Apple does not have any intentions of building a search engine or entering the text ad market, highlighted a company executive on Monday. The statement arrived as an official testimony in the ongoing antitrust case against Google and Apple filed by the US Department of Justice over the default search engine deal that triggers any queries entered by an iPhone user on Safari to directly open in the former’s search engine. The executive said that if such a deal were to be scrapped, it would not mean that the Cupertino-based tech giant would build its search engine platform.
Apple Does Not Want to Build a Search Engine
Eddy Cue, the Senior Vice President of Services at Apple, declared an official statement on December 23 during the ongoing antitrust case that implicates both the iPhone maker and Google. Notably, the case was filed several years ago after it was known that Apple makes approximately $20 billion (roughly Rs. 1.7 lakh crore) a year from Google as a part of a revenue-sharing deal that makes the latter the default search engine on iPhone devices.
The statements filed in the court were first spotted by Reuters. As per the filings, Cue was responding to the antitrust enforcer’s suggested remedy that would prohibit Google from sharing revenue for search distribution. Calling them “unacceptable choices”, he highlighted that such a remedy would either lead to Apple removing Google Search as a choice on Safari or let it stay without receiving any compensation for sharing “valuable access to Apple’s users.”
Cue also added that the proposed remedies assume that without a revenue-sharing agreement, Apple would develop its search engine. Highlighting that the assumption was wrong, he provided three reasons why Apple has so far chosen not to develop a search engine and why it is unlikely to ever enter this market in the future.
Providing the first reason, the executive stated that Apple is focused on other growth areas and developing a search engine would mean that the company has to divert capital investment and employees from those areas because “creating a search engine would cost billions of dollars and take many years.”
The second reason involves artificial intelligence (AI) and the rapid evolution currently taking place in the search engine segment. Several generative AI-based search engines such as Perplexity and OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search have recently been released. A report also claims that the Mountain View-based tech giant is working on an AI Mode for its search product. “That makes it economically risky to devote the huge resources that would be required to create a search engine,” Cue added.
Finally, explaining the third reason, the executive said that Apple does not have “the volume of specialised professionals and significant operational infrastructure needed to build and run a successful search advertising business.” While the tech giant does run niche advertising on its App Store platform, doing it on the search engine is outside of the company’s core expertise, Cue stated.
