“Steve Jobs was livid when he learned about Google plans to use the Android operating system which Google acquired to compete with the iPhone. He felt betrayed by Eric Schmidt, the then CEO of Google who also happened to be a member of the Apple Board. Schmidt joined the board of Apple in 2005 and left (or, was asked to leave) in 2009. Jobs began to realize that Google could become the next Microsoft which would have the same effect that the old Microsoft had on the pre-iPhone Apple, it would cut the company off at the knees. Jobs realized that the only way to prevent that, was to put a dagger into the very heart of Google – Search,” Avram Miller writes for Two Thirds Done. “So he started up the most secret project ever undertaken at Apple. The name of the project was ‘Found.’ Less than four people knew about Found and not one of them was a board member. Jobs understood that Search was a very vulnerable area that had no stickiness other than possibly the brand behind it. That when users did a search, they just wanted the best results.”
“Yes, Google built up an amazing advertising business around Search. But advertisers would always go where the ‘audience’ went,” Miller writes. “It was not important to Apple to monitize Search, what was important was for Apple to disable the Google money machine to defend its franchise.”
“On his death bed, or close to it, he made Tim Cook, the current CEO, promise to keep project Found going. By the summer of 2014, it was clear that the new search capability developed by Apple would revolutionize search. Apple began to get ready for the launch. They wanted a way to make sure that millions of people could use the new search capability on the day of the launch,” Miller writes. “This required that a few more people be brought into the fold so that Found could be rolled out in releases iOS, OS X and iTunes. Of course, it was hard to keep such a project secret up to the announcement but Apple did it’s best. It provided a lot of cover. Many false stories were leaked with most focused on the use of Artificial Intelligence within Siri. While these stories were not far from the truth, they lacked a few key elements – all of which were finally revealed publicly by Steve Jobs at a major event in Sept. 2015. Yes, I said Steve Jobs. This effort was so important to him that he pre-recorded the announcement before his death and instructed Tim Cook to use it.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Attribution: I, Cringely. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mtnmnn” for the heads up.]
Shades of Hari Seldon…
…but I sure hope there’s no Mule in this story.
Welcome to Terminus
There is. It’s Facebook.
Well, Washington, D.C. has been making a run at becoming Trantor.
I said a while back that new theatre in the middle of the space ship complex reminded me of the spot used by the Foundationers to watch Seldon give his projected ‘State of the Nation’ speeches. So maybe launch is a few years away yet.
Good one :-). Sad that more people don’t recognize the similarity between today’s liberals and Trantor. “Use less,” say the libs. “Reduce power creation” say the socialists. Just like corrupt and weakening Trantor.
Anyway, I have thought for years that the way to destroy Google would be for Apple to launch a rival search feature. I wondered why they hadn’t, it seems so obvious.
Now, maybe, heh, heh.
Awsome!!!!
I can’t wait for Steve Jobs himself to announce the thing that will kill Google Search.
That would be great but the rumored Walt Disney guidance movies shot to be seen after his death seem never to have materialized so this might be fantasy too. Seeing Jobs face suddenly come up on a big screen with a new announcement, well the shock value would ensure lots of media coverage. It might also have doomsayers saying Tim Cook still needs a dead Steve Jobs to push innovation and new services at Apple. If it happens, I hope not. It’d be a delight though to see Steve J. one last time. Revenge on Google would be sweet.
The “I hope not” means I hope people wouldn’t be criticizing Tim Cook about using Jobs this way, a posthumous announcement.
I thought the same thing. I presume (assuming this whole idea is not just some fantasy of the writer) that Jobs would begin the video by addressing that very issue, take the “blame,” etc.
But if it’s true, then what better way to get the absolute maximum attention and apply as much “pain” as possible to Google. I think that if Jobs had had the chance to change just one single thing he did at Apple it would have been to not have given Schmidt access and awareness of the iPhone.
Yes it had to be a big D’Oh! moment realizing you invited in and gave away the Crown iPhone Jewels to exactly the wrong guy. Someone you shouldn’t have anywhere near let alone accepted through the Apple Board. Eric Schmidt is the poster boy for corporate betrayal and malfeasance.
I can’t help feeling that a projected Steve Jobs image talking about the future/present would have uncanny resemblance to the 1984 advert that presented Apple as the saviour of the oppressed. Im sure any number of ‘hacks’ would point this out to noting the irony. So yes this is indeed all fantasy… I hope.
Let’s hope this is an accurate prediction, because it would be an amazing feat to pull off! Dare I say impossible?
Wow. A Foundation thread. I am among true geekdom. It is to smile.
Now, if we could only start a Elijah Baley/R. Daneel Olivaw thread…
“When you can’t beat them, leap frog them.” -SJ
Apple won’t compete with Google on browser-based text searches. Apple will debut (is debuting) a fully functional intelligent voice search. That will be the beginning of the end of Goo’s reign.
I’ll believe it when it actually happens.
That said, IF this is true, I will dance in the streets. And “Found” is an INCREDIBLE name for a search engine. “I didn’t just search, I Found!” (Or will it be iFound?)
Okay, even though I’m taking this with a huge grain of salt, I’m still getting a little jittery just thinking about it.
How about “iKnow”.
Actually that link would be very cool indeed. Even more unexpected will be the arrival on stage of a projected Isaac Asimov followed by any number of long dead legends to give their support and party. Now that would truly destroy Google and pretty much every other tech company for that matter.
Have you checked out http://www.ifound.com?
Nice! lol. I had not.
Interesting. The domain has been registered for many years, since 1997. The current owner is a Seattle company called Internet Foundations. That gif, though, is rather suggestive. According to the Wayback Machine it first appeared in early 2007. Did anything else significant happen in early 2007? (heh).
Interesting, especially if there is such as message. Steve Jobs as Hari Seldon (for the sci-fi geeks).
Android did not end up being such a bad thing for Apple. In a world where Android is the only OTHER viable mobile computing platform, Apple thrives and make most of the available profit. Android did the dirty work in destroying or decimating the rest of the smartphone platforms (Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry…). Android keeps the low-end closed to new platforms, so that unpredictable threats to Apple do not emerge. Android itself is no threat to Apple where Apple chooses to compete; it is utterly predictable and “commoditized.”
Apple wants to keep Android around. That is why Apple never takes legal action against Google (and the Android platform). Apple’s lawyers take aim at competitors who abuse Android and become a bit to successful at copying Apple’s hard work.
But there’s nothing wrong with going after Google in search. 🙂
Really, I don’t know what people were expecting Samsung, LG, Sony, HTC, Motorola, Nokia and all the others to do other than stop making phones because suddenly the iPhone popped into existence. The reality was, Google wanted to be on as many phones as possible. The partnership with Apple was great, but what happens when every other non-iPhone is a Windows phone using Microsoft services instead of Google services?
Google’s mistake was in crossing a line with what Job’s felt was acceptably close enough to iOS. I’m not sure that wasn’t inevitable at some point.
Yea, but unfortunately, the folks that use Android aren’t big search, advertising consuming or spending customers. Apple owns them. So what the heck is Android really doing for Google???
You make it seem as if Android users aren’t using search, receiving ads or consuming at all. That’s not the case. Mobile usage share is around 36% for Android and 53% for iOS. Google’s (legitimate) concern was that it was going to be 36% for Microsoft and 53% for iOS. But even still, the numbers we’re experiencing today aren’t what anyone, including Jobs, were predicting (at least publicly) when Google made the decision to go ahead with Android. At the time, Google was looking at information that they were looking at having a minority share of search in the mobile space with Microsoft having the majority.
This extends to all other Google services.
What we expected was for those companies to innovate not directly copy.
Read the last sentence of what I wrote.
I thought Apple went after Samsung because they’re the only ones making any money out of Android.
Plus they have no original ideas of their own: They use Google’s software and Apple’s hardware designs!
Very good point indeed, without Android Winphone/Winpad would have overtaken iOS by now (especially with Apples slow model expansion) at least in numbers and that would have given Microsoft a way back. This way the market is a low end fight for survival which Apple can stay above.
I don’t believe a word of it.
However, I am loving the image of a frail Steve popping up as a hologram every time the Foundation…..uh…I mean Apple is threatened. A “Jobs Crisis” as it were.
I read the original article and I’m not sure this is real. It seems to be a hypothetical scenario. As stated by the author, “Ok, this was all made up or was it? You will have to wait for about 1 1/2 years to find out. In the mean time, one thing is now abundantly clear. Google failed at doing to Facebook what Apple did to Google in my STORY above. ”
Date of the article is: April 28, 2014 so I think it is “pie in the sky” thinking.
No, this is NOT real. It’s sci fi for Apple fans.
It seems not real, especially on the author’s site, but that’s not how Cringely presents it. And they are personal friends and neighbors, not just professional acquaintances. Cringely surely knows whether or not this is idle dreaming.
It still seems unlikely to me, but much less so because of that.
Less than four people knew about Found and not one of them was a board member…
So how exactly, does THIS guy know about it? What source does he cite? Oh wait, he DOES’T say. That Apple would work on their own search, is an easy guess. Btw, can’t Safari do search? To COMBINE search with voice…..Anyone can do that.
How people will WANT to search, and what is the BEST EXPERIENCE well….we’ll see.
This almost certainly is not true.
But, I sure wish it was….
Image searching for information at Apple’s website and actually FINDING it! That would be worth a week of celebration. Party at my house.
Meanwhile: If Apple is striving to keep new modern search technology a secret from the public, so far they’re brilliantly successful. 🙄
Be a first too not to mention the irony that the particular exception revolved around a search app.
I’m pretty sure Jason Bourne is leading this project too?
Geez – what bloggers will do for hits? Put Apple and Jobs in an article and hope for hits. LOL. Anyone here click the article link?
MDN – you post this crap. WHY? Is the question.
“Less than four people” oooooo, such mystery.
Yes. Things I would love to see from apple: YouTube competition integrated with iTunes Store; search engine; competition for google fiber.
The digital ecosystem apple can create is vastly more superior than all these various fragmented and disconnected services we use today.
“Google Smash!”? How about smash google!
Well, with Easter 2015 just gone by, it will make the second coming the first time I’ve seen it in my lifetime.
That year went quick
So, we can just write to everyone about our fantasies as long as we include Apple somehow? Mkay, so there I was, standing on the corner eating an apple, when suddenly this bus full of actresses dressed as Japanese schoolgirls on their way to an audition for a porn video blows a tire right in front of me. Oh I forgot to mention, I just happened to be taking my floor jack and complete mechanics tool chest across the street at the time because this bachelorette party was having trouble getting their hot tub to work. Anyway, it was a very hot day and I had to remove my shirt, but I do burn easily in the sun so I asked the actresses if they had any oil…
This may be science fiction, but it beats the unimaginative speculation that never seems to let up. It also beats the “glory days are over” stories, the calls for Cook to resign, and all the rest of the eyewash that earn these writers their money at the expense of jaded readers.
The problem with this hypothetical scenario is that it’s not a matter of “a magical algorithm from Israel”. Nobody is going to significantly improve on Google’s algorithm anytime soon, and matching their algorithm is a trivial task at this point.
Vastly more difficult is trumping their data, and that’s not something that’s done with few people in secret over a short period of time. That’s something that’s done very publicly with the involvement of many users, business and publishers over a long period of time with thousands of employees in-house.
Look at Maps. Apple rather quickly acquired parts and built parts that made a better user experience for Maps than what Google had been offering on iOS in terms of navigation, animation, graphics, etc… The app itself was much better than the Google Maps app.
What was lacking, and still is in many areas is the data. This required a long period of time of developer beta and then public beta, and regardless of what one might think of data parity today in general, there’s still no (direct) data at all in terms of street view and transit. And while Apple Maps might get you where you need to go today, the business listings data is far short of Google’s. I’m not bashing Apple Maps here, I use it as my preferred navigation and find it superior in many ways to Google Maps. I’m just pointing out how long of a road and how much has been poured into Apple Maps under public scrutiny and involvement to get it where it is today.
Search would be much more difficult than Maps to improve upon what Google is doing as the article suggests from a technical perspective.
On the other hand…
Basic search needs, especially mobile, doesn’t have to blow away Google on a technical level for it to be successful. Simply having a decent search, with no privacy issues, no BS tie-ins, no overly intrusive ads would be something that most iOS users would not alter as the default search engine. Over time, it could end up challenging Google overall, especially on the desktop.
And what would prevent Apple from recording all the data google has delivered via search on iPad, iPhone, and iMac’s for the last 5 years?
Well besides privacy commitments, and copyright issues, that’s still not the issue. That aside, suppose Apple did “record” everything. Now what? Those results have to meticulously processed. Again, that involves thousands of employees over a long period of time working publicly with businesses, publishers and feedback from users.
Doable, but not in secret and not “an algorithm”. The algorithm part is easy to roughly match, and next to impossible to significantly improve upon.
The whole “Eric T. Mole” thing doesn’t jive with accounts of Google scrambling to overhaul Android after the iPhone was unveiled … ?
Well Schmidt certainly was exposed to it well in advance of its launch. The alternative to the “mole” idea would be to believe that Schmidt knew about the iPhone, knew about Google’s Android plans which were now off-target, and yet decided to keep quiet about it to the determent of Google.
That seems, well, unlikely. A lot.
Fascinating …
Hmmmm…
http://www.iFound.com
In light of all this speculation, what a brilliant place holder; just passing time until brilliance is liberated once again.
Love Cpt Hilts. Best movie ever IMHO
this makes no sense!!!
I thought I hit the sauce hard this afternoon…
Fascinating, Spooky and Creepy. Yikes `
Always thought it would be cool to see a pre-recorded hologram of Steve Jobs presenting “one more thing.” Maybe it will actually happen!