Rumorama: Apple Not Building Search Engine

There have been some faint rumblings from sites like TechCrunch that Apple is working on its own search engine to help bring funds to the 6-7% market share of its Safari browser, not to mention iPhone applications.

But the hiring practices at Apple don't reflect such a reality - no search experts or engineers have been poached from other big search companies, and nobody's heard of any search-specific hirings. So barring the emergence of some search geniuses inside Apple, they don't have the people to pull off a search engine.

Besides which, Apple makes bank on fees from Google. But even more than that, wouldn't a search engine be blasphemy against Apple's elitist doctrine? For the love of jingo, their new displays have a proprietary connection and no alternate inputs - how do you wed that kind of "f*ck you" attitude to a search engine, which is about as close to "power to the people" as you can find in an online tool? Apple builds beautiful machines for beautiful people with beautifully big wallets, not proletarian web applications meant to be used by the little people Apple so studiously ignores.

I agree that Apple may be working on a radical improvement to iPhone searches, but I can't see them using anyone but Google without the development of big, visible, anticipate-able team.