不拼數量拼質量 蘋果無廣告版Spotlight搜尋服務叫板谷歌
The developers in the audience at WWDC may have missed the significance of the attention Apple AAPL 1.41% paid Monday to Spotlight — the little magnifying glass on the top right hand corner of the Mac’s home screen — but Ad Age didn’t.
週一召開的蘋果全球開發者大會（WWDC）上，開發者們可能忽略了蘋果對於Spotlight的重視程度，但行業資訊網站廣告時代Ad Age卻注意到了這一點。Spotlight是Mac電腦主螢幕右上角的一個小放大鏡圖示。When it was released in 2005, Spotlight was simply a quick and convenient way to search the contents of your local hard drive — to locate a document, say, or a lost e-mail. It’s been quietly gathering power with each new iteration: doubling as a calculator or a dictionary and offering Boolean (and/or) searches.
蘋果2005年就推出了Spotlight，最初只是一種搜尋本地硬碟內容的便捷方式——比如查詢檔案或丟失的郵件等。而它每一次改版，都伴隨著功能的不斷增強：如今的Spotlight既可用作計算器或詞典，也可提供布林（和/或）搜尋。But in OS X Yosemite, the new Mac operating system unveiled Monday, Spotlight comes front and center — literally. When you tap on the magnifying glass, a search window pops up in the middle of the screen. And when you type a few characters, it doesn’t just search your local computer, it searches the Internet as well, delivering maps, Wikipedia articles and Web results stripped of their ads. Repeat: Stripped of their ads.
而在週一釋出的最新Mac作業系統OS X Yosemite中，Spotlight被推到了臺前的中心位置——至少從形式上看確實是這樣。點選放大鏡後，螢幕中央會彈出一個搜尋視窗。輸入文字之後，Spotlight不僅會搜尋本地計算機，還會進行網際網路搜尋，提供地圖、維基百科（Wikipedia）文章和去除廣告後的網頁搜尋結果。注意：是去除廣告後的搜尋結果。
MicrosoFT MSFT -1.23% is delighted that Apple is using its Bing service to search the Web. “Last year Bing became the default web search for Siri, and will now also be the default web search provider in the redesigned Spotlight search feature for the next generation of iOS and OS X,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Ad Age. “We’re excited about extending the Bing platform to help iOS and Mac customers find what they need to get things done.”
微軟（Microsoft）很高興看到蘋果利用必應（Bing）提供網頁搜尋服務。一位微軟發言人告訴Ad Age：“去年，必應成為語音助手Siri的預設網頁搜尋引擎；而在新一代iOS與OS X中，必應將作為改版後的Spotlight搜尋服務的預設網頁搜尋服務提供商。能夠擴充套件必應平臺，幫助iOS與Mac使用者查詢他們需要的資訊，我們感到非常興奮。”Google GOOG -1.62% will not be so happy. Advertising — especially U.S. search advertising — pays for nearly everything Google does, from building driverless cars to wiring whole cities with fiber optics. According to eMarketer estimates, Google took in 70.8% of the $19.92 billion spent on U.S. search advertising last year.
但谷歌（Google）恐怕不會開心。從設計無人駕駛汽車，到建設光纖城市，谷歌每一個專案的資金，幾乎都來自廣告業務，尤其是美國搜尋廣告業務。據市場調查公司eMarketer估計，美國去年的搜尋引擎廣告開支為199.2億美元，其中約70.8%被谷歌收入囊中。If Apple hopes to disrupt Google by giving the information away for free, it’s got its work cut out for it. As Ad Age poins out:
蘋果如果希望通過免費提供資訊來擾亂谷歌的運營，那它還有很長一段路要走。正如Ad Age指出：“Apple’s search tool shows only a few results per query, meaning a lot less real estate for results. That means Apple would have to prove that its small number of results are accurate enough to fulfill someone’s query. Good-enough search has never been enough to unseat or take share from Google.”
“蘋果搜尋工具每次查詢只顯示很少的幾個結果。。這意味著，蘋果必須證明，它寥寥可數的搜尋結果就已經足夠準確，可以滿足使用者的查詢需求。一款搜尋引擎如果只是足夠好，那它不足以撼動谷歌的地位，也不足以搶佔谷歌的份額。”
