Apple Won’t Build a Search Engine: Eddy Cue Explains Why

Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, Eddy Cue, shared the unscripted reasoning behind the company’s lack of plans to build its own search engine—something you might think would be fairly obvious. John Cue said in a statement filed with a U.S. federal court in Washington, D.C. that this is a difficult move that he must face for many reasons.

Why Apple Won’t Build a Search Engine: Eddy Cue Explains Key Challenges

Creating a search engine, he said, would take a huge investment, costing Apple billions and years of work. Such an effort, he added, would take resources — both financial and personnel — away from other areas of growth that the company plans to pursue in the near future. Cue also highlighted the economic risks presented by an industry that is changing quickly, primarily due to the rise of artificial intelligence. Trying to compete in this changing marketplace would be financially risky for Apple, he said.

Also, he added, establishing a money-making search engine would require selling targeted advertising, which is far from Apple’s core business. Cue said doing so would be at odds with Apple’s longtime focus on user privacy, a bedrock of the company’s ethos. He also noted that Apple does not possess the specialized expertise and operational know-how needed to build and operate a competitive search engine business.

Cue’s comments were made in the ongoing antitrust trial of Google, where the U.S. Department of Justice is contesting the legality of Google’s arrangement to remain the default search engine in Apple’s Safari browser. Cue defended the arrangement and asked the court to allow Apple to call witnesses to testify about the merits of the deal.

He asserted that Apple’s partnerships with other companies, such as Google, are motivated by the priority of providing the best user experience possible. Cue revealed that Google paid Apple about $20 billion in 2022 alone as part of the deal. He cautioned that terminating this alliance would have a recurring adverse influence on Apple’s potential to deliver goods that accomplish its users’ requirements.

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