Apple will soon bring its powerful internal search engine to the App Store and other apps, Mark Gurman reported in Bloomberg’s Power On newsletter this week. Apple is improving the Spotlight search feature in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, allowing users to search for web results, details from apps, documents, and more. But this time we may encounter a much more powerful search engine.
According to the release, former Google executive John Giannandrea’s search team is working to embed the search engine, internally dubbed “Pegasus,” deeper into iOS and macOS and may even use generative AI tools to improve it further. Last year, Apple also launched Business Connect, a tool that helps boost businesses’ database of information with details about their business hours and locations, which could help it compete with Google.
Gurman points out that while Apple’s Spotlight and app search engine aren’t as powerful as Google’s, it has a strong App Store advertising business that serves ads on its other apps, like Apple News and Weather. Putting all this together, we can say that Apple has enough pieces to launch its own search engine, perhaps in the near future. While this may seem far from being a web search engine for now, it could mean preparation for the future.
Whether Apple will do this is another question. Apple executive Eddy Cue previously said that Apple did not need to make its own search engine, and it was recently revealed that the company turned down the offer to purchase Bing in 2020.
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