According to The New York Times , in 2017, the contract between Apple and Google was renewed for the default search engine Google Search on the devices of the former, with an amount estimated at 8 -12 billion dollars per year ! This amount is believed to be the largest that Google pays each year to a partner and even accounts for 14-21% of Apple’s annual profits.
According to a new publication of the Financial Times, there is a risk that Apple will be blamed for accepting this annual payment and that is why it has accelerated its efforts to develop its own solution, by recruiting people with a good background in this field. (including former Google employees), while indications have already been found for the operation of its own web crawler “Applebot”.
It’s still too early to draw conclusions about Apple’s search engine, but we do not believe it is being developed to really compete with Google Search. We will probably see it as an alternative for its devices and with a different mode of operation, in order to convince the competent authorities that it is not based exclusively on Google.
Whether the search could really be called Apple iSearch is of course pure speculation. Just like the question of the appearance of the service. Some might imagine their own website here, like that of Google, but Apple can also integrate the search permanently as a service and almost invisibly into its ecosystem. Maybe with the upcoming iOS 15 update ? A mix of both would also be conceivable. However, Apple then has to launch the search first. So let’s wait and see.
