I dont believe that is Apple's intention to compete <i>directly</i> with Google.<p>What Apple is doing from <i>Day 1</i>, were to strategically squeeze as much money from Google, or from Android Ecosystem as possible.<p>First is Default Search Engine Placement Rent.<p>Then try to use privacy to limit the Data Google could collect. Decreasing the value they get per user.<p>Since Apple knows all the search queries, they can now place the Answer ( Siri ) directly into your Siri Suggestions or Answers from Wiki, Weather, Sports, TV, News etc without ever touching Google.<p>Limiting your exposure to the Web, and Ads directly lower Google revenue.<p>One unintended consequence is that Google tries to increase their revenue in the mist of all that, so they now have even more ads on the search results. Which harms the Web Experience, and more people are turning to Apps.<p>And when people search for Apps on App Store, Guess what Apple does? App Store placement and Ads. ( Genius! ... or not. )<p>$10 per user per year, roughly $10B per year is enough to fund Apple's Map and Ax Chip R&D for <i>years</i>. And it is the sole reason why Apple are putting out Services like Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade and Apple News+. All of these are very low or nearly <i>zero</i> margin business. While App Store, Google's Payment are nearly <i>100%</i> margin. ( Apple only book their 30% cut as their revenue before someone jump in with 70% being paid out as I have seen <i>countless times</i> on HN, Reddit and everywhere else on the web )<p>Without that $10B payment per year from Google, its whole Services Strategy will fail. Also one reason why Apple is pushing the IAP so hard in the recent 12 months. Google's payment used to grow as Apple's Active Users grow. But I think Apple is projecting a slow down in their Active Users count ( Mac, iPad, iPhone ) so they are starting to push IAP to further increase their Services revenue.
"Siri suggested websites" has been part of safari for a long time. I actually find them more useful than Google, since it is quick to suggest wikipedia articles, while Google prefers to show their own cards instead of linking to the wikipedia source of those cards.<p>Annoyingly, Siri often suggests a wikipedia article from en.m.wikipedia.org, but send me to a dk.m.wikipedia.org page where the article doesn't exists.<p>So the suggest is good, but at the same time kinda useless.
What the title says: "Apple <i>has</i> developed an alternative to Google Search".<p>What the content says: "Apple <i>might</i> be developing an alternative to Google Search".<p>When are mainstream, reputable outlets like FT going to realize that this kind of thing actively contributes to the "fake news" meme cycle? It's almost like they are <i>trying</i> to destroy their own reputations in pursuit of clicks.<p>What a shame.
I would like to see a discussion about how Siri Suggested Sites works. Say what you want about Google, but they should be admired for taking the high road on content development to support search. Their participation in schema.org, Wikipedia, and other knowledge resources leads to result that can be used at a low level by anyone. It's another matter that we should be concerned that only a few companies will have the capacity to build the brain to support all this creates, which is well beyond browsing the web, a web site like Amazon, or silo'd apps (though a really large and ultimately non-open site like Facebook could become its own world).
A search engine from a non-advertising-supported company is great news.<p>Google has dropped the ball when it comes to penalizing websites that provide a bad experience (paywalls/login walls, ads, SEO filler content, etc) which makes sense when you realize that Google's revenue depends on ads so that downranking websites with ads (the aforementioned bad behaviors are often combined with ads) would be counter-productive to its bottom-line.<p>Apple would not have that limitation, and would be free to downrank websites at will considering their revenue doesn't directly depend on those sites. At the same time, if this becomes the default search engine on iOS it will force websites to comply with Apple's demands unless they're happy to lose out on a large chunk of potential customers with money to spend (as they've already demonstrated by buying an iOS device instead of Android).