According to the newsletter, former Google executive John Giannandrea’s search team is working to more deeply integrate the search engine internally called “Pegasus” into iOS and macOS and could even use generative ai tools to improve it further. Last year, Apple also launched Business Connect, a tool that helped strengthen its information database with details about business hours and locations in a way that could help it compete with Google.
Gurman notes that while Apple’s Spotlight and app search engine aren’t as powerful as Google’s, it has a strong ad business in the App Store that serves ads to its other apps, such as Apple News and Weather. Those things combined give Apple enough pieces to launch its own search engine, perhaps sooner rather than later.