Apple may soon launch its 'own' search engine to take on Google

As Apple gears up for its annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) showcase for 2022, the iPhone maker is set to announce the updated OS for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and other devices. Additionally, there’s a buzz that Apple may announce a new search engine too.

A tweet from technology blogger Robert Scoble, which appears after a thread summarising the Apple surprises he expects in the coming year, is the source of the speculation.

Scoble states the information is based on interactions with inside sources, and the Apple search engine "could be the most expensive product launch of all time."

Some have speculated that Apple would eventually dip its toes in the 'search' business, due to a lack of competition in this space and its long-standing rivalry with tech giant Google.

Way back in 2015, Apple announced the existence of a web crawler, Applebot which sparked rumours about Apple working on its own search engine to take on Google. It was designed for queries made on the company’s Spotlight search and Siri. Speculations were rife in 2018 too when ex-Google executive John Giannandrea joined Apple as senior vice president of Machine Learning and AI.

Reports now suggest that with iOS and Safari have reached a wide audience base, this would help Apple to establish a search engine for its users, and gives it an upper hand against Google.

Google search accounts for the majority of the company's ad revenue, which was a whopping $210 billion in 2021.

Meanwhile, last year, Google paid Apple $15 billion to be the default search engine on Apple Safari. This means, Google may want to have control over Apple Search as well.

Some questions come to mind in this regard. Would Apple’s entry in the search market mean Siri will get a boost at answering smart queries or will Apple be crawling and indexing the web in a better and faster way? The bigger question is, can Apple compete with Google or even Microsoft Bing? And would it take away a share of the pie from Google?

Apple officials, however, have not hinted on the upcoming search engine. However, as per Scoble's speculations, if Apple would launch a search engine, it’s highly possible that a section of users could make a shift to it. That’s because its added privacy and security would be one of the key differentiating factors. 

But it also remains to be seen how Apple would get its revenue without target ads, which has remained the strong point for Google.