A few years ago, Apple dropped Google and replaced them with Bing results on iOS and Mac. Well now, Apple is switching back to Google for the core web results and some other results both on iOS Siri and Mac Spotlight results. The news came from TechCrunch which both Google and Apple representations confirmed for me.
"Switching to Google as the web search provider for Siri, Search within iOS and Spotlight on Mac will allow these services to have a consistent web search experience with the default in Safari," reads an Apple statement sent this morning. "We have strong relationships with Google and Microsoft and remain committed to delivering the best user experience possible."
It isn't clear how much this is costing, the partnership, but we can say it is likely in the billions of dollars.
"All of the search results that you see in these different cases will come directly from the search API, which means you’ll be getting the raw, ranked search results that start below all of the ads and Knowledge Graph stuff that appears on a regular Google home page," TechCrunch reported. YouTube results show as well.
Apple is anonymizing the data so Google doesn't get anything, that is until you click over to Google's web site. Then it is fair game.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
