<story><title>Apple’s Social Network</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2018/apples-social-network/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cronix</author><text>I think the single biggest thing they could do to get to $2T is build their own search engine, and ditch google completely. I think it&amp;#x27;s funny how some people (and Apple themselves) always say how Apple is so privacy conscious, while at the same time they made 9 Billion Dollars from Google by using Google as the default search engine in Safari (which most people don&amp;#x27;t change). So it seems they&amp;#x27;re willing to sell some of their users privacy for profit, and a very nice one at that.&lt;p&gt;If they just built their own search engine and used it as default, and it provided high quality un-manipulated results, I think even more would flock to Apple. Yes they&amp;#x27;d take a (big) hit up front by losing out on all of that free Google money (estimated to be ~$12B in 2019), but then they could &lt;i&gt;actually&lt;/i&gt; say with a straight face they were truly privacy advocates and won&amp;#x27;t sell their users data to Google via the Google Search Engine.&lt;p&gt;Saying how privacy conscious a company is, while literally making billions of dollars by indirectly selling a lot of their customers data, really rings hollow with me. Build a search engine. It&amp;#x27;s not as hard as building Apple Maps, and will do more good in many ways. Hell, even non-Apple people might use Apple search and fall in love with the results, bringing them into the Apple fold.</text></item><item><author>ethagknight</author><text>Ha, I&amp;#x27;m speaking from Apple&amp;#x27;s perspective thinking through how they could double in value. I don&amp;#x27;t think the current method of bills coming from everywhere with different payment requirements is all that great. If this new &amp;quot;middleman&amp;quot; provides value and protects me, then what&amp;#x27;s the problem? I wouldn&amp;#x27;t see direct integration with my apple device as a middleman but an endpoint. Furthermore, there are loads of whitelabelled middlemen in the current process, you just see it in one big bottom line number for each bill and may appear as service charges, admin fees, billing services, compliance, etc. Apple moving into this space kinda removes middlemen, reducing the number of touches between the biller and your wallet.</text></item><item><author>moolcool</author><text>&amp;gt;Imagine if those “luxury” expenses were intermixed with a dozen other large, more legitimate bills? Apple could be processing $1000s a month per household, taking a hefty fee from some of them.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s what we need-- another middle man taking a even more off the top of every transaction.</text></item><item><author>ethagknight</author><text>I don’t think he mentioned it, but the easy way for Apple to grow to a $2T company is to get my household, a typical locked-in Apple household with an iPad or iPhone for every person and a computer for each adult and an AppleTV at every TV, to start paying for ever more services through those Apple devices. TV service. Ubiquitous internet service. Financial services like payments but grow into banking. manage all my regularly scheduled bills like utilities, rent or mortgages. I would love for a trusted intermediary to handle these things.&lt;p&gt;I was recently taken aback by the amount of money I was paying for high-quality subscriptions “oh my god, I’ve paid $20&amp;#x2F;month for the last 12 months to subscribe to high quality streaming to Phish concerts via their app?!?” I signed up for it thinking I would only do it for a month. I forgot. I spent $240 on Phish audio, more than I spent on my Apple Watch. Apple’s real social network could be just getting started. Imagine if those “luxury” expenses were intermixed with a dozen other large, more legitimate bills? Apple could be processing $1000s a month per household, taking a hefty fee from some of them. And then launch a loyalty program :).&lt;p&gt;If I had to guess, I’d say this comment resembles Buffet’s view of Apple’s opportunity.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>reaperducer</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I think the single biggest thing they could do to get to $2T is build their own search engine, and ditch google completely.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Based on the series of frustrating searches I did in iTunes last night, Apple either isn&amp;#x27;t working on this at all, or isn&amp;#x27;t using iTunes as a testbed.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple’s Social Network</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2018/apples-social-network/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cronix</author><text>I think the single biggest thing they could do to get to $2T is build their own search engine, and ditch google completely. I think it&amp;#x27;s funny how some people (and Apple themselves) always say how Apple is so privacy conscious, while at the same time they made 9 Billion Dollars from Google by using Google as the default search engine in Safari (which most people don&amp;#x27;t change). So it seems they&amp;#x27;re willing to sell some of their users privacy for profit, and a very nice one at that.&lt;p&gt;If they just built their own search engine and used it as default, and it provided high quality un-manipulated results, I think even more would flock to Apple. Yes they&amp;#x27;d take a (big) hit up front by losing out on all of that free Google money (estimated to be ~$12B in 2019), but then they could &lt;i&gt;actually&lt;/i&gt; say with a straight face they were truly privacy advocates and won&amp;#x27;t sell their users data to Google via the Google Search Engine.&lt;p&gt;Saying how privacy conscious a company is, while literally making billions of dollars by indirectly selling a lot of their customers data, really rings hollow with me. Build a search engine. It&amp;#x27;s not as hard as building Apple Maps, and will do more good in many ways. Hell, even non-Apple people might use Apple search and fall in love with the results, bringing them into the Apple fold.</text></item><item><author>ethagknight</author><text>Ha, I&amp;#x27;m speaking from Apple&amp;#x27;s perspective thinking through how they could double in value. I don&amp;#x27;t think the current method of bills coming from everywhere with different payment requirements is all that great. If this new &amp;quot;middleman&amp;quot; provides value and protects me, then what&amp;#x27;s the problem? I wouldn&amp;#x27;t see direct integration with my apple device as a middleman but an endpoint. Furthermore, there are loads of whitelabelled middlemen in the current process, you just see it in one big bottom line number for each bill and may appear as service charges, admin fees, billing services, compliance, etc. Apple moving into this space kinda removes middlemen, reducing the number of touches between the biller and your wallet.</text></item><item><author>moolcool</author><text>&amp;gt;Imagine if those “luxury” expenses were intermixed with a dozen other large, more legitimate bills? Apple could be processing $1000s a month per household, taking a hefty fee from some of them.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s what we need-- another middle man taking a even more off the top of every transaction.</text></item><item><author>ethagknight</author><text>I don’t think he mentioned it, but the easy way for Apple to grow to a $2T company is to get my household, a typical locked-in Apple household with an iPad or iPhone for every person and a computer for each adult and an AppleTV at every TV, to start paying for ever more services through those Apple devices. TV service. Ubiquitous internet service. Financial services like payments but grow into banking. manage all my regularly scheduled bills like utilities, rent or mortgages. I would love for a trusted intermediary to handle these things.&lt;p&gt;I was recently taken aback by the amount of money I was paying for high-quality subscriptions “oh my god, I’ve paid $20&amp;#x2F;month for the last 12 months to subscribe to high quality streaming to Phish concerts via their app?!?” I signed up for it thinking I would only do it for a month. I forgot. I spent $240 on Phish audio, more than I spent on my Apple Watch. Apple’s real social network could be just getting started. Imagine if those “luxury” expenses were intermixed with a dozen other large, more legitimate bills? Apple could be processing $1000s a month per household, taking a hefty fee from some of them. And then launch a loyalty program :).&lt;p&gt;If I had to guess, I’d say this comment resembles Buffet’s view of Apple’s opportunity.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ummonk</author><text>This is unlikely to happen but I&amp;#x27;d certainly like to see it happen, as Duck Duck Go simply does not work as a substitute for me, and I don&amp;#x27;t know that Bing is any better than Google privacy-wise. If Microsoft can make Bing, Apple can certainly make Apple Search - they have plenty of cash to throw at the problem.</text></comment>