Apple: Inside the cult

Latest insane Apple rumor: An Apple search engine

It's so ludicrous that I have to point and laugh: last week influential tech blogger Michael Arrington reported rumors that that Apple is developing its own search engine, though he mostly raises the idea only to dismiss it (pointing out that Apple hasn't, say, hired any search experts).

This hasn't stopped various other tech commentors from speculating on the how and why of such a thing, which is a slightly more realistic proposition than determining how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Don Reisinger says that such a move would be aimed squarely at Microsoft, which, you'll recall, has its own third-rate unprofitable search business. Palluxo.com thinks that if Apple is losing its mind and getting into the search engine business anyway, it might as well just go completely insane and buy Yahoo! while it's as it. ITProPortal.com thinks that, with interest rates so low, Apple would be better spending its cash on hand on a useless search engine than letting it earn 2 percent a year in the bank, and mobile search is the Next Big Thing anyway.

Speaking of which, Google's voice-activated search thingie is now available for the iPhone. Folks have tried to spin the one-day-or-so delay in the release of this nifty app as more signs of trouble between Apple and Google (of the sort that might have Apple developing a search engine out of spite). This seems far-fetched. Google is very much an iPhone team player. As Jon Gruber says in a footnote, "Google, company-wide, has made some of the best iPhone-optimized web sites I've seen."

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