In federal court on Wednesday, Apple’s head of artificial intelligence and machine learning highlighted that as part of iOS 17, users can now change Safari’s default search engine for private browsing, something they couldn’t do before.
As reported by Bloomberg, John GiannandreaJohn Giannandrea was born in the 1960s in Bridge of Allan, Scotland. Giannandrea received a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Computer Science from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland in 1988. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the same university in 2013. In addition to his role at Apple, Giannandrea is a board of trustees member at..., Apple’s head of AI and ML, said that while users could previously change Safari’s default search engine for normal browsing mode, iOS 17 extends the functionality to private browsing.
The iOS 17, released Monday, added “a second setting, so you could choose two different” search engines, Giannandrea said in testimony in federal court in Washington as part of the Justice Department’s antitrust suit against Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
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By default, Google is the default search engine on the iPhone. This fact has become a concern for other search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, which alleges the Apple and Google partnership limits competition in the market. Google reportedly pays Apple between $4 billion and $7 billion annually to be the iPhone’s default search engine, in addition to some revenue from advertising.
Giannandrea made the latest comments during testimony as part of the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet, alleging that Google maintains a monopoly over the search engine market, partly thanks to its deal with Apple. Still, some concern remains that the option to change the default search engine on iPhone is too complex and requires “too many steps,” according to DuckduckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg.
To change the default search engine, users must navigate to Settings, Safari, and Search Engine and Private Search Engine. Depending on the markets, Apple offers Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia as the options users can choose from.
Apple released iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 to the public earlier last week, bringing several new features and quality-of-live improvements to the iPhone and iPad. While this year’s updates were not as heavy on the visual interface changes as years past, there are several big changes, including Contact Posters, NameDrop, and more.
