It has always struck me as a bit odd that Apple has never come up with its own search engine. After all, Apple fans have devotion that borders on the religious, so it would seem like a license to print money. Yet, for good or for ill, Apple has stayed remarkably loyal to Google.
Well, no longer it seems that that's the case. A report has just come out that Apple is going to start letting users choose Baidu as their search engine of choice. From Apple's standpoint, this makes sense: while Google dominates almost everywhere else, Baidu has roughly an 83.6% market share in China. So, as far as Apple is concerned, this move makes perfect sense.
But, the greater ramifications of this change is that Apple is starting to disassociate itself with Google in the world's second largest economy. Apple already stopped using Google Maps for some of their products. That was certainly an interesting outlier, but this recent announcement makes it seem that a pattern is developing.
If Apple does keep moving from Google, where would it go to? It certainly can't use Baidu in the United States, so Apple would have to join up with an existing search engine or, perhaps, introduce their own. It might seem a bit odd to imagine Apple banding together with Microsoft and start using Bing, but it might be the case.
However, I personally can't imagine that Apple, which is the most admired company in the world, would require (or want) to share their success with an outside company for too much longer, let alone Microsoft, its arch-nemesis. While it is, of course, still too early to say, I am willing to put my name out there to make the prediction that Apple will have its own search engine sooner rather than later.
Michael Gillen is an SEO Specialist for fishbat, an online marketing firm located in Bohemia, NY.