Google risks losing its spot as the default search provider in Apple’s Safari browser next year, according to a report from The Information. The latest extension of a deal that’s put Google Search in the hands of iPhone owners since 2007 is set to expire in 2015, and Mountain View rivals Microsoft and Yahoo are already making a case for change with Apple’s leadership. Per the report, each company has pitched Apple SVP Eddy Cue on the idea of replacing Google as the default iOS search provider; Microsoft wants Bing to be the default option out of the box, and Yahoo is vying for the same spot.
This will be an interesting claim of Apple’s claim that they care about consumers. If they renew the deal, they place their customer’s interests first, because their customers massively prefer Google Search. However, if they ditch Google and replace it with some inferior nonsense like Bing or Yahoo, they care more about their personal vendetta than their customers’ best interests. If they go the privacy angle, switching to Bing or Yahoo is even more laughable, since those companies track just as much as Google does.
If Apple opts for DDG as default – well, then they earn some respect.
Bing powers Yahoo search now, so you may want to keep that in mind. As for DuckDuckGo, nobody has heard of it so it’s a non-starter for them (not that the poor quality of their search results doesn’t matter either).
Actually the new CEO of Yahoo has hinted rather broadly that when the MSFT deal expires next year she’ll pull the plug and go back to running their backend, thus making it a 3 horse race once again.
That said I’ve been using Bing exclusively for a year and a half and I like it better than Google and here is why: The image search actually brings up the images I’m looking for at decent resolutions, Google doesn’t. When I search for a specific product I’m much more likely to get info on that product with Bing whereas Google has become infested with SEO spam and malware sites using scripts to fill in whatever you are searching for. Finally Bing doesn’t seem to be “*.A.A friendly” like Google so that if I search for something the *.A.A won’t like such as when I looked for a specific old movie so I could watch a section to see what a certain line was? I actually found the movie with Bing, all I got with Google was a bunch of links that all fed back to an amazon page to buy the movie.
So if you haven’t given Bing a spin try it, you might like it.
Never had a problem, and I do image searches (by content, and by images themselves) dozens of times a day at times.
If I need a higher resolution, I just use the search tools.
Bing can’t search a date range, which is very annoying, and its results for unusual strings are horrible. Not to mention how much I detest the ‘flat’ aesthetic.
As an example, compare a search for my username “looncraz”
Bing dissects the string and brings up many unrelated results in the web search, and only brings up seven (7) images in the image search… and they aren’t relevant.
Google brings 24,600 web results, almost all of which are relevant. Images brings up huge amounts of images – and they make sense as to what I’ve been doing online.
That seems to be true. I have been seeing Yahoo! Slurp coming from *.yahoo.net hosts for many months now in my website logs. And my websites are typical European small-business sites (i.e. not important for US market).
Well, they obviously have to do a lot of crawling and indexing before they plan to switch to in-house backend.
I try it periodically. It’s so s**t, that it serves up US advertisements for me in Lithuania. Google is far from perfect, but saying that Bing is on par is a very limited view of what the market is.
And don’t get me started on the poor quality of ad matching.
Just type in BigBoy Model into Google and Bing, Google’s results are much more relevant to the search query.
Hold on a second.
There’s places outside the US?
I’ve seen several people commending Bing’s image search. Some say it’s the only way to browse porn.
What languages do you search in?
Personally I am using Google in English and all of the images that I search for using Google have been superb.
And Google paid Apple 1Billion to be the default search. I would expect the next contract to be just as high or more with whomever Apple chooses
Maps worked out so well.
Check if your robots.txt file is being accessed by some new IPs.
That way they can ignore sites that use Flash or other things they disapprove of.
Yet if customers prefer Google, wouldn’t using ddg by default be just as much against their wishes as switching to Bing?
I think he meant in terms of features and search results. Google is still king, but DDG is quite frankly the only real alternative, as it handily trounces Bing/Yahoo in terms of results relevancy, and its instant answers are very useful, especially when compared to the utter lack of instant answers in Bing and Yahoo.
Edited 2014-11-26 04:31 UTC
IHHO Startpage shits on every other search engine.
Edited 2014-11-26 05:08 UTC
Startpage uses Google as backend.
Startpage takes the best search engine and adds privacy. SP also has a far more useful interface IMO.
I love DDG, but only for when I need unbiased results. That is rare, though.
I don’t see a big problem if they make the switch clear to the users, and make it easy for the _average_ user to change search providers.
Such a switch would make sense: instead of bringing business towards a competitor, get some money from a buddy (MSFT) or a 3-rd party (Yahoo). As for the users and what they want, who cares about them? Neither Mozilla cared when switched to Yahoo.
But Google paid ~1 Billion for the default search deal in iOS and that renewed them as the default last time it was set to expire while Jobs was still around.
It is not about friends or enemies. One could make the case that Google and Apple have burred the hatch with the patent wars gearing down from Apple (and their patent joint venture) against Google.
Edited 2014-11-26 22:48 UTC
The deal with Yahoo or Microsoft is also for money. When having the choice, would you prefer to make business with a friend or a competitor?
Who would notice?
You may be thinking of the desktop.
Apple’s footprint in mobile search and web use, including ad-clicks, is HUGE! Android just passed them and it has many times the number of devices when considering phones and tablets combined.
It’s in the air. iSearch. Only sensible move in the long term. It’s not like crawling the web is hard. Making semantic sense is, and current acquisitions indicate they have something up their sleeves.
Yeah, but Apple has historically really, really sucked at building any kind of web service. It would be really shocking to see them try with something so critical as web search.
It’s fully expected.
Google is Apple’s biggest competitor. So if Apple stops the default Google setting, it’s a “personal vendetta”? LOLZ.
Siri has never been particularly accurate with her answers…now she will be even less accurate with Bing! Yay?
Siri is already powered by Bing. Since iOS 7, if I’m not mistaken.
For localized searches anywhere outside the US, Bing is Bollocks.
Edited 2014-11-26 17:21 UTC
Who actually cares about a default search provider? I have yet to run into someone who has any difficulty using whichever search they prefer. Even if you’re 90 years old and using a computer + the internet for the first time, this is a non-issue. Most search engines seem to have no problem finding good hits for most searches. No, I did not conduct a scientific study but I do pay attention to how many times I’ve heard people complain about difficulty finding relevant hits… They’re very few and very far between.
So, search providers might care about this but users? Nope.
Never underestimate the power of defaults.
Maybe if you’re searching for something obscure. But most people most of the time aren’t doing that. I understand how being the default search engine is important to a company that needs website hits and/or makes money through advertising. But, I have yet to hear a single solid reason this matters to the average user. That includes privacy. Some people seem to think if the default search was DuckDuckGo, users would magically have more privacy. No. DDG is an American company subject to American law and court orders. DDG could be tracking everything via sealed court order right now while people mistakenly think their searches are “private” or safe from prying eyes.
Again, I’d love to hear one solid reason why end users should care at all about who the default search engine is set to.
Interesting comment eh..?
Says a lot about Firefox’s concern about privacy on the web.
Mozilla is supposed to be including Tor with Firefox soon in the name of privacy. That news, ironically came on the heels of finding out that Tor has been compromised compliments of the usual group of govt. sponsored spy agencies.
As far as Apple earning respect if they choose DDG as the default search engine… That makes absolutely no sense what-so-ever. DDG is no more secure or private that Google, Bing, or anyone else. That they advertise they don’t track is completely meaningless because DDG is an American company bound by American law & jurisdiction.
The reality is there isn’t any real safety online. You leave digital footprints everywhere, regardless of how many false senses of security you believe in. We know for a fact that “security” agencies will do whatever they want, anywhere in the world they want, and it isn’t just American agencies doing it. If you truly care about your privacy, you shouldn’t use the internet in any capacity. But this is getting away from the topic at hand — who has chosen which search engine as their default. To that I say don’t kid yourself that it even matters.
I already use DDG as my default engine in Safari but only because i like the wildcard options (bangs?) but the default results tend to be simply terrible. Both Yahoo and Bing are FAR better than DDG (without bangs).