today in my view. Back in 2009, Google had only 20k employees, and again only come % of those were working on search.
As an analogy, it's like comparing SK hynix to Samsung. They both make DRAM chips, but SK hynix makes only DRAM chips, whereas Samsung has a hand in pretty much every single market on the planet. Of course Samsung is bigger and has more employees and money, but apples to apples, both make approximately equally good DRAM chips.
Google has long moved from mere search, it has way too many mechanisms to collect, mine, aggregate, segmentise, target users many ways and providing surreptitious services like translations, voice response, scan documents etc...automated call centre operations(Botomation), websites, emails, documents editing & sharing(enterprise level), AI, ML, very effective collaboration tools for individual consumers and enterprise customers(Google Meet, YouTube, Google Drive, Photos, Maps for example)....they could get access to wide variety of geographic-wise data and know how to utilise in terms of monetisation. They only failed in Social Media like FB & Twitter where they could not get their Google + topple the others.
Apple seems to have enormous amount of data, but haven’t effectively used for the benefit of the consumers, they even have no idea how to deal with corporate customers. Not many use their cloud, video, office solutions even if it is available.
Apple can only deal with high quality consumer high tech hardware/devices(Google apparently struggling in that) and associated OS, beyond that they got used to franchise and distribution classic model of OEMs in terms of delivery and services...
Apple seems to have enormous amount of data, but haven’t effectively used for the benefit of the consumers, they even have no idea how to deal with corporate customers. Not many use their cloud, video, office solutions even if it is available.
Apple can only deal with high quality consumer high tech hardware/devices(Google apparently struggling in that) and associated OS, beyond that they got used to franchise and distribution classic model of OEMs in terms of delivery and services...
I don't understand why this would be seen as anti-competitive behavior. I don't think Apple and Google are working together to shut out competition. If Microsoft offered to pay more, I'm sure Apple would drop Google as its default search in a heartbeat.
The iPhone is a massively successful platform. The amount it (Google) pays is large, but when scaled to the number of i-devices?
The iPhone is a massively successful platform. The amount it (Google) pays is large, but when scaled to the number of i-devices?
Remains to be seen. Maps all over again, and Apple Maps has worked great for me for the last couple years. There,is no special sauce in Google search that cannot be met by others with enough effort.
The lesson is never strive to be #1, for you could be considered to be a monopoly?
It might make the rounds with consumers one day that collaboration with the world’s biggest ad company is countering your public efforts for privacy, somehow.
Weird I exclusively use Duck duck Go with occasional bounce back to Google search and I find DDG much better. I think it is due to DDG not having a pay to play feature for companies as Google does. I mean I guess if you like what Google likes and not an objective search then I guess Google is OK.
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Translate’s still brand new, but I’ve preferred Apple’s Maps to Google Maps for a long time - plenty accurate everywhere I’ve gone, and a better experience. I’d love to see Apple do a first rate search engine, but I fear it’ll take a looong time to get it right (and to index everything).
Can you imagine, though, just how much of a blow this would be to Google’s core business? It would take away an enormous amount of the most lucrative customers (just going by how much more willing the iOS users are to pay for software than the Android users, one would think the iOS users are more interesting/valuable to Google’s clients for ads). If Apple did a search engine that worked well and wasn’t driven by ad revenue, a lot of people would jump on it, and away from Google.
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Again remains to be seen. They certainly can’t be matched at the level of data mining.