It took longer than I thought it would, but it’s finally happened. Apple’s admitted that it needs real search to bring it’s tangled app universe to heel, and purchased Chomp, a leading third-party app review and search service.
Nearly two years ago I wrote this piece: Apple Won’t Build a (Web) Search Engine. From it:
…but it will build the equivalent of an app search engine. It’s crazy not to. In fact, it has to. It already has app discovery via the iTunes store, but it’s terrible, with no signal that gives reliable results based on accrued intent.
What Apple needs is a search engine that “crawls” apps, app content, and app usage data, then surfaces recommendations as well as content . To do this, mobile apps will need to make their content available for Apple to crawl. And why wouldn’t you if you’re Yelp, for example? Or Facebook, for that matter? An index of apps+social signal+app content would be quite compelling.
What Apple will NOT do is crawl the entire web.
I still think that last sentence will remain true. It’s my hope that Apple continues to develop Chomp and help “real search” – the kind I describe above, to happen in iOS.
Sharp thoughts.
polo ralph lauren loves your article, it is very good. but ralph lauren polo also want to introduce my blog to you:http://www.polorl.org/
Well, iTunes was designed for music, and the iTunes Store, was designed for finding albums and songs. All this is is updating the Store for better discoverability (obviously) for the new ‘big content’: apps. Saying they’re ‘getting into app search’ is kind of puzzling… haven’t they had it since 2008 when the App Store launched? Of course they have. They’re just improving their horrid Search Experience with this acquisition.