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Apple won’t build a search engine. They can just let the user choose which search engine to use.
I think the point you are missing here is that Google won't pay Apple then. Apple needs to find a way to come up with PROFITS of 20B+ to make up for the missing payments...

I think Google should be happy about this. Even if they lose 20% of their search revenue, their profits just went up... I'm not sure who they are worried about taking share. Although certainly their product is a far cry from where it was 15 years ago it is still better than others.

The real issue is that many websites (e.g. Reddit) only let Google search index them. That is a huge barrier to making a competing product and will somehow need to be solved.
 
This will be in the courts for years and will undoubtedly wind up before the SCOTUS. I don't think we need to be speculating about what Apple will do. They could still keep Google as the default search engine. Safari already lists five different search engines to choose from. Why do they have to kowtow to those ignorant users who don’t know any better. Catering to the stupid just makes things more difficult for the rest of us.
 
I think every AI company is missing the forest for the trees here.

People yearn for a search engine like how Google was back in the early 2000s. But this is impossible today because SEO ruined it. Now we have all these AI companies delivering quick answers to questions, but this is not search.

OpenAI or anyone else should leverage AI to show search results in a list like they used to be. Specifically, use the AI to select the top 10, 20, 100, or whatever web sites with the information you are seeking, display them in a list, with a little blurb quoting and excerpting relevant info from each link. This way, it could filter out the SEO garbage, direct the user to the info they are seeking, but still provide a semblance of control and choice by showing it in a list format instead of just a robo-answer to a question.
I hope you’re right, but unfortunately it looks like it’s going in the opposite direction: chatbots with boolean answers. People want short and unambiguous answers regardless of complexity. They think they can have the same kind of solid answer for “how many eyes do monkeys have” and “how will the economy perform next year”. But this is sadly a cultural change that is reflected on how technology behaves.
 
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So basically Google was paying Apple $20b to not develop a search engine. It can’t be any more obvious. Now with AI Apple is in a great position and timing to enter search. Which common sense says they will.
 
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Is there any money in a search engine? Sure if you’re scraping and categorizing data then making it available to others as a fee with ad presentation. Apple does that within their own walled garden, but nothing indicates they do or would like to do that on a global scale.

There’s nothing about how a search engine works that makes it viable for anything other than companies IN the ad biz or… I guess that’s it?
 
This will be in the courts for years and will undoubtedly wind up before the SCOTUS. I don't think we need to be speculating about what Apple will do. They could still keep Google as the default search engine. Safari already lists five different search engines to choose from. Why do they have to kowtow to those ignorant users who don’t know any better. Catering to the stupid just makes things more difficult for the rest of us.

Unfortunately, "the stupid" make up a significant portion of the customer base.
 
So basically Google was paying Apple $20b to not develop a search engine. It can’t be any more obvious. Now with AI Apple is in a great position and timing to enter search. Which common sense says they will.
To me, it looks like they paid them $20b a year to NOT implement a “pick a search engine” option. That would do far more damage to Google than coming up with yet another anemic version of a data set that will simply not ever compare to the size and breadth of Google’s.
 
I don't think they would do that, that would make Apple a data company and would undermine its whole position on privacy.
It’s the same when folks think they want Apple to create a social media company. Can you IMAGINE what .mac would be like these days? Apple having to police and take down sites hosted on their servers as quickly as bots create them? They’d be spending way too much money on moderation.
 
I think every AI company is missing the forest for the trees here.

People yearn for a search engine like how Google was back in the early 2000s. But this is impossible today because SEO ruined it. Now we have all these AI companies delivering quick answers to questions, but this is not search.

OpenAI or anyone else should leverage AI to show search results in a list like they used to be. Specifically, use the AI to select the top 10, 20, 100, or whatever web sites with the information you are seeking, display them in a list, with a little blurb quoting and excerpting relevant info from each link. This way, it could filter out the SEO garbage, direct the user to the info they are seeking, but still provide a semblance of control and choice by showing it in a list format instead of just a robo-answer to a question.
You are asking wrong people to deliver you search as you knew and loved. The reason why Google is worse today than it was is (aside from SEO) precisely machine learning.
 
I hope you’re right, but unfortunately it looks like it’s going in the opposite direction: chatbots with boolean answers. People want short and unambiguous answers regardless of complexity. They think they can have the same kind of solid answer for “how many eyes do monkeys have” and “how will the economy perform next year”. But this is sadly a cultural change that is reflected on how technology behaves.
There’s also the fact that the conversational format of chatbots should imply (definitely doesn’t) a much higher level of accuracy, even when it’s a straightforward question.

If I search “What’s the height of X” in Google and I get some results, I clearly know they’re not the responsibility of the provider, and I always assume some healthy skepticism.

If I ask a chatbot “What’s the height of X” and I get a straightforward answer, I would expect 100% accuracy. As a company, I would never launch a chatbot that cannot meet that criteria - even if it’s absurdly ambitious, it’s my responsibility.

I think about that when people joke about Siri’s “here’s what I found on the web”. It seems like Apple will do the same with ChatGPT - but they better include a very big warning, and even then…
 
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