Here are just a few of the things you aren’t considering:
* how many people worldwide keep their google places information up-to-date and not their local government office or their website.
* how advertisers can get value for their search ad campaigns; how to convince them of this
* how much google ad/targeting intelligence comes from off-site (eg Adsense, partner programs, xml ads)
* how many websites and website owners focus obsessively on their google presence making sure that even where Google’s tech gets it wrong they can get it corrected.
* how valuable the feedback loop is: google ads literally tells google what pages and terms are useful, what people like, and what to do more of at scale
* giving away free email and chat to build a whitelist of “good shares”
And that doesn’t cover video or the inverted index you need to provide governments access to emails and search terms. And so on.
Apple has all that data, if not better, on a much more valuable audience at that, and can market themselves as "privacy friendly" because only they will leverage said data and won't let anyone in on their platform, and naturally you will trust Apple.
Hell they can even throw a spin on how it's about "privacy" and not about taking another way to bank on their walled garden monopoly and the Apple crowd here will gobble it up with "we are finally free from Google spying, praise Tim and his holy father Steve in heaven".
I've been arguing app stores are a monopoly for years now and the amount of cultist here that were like "Apple is doing it to protect me from bad software" and "I would not use my iPhone if there was an option to install a different store" was staggering.
They'll want to know where their 10bn (ish) USD went that Apple currently gets from Google.
Is Apple going to increase their device sales substantially because of an Apple search engine? I think everyone who is going to buy Apple has bought Apple, so I think not.
On the other hand, if Apple sells ads on Apple search, and they charge the same fees Google does, they'll still need 50bn in turnover to drop Google; Advertisers aren't going to double their marketing budget, they'll split it based on the ROI, and unless Apple ads convert as good or better than Google, this is a net loss.
* how many people worldwide keep their google places information up-to-date and not their local government office or their website.
* how advertisers can get value for their search ad campaigns; how to convince them of this
* how much google ad/targeting intelligence comes from off-site (eg Adsense, partner programs, xml ads)
* how many websites and website owners focus obsessively on their google presence making sure that even where Google’s tech gets it wrong they can get it corrected.
* how valuable the feedback loop is: google ads literally tells google what pages and terms are useful, what people like, and what to do more of at scale
* giving away free email and chat to build a whitelist of “good shares”
And that doesn’t cover video or the inverted index you need to provide governments access to emails and search terms. And so on.
These are largely not-software problems.