The speculation comes amidst the ongoing Google antitrust lawsuit by the US Department of Justice, where Apple was brought in as a witness regarding its deal making Google the default search engine on iPhones. Apple's senior vice president of machine learning and AI, John Giannandrea, revealed during testimony that iOS 17 allows users to change the default search engine on their iPhone when using Safari in private browsing mode.
Key takeaways:
- Apple is reportedly considering creating its own search engine for its devices, which could potentially end its reliance on Google.
- Apple has a team working on a next-generation search engine codenamed Pegasus, which is being developed under the supervision of John Giannandrea, Apple's senior vice president of machine learning and AI.
- Apple has been experimenting with its search feature, Spotlight, by adding web search results from either Microsoft's Bing or Google.
- The speculation about Apple's own search engine comes amid the ongoing Google antitrust lawsuit brought by the US Department of Justice, where Apple was brought in as a witness regarding its deal that makes Google the default search engine on iPhones.