With the new iOS 14 update, Apple gave users a ton of new features and improvements. Siri also got a new overlay with the update. It is a lot smaller now and, therefore, a lot less intrusive than before. However, the one area where Siri currently lacks is search results as well as spotlight searches. Part of the reason for that is Apple has to rely on third party search engines to source query results.
Now Apple recently made a search engine for use with Siri and Spotlight searches. Now it looks like they will be moving to an even more proprietary design. With the recent reports, we learned that Apple is currently looking to End its agreement with Google. This agreement between the two companies was to make Google the default search engine on the iPhone. Since Apple is moving to its search engine now, the deal will have to end.
One of the main facts behind this argument is that after iOS 14 updates, users can no longer differentiate whether Siri search results come from google or not. Apple now returns search results with Spotlight Search and is bypassing all other search engines.
You can easily verify this statement by monitoring your router traffic. In this test on an iOS14 device, we could see that only some parts of Siri Suggestions came from google. However, on an iOS 13 phone, almost all of the search results were pulled from Google.
The report also says that Apple is currently investing a fortune on search solutions. The company also has job postings for search engineers. On the other hand, in comparison to last year, the jobs from Apple in this field are decreased. But we can not compare the two years because of the imbalance caused by coronavirus pandemic this year.
AppleBot:
In a recent update to Applebot in June, a web crawler page was also made for developers. According to the report, the new changes focused on how to verify traffic was actually coming from Applebot. Apple also provided details on differences of the crawler in desktop- and mobile-centric searches.
They also talked about a ranking system according to which the crawler renders ages similar to Google, so developers do not have to worry about any new algorithms. The current information we have on the topic indicated a very similar system to that used by Google.
Jon Henshaw atCoywolf also says that the AppleBot web crawler has at work for a long time in the background, In his recent discovery. Meanwhile, a recent examination of AppleInsider crawler traffic shows no notable increase or decrease in Applebot crawler traffic since 2015 after it launched in the fall of 2014.
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Although the current evidence suggests that there will not be a search engine launch from Apple anytime soon. At the end of the day, it is inevitable, and apple will have to do that sometime in the future. The one thing Huawei has taught tech companies is you do not have to rely on Google to have successful phones.
Not only will Apple’s proprietary search engine provide better results to users, but it will also bring some other features. With its own system, Apple will have a better promotion for Apple services, tighter control of the full hardware and software stack. It will even allow developers to promote apps in more extensive search results instead of being limited to just App Store searches.
Currently, the only thing stopping Apple from developing its own Search Engine is the loss of revenue it gets from Google. Every year google pays billions of dollars to Apple for being the default. It might also draw the attention of regulatory agencies on Apple, and they will have to deal with a lot more issues from then onwards.
