Apple Says It Will Not Take On Google In Search, But It Already Has

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) Steve Jobs says his company will not take on Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) in the search business.  The Apple App Store , however, already competes against Google in cellphones, mobile advertising and operating systems.

Many of Apple’s 200,000 app downloads are shortcuts to the web which eliminates the need for Google’s search functions.

Apple’s most popular apps are for social networks, news, weather, and games. Among Google’s most popular searches are ones for Facebook, news, and instant messaging services such as AIM. People do not need to use Google to access their personal files and social network postings. Apple has done that for them.

Another key feature that Google offers is maps and location services. Apple’s iPhone has built-in GPS and that is the basis for helping users move from point to point without Google Maps which does not, usually ,work with customer-based GPS.

Apple also offers apps for Google’s search competitors for those who believe that search is their best way to navigate the web. The Bing download is one of the most popular and so are location and phone look-up services. Apple also offers apps for news which directly compete with Google News.

Apple has already seized a part of the search market by putting it into app portals which offer fast and direct access to parts of the internet. They happen to be many of the same destinations that Google offers through its search service.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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