SEOHost.Net Principal: Apple is Capable of Challenging Google’s Dominance of Search
There is growing evidence that Apple plans to launch its own search engine, and it could be the first to truly challenge Google.
Terry Cane, COO of SEOHost.net (https://www.seohost.net), a leading domain registration, SSL service, and SEO hosting provider, announced that Apple, Inc. may have the potential to challenge Google, Alphabet Inc’s market-leading search engine.
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“The relationship between Google and Apple is complicated,” said Cane. “On the one hand, they’re already competitors in multiple industries, including smartphones and smart technology. On the other, the two companies have had a long-standing and well-documented relationship that involves Alphabet paying billions annually to remain the default search engine on Apple’s devices.”
Recently, according to Reuters, regulators in the United Kingdom posited that this arrangement was anti-competitive. According to a report released in July, the partnership between Alphabet and Apple created considerable barriers to entry for rivals in the search market, including DuckDuckGo and Bing. These organizations also pay Apple to be options on their devices, but they are not the default.
“Apple’s licensing arrangement with Google is a not-insignificant source of income,” Cane said. “That said, if regulatory agencies do end up cracking down on it, there’s one way Apple could potentially recoup its losses. Instead of partnering with Google, it could compete against them.”
“Apple’s digital assistant, Siri, is already in many ways the gold standard for voice search and voice recognition,” she continued. “Apple likely realizes this, as well. Over the past year, we’ve seen them initiate a hiring push for more search engineers, directed more resources towards its Applebot web crawler, and debut a new feature, Spotlight Search, which bypasses Google and relies entirely on Siri.”
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Although Apple only holds approximately 25 percent of the global smartphone market to Android’s 75 percent, it maintains a position of market dominance in North America. There, iOS represents approximately 53 percent of total smartphone users, with Android at approximately 47 percent. Apple is also the market leader where tablets are concerned, holding approximately 57 percent of the global market and 64 percent in North America.
“Because of how widespread its devices are, Apple is one of the few companies capable of challenging Google from a search perspective,” said Cane. “If Apple takes the right path here, focusing on privacy and allowing users control over their personal data, it could easily make inroads into other platforms as users grow increasingly frustrated with Google’s data practices.”
“If this does indeed come to pass, I don’t expect it will change much for SEO specialists,” she said. “At its core, every search engine ultimately wants to provide users with the content that best matches their intent. They may differ in certain minor, technical aspects, but if Apple does release its own search engine, optimizing for that platform will likely follow many of the same beats as optimizing for Google.”
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