For the longest time, Apple, a brand that has seemingly taken upon itself to either make or be involved in the making of nearly everything it markets, hasn’t had the same zeal for an internet search engine. As it turns out, there are three reasons for it, as revealed in the ongoing legal battle between the US Department of Justice and Google.
In a court filing, Eddy Cue, senior VP of Services at Apple, shared three reasons why the iPhone maker will not be making its own search engine. The first is that the company is focused on other growth areas, and making a search engine would require diverting resources that won’t see their ROI any time soon.
The second reason is that Apple sees the ongoing developments in the field of AI as making it risky to be devoting resources needed to create a search engine. And finally, Cue says that “a viable search engine would require building a platform to sell targeted advertising, which is not a core business of Apple”.
At this point, you may be wondering why is the bitten fruit brand involving itself with Google’s defending itself against the US DOJ. Reuters cites a statement from the company which reads “Google can no longer adequately represent Apple’s interests: Google must now defend against a broad effort to break up its business units“.
For context, the internet search giant sends tons of money to the iPhone maker to be the latter’s devices’ default search engine. Said Reuters report notes that a 2022 agreement saw an estimated US$20 billion changing hands.
(Source: Reuters [1], [2, PDF], [3])
