Google has worried for years that Apple would one day expand its internet search technology, and has been working on ways to prevent that from happening.
  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    At the same time, Google studied how to pry open Apple’s control of the iPhone by leveraging a new European law intended to help small companies compete with Big Tech.

    It also provides insight into the company’s complex relationship with Apple, a competitor in consumer gadgets and software that has been an instrumental partner in Google’s mobile ads business for more than a decade.

    Last fall, Google executives met to discuss how to reduce the company’s reliance on Apple’s Safari browser and how best to use a new law in Europe to undermine the iPhone maker, documents showed.

    At the time, the European Union was readying the Digital Markets Act, which was designed to help smaller companies crack Big Tech’s control of the industry.

    regulators to crack open Apple’s tightly controlled software ecosystem so Google could siphon users from Safari and Spotlight, the documents showed.

    Regulations intended to help smaller companies enter the marketplace “very frequently can also be used by incumbents to gain advantage over their rivals,” Gus Hurwitz, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School who focuses on technology and competition, said in an interview.

    The original article contains 1,180 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • nicetriangle@kbin.social
    0·
    11 months ago

    It’s kinda hard imagining Apple getting into search with how squeaky clean they tend to be about things. Like… picture an Apple search engine returning porn results. Just doesn’t really compute.

    • kirklennon@kbin.social
      0·
      11 months ago

      Apple got into search years ago, though. If you search in Safari, Apple will provide a single top result (if it has one) above your selected search engine results. Search for a famous person from history and you’ll most likely get a Wikipedia link at the top with the picture and small excerpt. This is powered by Apple’s own search engine. It’s not limited to Wikipedia either but is powered by their Applebot web crawler. If you want to be able to see more than one result, you can use the Spotlight search by swiping down on the home screen. Depending on your search term you’ll have a Websites section with multiple results from their search engine.

      What Apple doesn’t offer is a web page for you to access their search engine. Even without it, though, many millions of people have been using Apple’s search engine for years now, clicking on the results usually without even realizing that’s where it came from.

        • kirklennon@kbin.social
          1·
          11 months ago

          Just for you I did a couple of quick searches and discovered something extraordinary. I’ll leave out most of the specific terms I tried but basically anything for an explicit topic just doesn’t have web results at all. It merely offers to search in the browser using your default search engine.

          “Masturbation” also had no Apple web results but pulled up a Shortcuts result with the option to turn on the “Do Not Disturb Focus”!

  • cerement@slrpnk.netEnglish
    01·
    11 months ago

    would be nice if somebody was serious about search considering Google has all but abandoned it