Yet Another Apple Search Engine Rumour ⇥ bloomberg.com

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

John Giannandrea, a former Google executive who now oversees machine learning and AI at Apple, has a giant search team under him. Over the past few years, his group developed a next-generation search engine for Apple’s apps codenamed “Pegasus.” That technology, which more accurately surfaces results, is already available in some Apple apps, but will soon be coming to more, including the App Store itself.

But the best evidence of Apple’s search efforts can be seen in Spotlight, which helps users find things across their devices. A couple of iOS and macOS versions ago, Apple started adding web search results to this tool, pointing users directly to sites that might answer their questions. During different points in time, those results were powered by either Microsoft Corp.’s Bing or Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Siri also uses that technology to offer up web results.

Gurman says Apple has long thought about building a rival to Google search and, if it ever launched it, figures an ad-supported service would “potentially create a revenue stream about the size of the Apple Watch”. Apple’s search engine project is something we have heard about many times before and it highlights the unique tension between Apple and Google.

Even without its own website with a text box, Apple has plenty of search functionality in its own apps, as Gurman writes. It is unclear to me which system apps are taking advantage of this newer, better search engine, but I still run into bizarre errors in Maps, especially, similar to the one posted by Sebastiaan de With.

Also, “Pegasus” is a weird name for an iOS feature, even if it is only for internal use.