Applebot - Apple's Web Crawler That Finds Information For Siri

Finally, the rumours of AppleBot - Apple's Web Crawler have come true. Earlier this year in February, we spotted a "Apple Search" - Yep, Apple Might Be Getting Ready To Eat Google's Lunch on Apple's careers microsite that hinted at Apple hiring search engineers. Now Apple's confirmed that their new web crawler robot is called AppleBot. On the About Applebot - Apple Support page, Apple mentions that the primary function of this bot will be to find out information for Siri and Spotlight - the services that rely on Internet.

I'd like to assume that Apple indeed is secretly working on a web search engine. The business is big and there are no rivals to Google. Apple, with its technology and access to engineering talent can surely build up a product that can give Googlebot a break. I'd also assume that it won't be a typical webpage with a 'search box'. Apple is going to beat Google through search mechanisms that aren't 'direct'.

For example, Apple could keep making Spotlight and Siri so reliant on Applebot information that people won't need to visit Google to perform searches. All the information you'll need will be made available by the Spotlight and Siri and they already do it to some extent; quite impressively. Apple is also aware that the future of internet search depends upon who gets it right on mobile and smaller devices (including wearables).

I hope Google and other players in the market are taking a serious note of this development. The only challenge Apple will have to overcome is to beat Google in terms of the historic data it holds from years of lead in the search business. It's going to be an interesting game, after all. What say you?