Apple is said to be engaged in a “silent war” with Google in the mobile OS space.
It’s no secret that Apple and Google are smartphone rivals. The two tech giants run the only two mobile operating systems in town, with iOS and Android having been in direct competition since 2008.
This shared market dominance (the likes of Windows Phone and BlackBerry dropped out years ago) may have led you to believe that there was some kind of unspoken truce in place between the two titans. Not so, it seems.
According to a new report by the Financial Times, two former Apple engineers have claimed that the company continues to hold a grudge against Google for (in the Apple’s view) copying its early iOS work.
It’s claimed that Apple is continuing to wage a “silent war” agains Google through its continued efforts to lessen its reliance on Google’s ubiquitous products.
The most obvious of these initiatives is mapping, where Apple is still ploughing all of its efforts into displacing Google Maps as the go-to navigation solution.
If there’s one area you would think Google is untouchable in, it’s web search, but Apple is apparently up for the fight. The longstanding Apple Search feature that lets you run queries on your iPhone (including through Siri) is apparently being groomed to replace Google.
The report cites the various acquisitions that have made Apple’s intent known, most tellingly the 2019 purchase of Laserlike, an AI web search start-up founded by former Google engineers.
Finally, the report claims that Apple is planning to hit Google where it hurts – the web advertising business that supplies 80 percent of its income. A job posting last year demonstrated that Apple was looking to develop its own more privacy-focused ad platform.
