Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services Eddy Cue said that Apple will not build a search engine to compete with Google because it “would cost billions of dollars and take many years,” according to a motion to intervene filed with the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday. The purpose of the motion is to participate in the penalty phase of the DOJ’s antitrust case against Google, where up to $20 billion could be at stake for Apple in its deal with Google over the default search engine.
The DOJ and Google have not reached an agreement on how to deal with Google’s monopoly on universal search engines, but both sides have tentatively agreed to reduce or revise the terms of their partnership with Apple. Last week, Google proposed a three-year ban on strict long-term exclusive agreements that include any “patented Apple feature or functionality.”
According to MacRumors, Cue said that creating its own search engine would be “economically risky” and suggested that the next big evolution of search would be chatbots with artificial intelligence. In the statement, Apple also noted that in order to make search viable, it would have to introduce targeted advertising as a core service, which does not fit well with its privacy-focused business model.
Q also notes that “only Apple can speak to what kinds of future collaborations might best serve its users” and warns that the DOJ’s proposed remedies would “prevent” Apple from meeting the needs of its customers.
