Siri can finally Google itself. In a change that’s surprising only because it took this long, Apple has announced it will be switching from Bing to Google results when handling Siri and Spotlight web queries.
Now, when you ask Siri to search the web for something or it doesn’t know the exact answer to what you’re asking, your results will be from Google, not Bing. The change won’t affect the majority of what Siri can do, just where it sends you when it doesn’t know the answer to something. Curiously, image searches will still default to Bing and video search results will now come directly from YouTube, according to TechCrunch.
The switch will affect Siri and Spotlight on all iOS devices and Macs. In a statement, Apple praised its relationship with both companies and said the change was made for uniformity: “Switching to Google as the web search provider for Siri, Search within iOS and Spotlight on Mac will allow these services to have a consistent web search experience with the default in Safari.”
Google has long been the default search engine for Safari, but Siri has used Bing for web searches ever since it launched in 2010. It’s unclear if Google is paying for the privilege, but it’s likely that it is. Earlier this year it was revealed that the search giant pays Apple some $3 billion a year for the rights to be the default search engine on iOS.
Bing fans will have to ask Siri to specifically search Bing for something, since you can’t change the default search engine on Siri.
Why this matters: Whenever we use Siri or Spotlight to search for something, we want a quick and accurate answer. We never had a problem with Bing results, but if Google’s gets us where we need to go quicker, than we’re all for the change. We just hope it doesn’t create any bad blood between Cortana and Siri.
Author: Michael Simon, Executive Editor
Michael Simon has been covering Apple since the iPod was the iWalk. His obsession with technology goes back to his first PC—the IBM Thinkpad with the lift-up keyboard for swapping out the drive. He's still waiting for that to come back in style tbh.