Apple Maintains A Search Index Of Billions Of Websites

As part of the DOJ ruling that Google is a monopoly, the document noted that Apple has its own search index and the index size is of billions of websites. The specific number was redacted but it said, “Apple maintains an index of about X billion websites.”

This was on page 15 of the document and it goes on to say, “although it does not presently plan to use that index to offer a results page.” This was quoting John Giannandrea who left Google to work at Apple back in 2018.

Here is a screenshot of this:

Another interesting thing John Giannandrea said there was “What you include in the index matters a
lot,” adding the more sites in an index, the better.” The funny thing is that Google stopped touting its index size back almost two decades ago, in 2005 basically saying later that Google has no indexing limit but does have limited indexing resources. Which is why many sites that aren’t “quality enough” do not get indexed these days.

So I do wonder if index size is that important these days or if Apple’s billion site index is good enough?

Forum discussion at X.