Google has become much worse over the years, in my experience - it's just that the competition is lacking far behind. Yahoo and Bing are literally worthless.
SEO useless spam sites regularly appear on google's first page, more often than in the past, they don't seem to be doing much to combat SEOs. Apple has a better track record than Google in privacy too, but I don't know whether I'd trust their restrictive approach for searching the internet. On the other hand, if Apple gave an opt-in option to actually completely blacklist low quality SEO websites, I'd be in.
Apple is making / building a plethora of reasons to go to their platforms. It is baked into their charter / strategy, they are primarily a hardware manufacturer and everything they do is meant to forward the goal of selling more hardware. So, when apple makes a search engine it will ultimately be about selling more Apple hardware.
Google on the other hand is an advertising company, so everything they do is ultimately about selling advertising. Since they make so much 'free' stuff to get people on their platforms, this means selling their users information to facilitate targeted marketing. It's no coincidence that you go onto Google and search for say 'baby strollers', then next time you look on Amazon you'll have baby strollers front and center.
Of these two models, I vastly prefer the Apple one. It is more honest and upfront. You buy their hardware, you get top notch products and don't have to worry about them selling you to the highest bidder. In the Google model, it's deceptive in that it appears to be free, but in the end you're paying by giving them your information - something that ultimately is bound to be used against people.
The harvesting of our personal details goes far beyond what many of us could imagine. So I braced myself and had a look
www.theguardian.com