After acquiring Beats and gearing towards taking down music streaming service Spotify, Apple Inc. admits that it has web crawlers or bots that work much like that of Google's.
Although it is not a web search engine that is as grand as Google, Cupertino uses the "AppleBot" mainly for Siri and Spotlight. What this means is whenever a user asks Siri, it does not look for answers using well-known search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, or Google anymore.
"Applebot is the web crawler for Apple, used by products including Siri and Spotlight Suggestions. It respects customary robots.txt rules and robots meta tags. It originates in the 17.0.0.0 net block," Apple shared on its official support website.
The iOS bot works just like the Googlebot. Apple had asked the developers to "follow Googlebot instructions if no AppleBot-specific instructions" are available.
The rumors and speculations about an Apple search engine started in 2014. Cupertino did not comment on any queries regarding a web crawler at the time, and just made the announcement on May 6, and confirmed that Apple Bot did exist.
It was first seen in November by developer Jan Moesen, 9to5 Mac reported. He noticed that there were web hits from a bot that bears a "block detailed to be 17.0.0.0/8," which is an IP address that is registered to Apple Inc.
So, what is Apple up to?
Now that Tim Cook's team has confirmed that it has web crawlers, people cannot help but ask if they are going to compete with Google.
Apart from the official announcement of AppleBot, Cupertino has not shared any plans of making it big yet. But let's go a few months back and try to see the reason behind these web crawlers from Apple.
Obviously, there are established web crawlers out there that Cupertino can use for Siri and Spotlight, so, why launch its very own bots?
Just last year, search engine Bing (which is owned by Microsoft) and Yahoo were in contract with Apple. Yahoo provided iOS with stock data, while Microsoft was in charge of the search results for Siri through Bing.
According to 9to5 Mac, big bosses from both Microsoft and Bing have already talked to Apple, "about a potential agreement that could see one of them displace Google to become the default search engine for iOS devices and Macs." There was no update which company Cupertino has picked for the proposal.
It looks like things are taking an exciting turn with Apple having its own web crawler.
