Apple is waging war against Google, and if this battle continues, Google could find its search revenues slip in the coming years. Usually, Apple would team up with Google on anything search related when it comes down to iOS and OSX, but this is changing with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite.
Hitting Google where it hurts seems to be Apple's motto, as it tries to weaken the company that is making a lot of enemies as of late. To increase its advertisement revenues, Google has been entering multiple sectors and making business difficult for companies that are unable to give away their services for free.
Well, the long sailing ship could now be on its way down after Apple announced at the recently held Worldwide Developers Conference that it is using Bing to power its Spotlight search. Spotlight has long been the default search tool in OSX that allows users to find files situated on their computer. This time around, Spotlight is more robust, it is now more than just a search tool designed to locate local files.
With the new Spotlight tool, Apple users can now use it to search the web. However, instead of Google search being the provider and backend for this service, Apple has turned to Microsoft and its Bing search engine to provide all that is needed.
This isn't the first time Apple has snubbed Google. Last year, the company made Bing and Wolfram Alpha the default search engines for Siri in iOS 7, and we expect that as Bing gets better at doing its core job, Apple might remove Google from its products for good.
Apple's next stab at Google is the addition of DuckDuckGo as the default private search engine. This is the search engine for those who would prefer not being tracked by the likes of Google, and Apple is making it readily available for users.
DuckDuckGo has increased in popularity back in 2013, and we expect 2014 to be a big success for the company after the NSA revelations.
What Apple is doing should give Google reasons to worry, because if the company's search engine is completely removed, the yearly advertising revenue is bound to decline, unless there's some form of back-up plan.
