Apple is making a smart move by not wanting to depend on anyone else.
Results may suck in the beginning, but well, competing in hard stuff is hard, this is another apple maps. Hopefully they won't get bashed so hard since this is not so user facing.
Results may suck in the beginning, but well, competing in hard stuff is hard, this is another apple maps. Hopefully they won't get bashed so hard since this is not so user facing.
That's one way of looking at it. A different one would be that the wealthiest company in the world could work with practically anyone and get a better product than they could build themselves more quickly with more features. The idea that they have to do everything in-house to get the best is paranoid and stupid.
For example, rather than build AppleBot, why couldn't they pump a few billion into DuckDuckGo to get use of DuckDuckBot? Or fund archive.org to access their index? Or buy in to commoncrawl.org?
It would be possible for Apple to use its fortune to benefit both their customers and the world. Google and Bing are not the only options.
I'm pretty sure they're not interested in quickly, or more features. Their users can still use other products (and lets be honest, most products WANT to be on the apple platforms), but at least this way they make sure their users aren't left stranded if those products cease to exist and/or are not updated. Remember the maps situation?
They are making sure their users have core features without having to depend on others' good will.
They could buy another company, sure, but I wouldn't count on DDG being ready to sell out, and besides, getting new people to work on their new thing is probably easier/better organisation-wise than to on-board a different company/organisation with a lot of baggage.