They're literally the biggest tech company in the world. Couldn't they build their own? I mean, it wouldn't be great at first but seems like a worthwhile project (and Microsoft managed it with Bing, so there's precedent there).
I think the issue is that besides the money they don't really have a competitive advantage so it'd be difficult to catch up given how long Google has been doing this for.
First of all Search is well outside their domain expertise; they aren't really well known for doing either search/MI or even web services well.
Secondly, it takes a long time just to get all the infrastructure set up. There is an unbelievable amount of build/test/deploy infrastructure that Google has been able to set up over the many years of doing search. I certainly think Apple has engineers smart enough to make it happen but in the end building the stuff takes a large amount of time.
And this is all assuming they use AWS/GCP/Azure instead of deploying their own data centers.
It's very much the same difficulty that Google has trying to make hardware to compete with Apple. They have so much experience and expertise in that area already. There's no way Google could make a phone faster than the iPhone: Apple makes their own chips! So instead Google has to compete in the areas where they have a competitive advantage, for example by using AI to make very good cameras.
> They're literally the biggest tech company in the world. Couldn't they build their own?
A search engine is a big enough process—and difficult enough—that you can't just throw money at it and expect it to work in the end. They could try, certainly. And maybe they'd succeed, and maybe they'd fail. And maybe they'd succeed but end up with a successful business unit whose goals are opposed to the rest of the company's.
Bing or Yahoo. Google profits even after spending 12b. It’s a substantial amount of traffic and could help put one of the smaller guys back on the map.