With Google's Defeat, the Time for Apple's Search Engine Has Arrived
Unless youāve been living under a rock, you know that Google was formally ruled an advertising monopoly this week. It could potentially be a catastrophic blow to the company that completely upends the web as we know it. A significant component of this case has been Googleās deal with Apple to be the default search engine in Safari. Google pays the Cupertino company nearly $20B a year to maintain dominance on Apple platforms. That is for good reason of course, Appleās users are some of the most valuable particularly when it comes to ad targeting. But it is also a flagrant way to squash any chance a competitor could have at growing to be a sustainable web search or ad business. Now that the verdict is in officially, I think it is time for Apple to do what has been long rumored. That is, to build their own search engine that powers Safari, Siri, and Spotlight.
An Apple search engine would be a particularly prescient offering given Appleās rebranding of their various ad businesses to āApple Adsā making it an umbrella for the various kinds of ad products they have at the moment. It begs the question of whether or not Apple may get into more traditional web ads in addition to the ones on the App Store and in Apple News. There is now a clear opening for them to enter the market, but I do not think they should just expand the ad offerings. They should go full court press and introduce a search engine. As Joe Rosensteel wrote over at Six Colors, the company needs to build on its existing services business and this is one of the ways that they can go about doing that.
As for the product itself, I know there is much hesitation over whether or not Apple could actually produce a good search engine. This is especially the case after the Apple Intelligence debacle and Siriās long period of neglect. But the beauty of a search engine is that you do not need to necessarily own the whole stack. It would be unlike Apple to go this route, but I think they need to learn to adapt in the new environment they are now operating in. Like DuckDuckGo or Ecosia, Apple should start by using search results from Bing and Copilot while they build up their own database. Package them up in a beautiful Apple-designed user interface with some clean new ad formats, and if need be, build some special tooling to carefully organize the search results in a better way than they would if otherwise seen on Bing. If they wanted to go really crazy, they could leverage their OpenAI partnership and reskin ChatGPT Search too. The company could even charge a subscription for ad-free results or additional features. It also is not like Apple does not have a similar breadth of services as Google on the web. Appleās search engine could link to various iCloud apps and save your search history to your account. The opportunity is right there in front of them.
Now I fully recognize that giving up a $20B yearly payment from Google is far from ideal, in fact it makes up a substantial part of their current services revenue. But how sustainable is that longterm? I do not think it can be counted on anymore. It is contingency time. While they would have to make up the $20B difference on their balance sheet with Apple Ad sales and Apple Search subscriptions, they would simultaneously be helping Microsoft or OpenAI grow their positions in search, therefore balancing the market a bit better. Googleās dominance in this space needs to be challenged seriously. OpenAI and Perplexity are really the only ones truly taking a crack at it, with Perplexity attempting to be particularly aggressive. But it remains to be seen just how big of a dent they can ultimately put in Googleās market share. While an astronomical number of people are using ChatGPT daily, Google is still overwhelmingly dominant in search. It is going to take an Apple (or an Apple with Microsoft or OpenAI) to truly break Google.
Gemini, Siri, and Default Assistants on iOS
I do not want to harp on the Siri situation, but I do have one suggestion that I think Apple should listen to. Because I suspect it is going to take quite some time for the company to get the new Siri out the door properly, they should do what was previously unthinkable. That is, open up iOS to third-party assistants. I do not say this lightly. I am one of those folks who does not want iOS to be torn open like Android, but I am willing to sign on when it makes good common sense. Right now it does.
ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, Perplexity, and Grok are all incredibly popular on iOS. They are in use by millions and millions of people. But some of them are not as powerful on iOS as they are on Android. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity can all be used as the default personal assistant on Android devices. If you do not like the one that came on your device, you can replace it. Apple has been adding more default app choices on iOS as of late and now is the time to add another one. Gemini in particular has become increasingly powerful due to its deep integration with Google apps. If you use them, you can get way more out of Gemini than the alternatives. I desperately want to use Gemini as my default personal assistant on my iPhone, so much so that I have the voice mode assigned to my action button. Because of Gemini’s integration with Google Keep, Google Tasks, and Google Calendar I can use the Gemini assistant to create reminders, generate lists, take notes, and create and manange events. Even better than that, Gemini can dive into my inbox and find things for me better than any standard search tool. Those are all productivity features, but Gemini also has deep entertainment functionality thanks to YouTube. If you want to find a specific video, Gemini can get the job done. You can even use it with Google Maps. The app is simply a fantastic assistant that is able to replace many of the things I already do with Siri, while also being an LLM-powered ultra smart knowledge engine.
I have not even mentioned the amazing Gemini Live yet, despite not integrating with your Google apps yet, it does let you have fluid conversations about world knowledge and things happening on the web. The app is dead simple, yet more powerful than Siri in almost every metric. While it currently cannot do some things like set a timer, it can do far more important things Siri can only dream of being capable of. If you use Google apps, I highly recommend assigning Gemini to your action button or to the back tap gesture on your iPhone. You will be blown away by how much more powerful it is once you begin taking advantage of the app integrations. Heck, if you use Google Home devices it even controls those as well.
I do not use Gemini as my primary LLM generally, I prefer to use ChatGPT and Claude most of the time for research, coding, and writing. But Gemini has proved to be the best assistant out of them all. So while we wait for Siri to get good, give us the ability to use custom assistants at the system level. It does not have to be available to everyone, heck create a special intent that Google and these companies need to apply for if you want. Have requirements for privacy and design too if need be. But these apps with proper system level overlays would be a massive improvement over the existing version of Siri. I do not want to have to launch the app every single time and the basic ChatGPT integration in Siri is far from the best solution.
Google clearly knows that they have a massive with Gemini right now and you can look no further than their decision to heavily advertise on Apple-centric podcasts. In recent weeks they’ve sponsored The Talk Show, Upgrade, Connected, and ATP. One of the best ways to go after Siri is to capture Apple fans and observers.
I know Apple would be averse to this, namely because of the potential for losing a massive amount of Siri users in the meantime while they get their act together. But it would do two things: it would mitigate some of the damage with customer relations while they wait for the new Siri and it sets a new bar for the Siri team to have to exceed. There would not be any room for failure and they need to be under that kind of pressure.
Gemini Integration Could be a Huge Upgrade Over ChatGPT in Siri
A few weeks ago Federico Viticci wrote a great piece on MacStories about how one of Gemini’s greatest strengths in the LLM competition is that it’s the only one with Google app extensions. On Friday, Apple released the first beta of iOS 18.4 and while many of the AI updates that we were expecting weren’t there, references to one new feature we weren’t quite anticipating yet surfaced in a review of the update’s code. As spotted by Aaron from MacRumors, Apple is actively working on bringing Gemini to iOS alongside the current ChatGPT integration. This is super interesting, not because there will be another frontier model available to use with Siri for world knowledge but because if this version of Gemini includes extensions it will be leaps and bounds more useful than the existing ChatGPT integration.
As Federico points out in his story, Gemini 2.0 combined with Google Maps, Search, Workspace and YouTube is a formidable offering. The current ChatGPT integration in iOS allows you to sign in with your personal account to get even more out of Siri. While it doesn’t allow you to use custom GPTs or change the OpenAI model, it does save your conversations, lets you generate images with DALL-E and gives you extended usage limits if you have a paid subscription. With that all being the case with ChatGPT, one would have to imagine that Gemini in iOS would have some sort of additional integrations with Google services. I hope that it’s the extensions that communicate with Maps, Search, Workspace and YouTube.
I think it’s safe to say that Gemini in Siri will almost certainly be able to talk to Search and YouTube since neither of those require any sort of personal data. The question that I have is whether or not being signed in with your Google account will give Siri with Gemini the ability to access your Gmail, Calendar, and Drive? Given that you can already connect your Google account to iOS for mail, contacts, calendars, and notes I can’t see why they wouldn’t be able to integrate the other services as well. I’m not sure if Apple would prefer Google not offer this and instead allow their future Siri upgrade to directly surface information from your account once signed in rather than needing to pass off requests to Gemini. But like I said, I think it’s safe to imagine that Google Search and YouTube should at least be accessible through Gemini in Siri. Maps is the outlier here, particularly given the touchy history between the two companies. You could argue the same with YouTube, but I think that’s too fundamental to Search and Apple doesn’t have a competitor. While I want to lean towards Google Maps not being integrated, the data it offers is crucial to so many potential requests. Maybe Apple just defaults to standard Siri mapping results unless you specifically ask Gemini. We’ll have to wait and see.
At the end of the day, this is good news whether or not all of the extensions are fully available through Siri. Another model to choose from is already a big step for Apple to take and Gemini is getting better and better. It will give ChatGPT a real run for its money when users decide which service to use. That is of course, unless Apple allows Siri to work with both models at any time rather than forcing you to pick one in Settings. In which case, things get even more interesting. There are so many possibilities for how this could go down.