Apple Branded Search

| by Ben Brooks

MG Siegler speculating about Apple replacing Google as the default search engine with Bing: Microsoft needs Apple to make Bing relevant. Apple needs Microsoft in order to stop paying Google billions. This is so obvious. I think we may see a Google-free iPhone sooner, rather than later. I’ve already spoken about how I like Bing […]

MG Siegler speculating about Apple replacing Google as the default search engine with Bing:

Microsoft needs Apple to make Bing relevant. Apple needs Microsoft in order to stop paying Google billions. This is so obvious. I think we may see a Google-free iPhone sooner, rather than later.

I’ve already spoken about how I like Bing on my iOS devices, but I think there is another option towards removing Google from iOS and Apple alike.

I mentioned that Yahoo! should buy DuckDuckGo, but what if the suitor was Apple?

Think about this for a moment: what if Apple used a fraction of the cash they have on hand to buy two companies:

  1. DuckDuckGo
  2. Wolfram Alpha

Then they turn those two search engines into one and the same search engine — powered by Apple — and only available to Apple customers. It’s now the default on iOS and Mac OS X — it would become instantly excellent and widely used.

Apple would also have two options here:

  1. Give it away free as a thanks for being a customer — they can afford to.
  2. They could place one or two ads on the results using iAds, thus making up what they spent to buy the companies in a few years time.

Think about this a little more: not only would this be a blow Google, but to Microsoft as well. This would give people a true reason to use iOS and the Mac, it would keep money out of competitors hands, and would be a game changer.

I have no clue if this a business Apple wants to be in, but I would bet that at least one (DuckDuckGo) of these two companies would match up very nicely with Apple.1

Alternatively I could see Apple convincing Bing to allow a fully Apple-branded results page and I could further see Microsoft being OK with that for a bit, but that prospect is far less exciting.

  1. Man, I hope this happens. ↩