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Apple replaces Google with Bing search in OS X Yosemite’s redesigned Spotlight?

One big change for Apple with the unveiling of OS X Yosemite today is Bing web searches in the completely revamped Spotlight feature. Spotlight, which allows users to look up anything locally on their Mac as well as perform web searches, received a redesigned user experience in Yosemite, but it might have also received a switch to Bing from Google search.

To be fair, the “web search” feature of spotlight prior to Yosemite actually just defaults to the default search engine in your browser of choice. If that happens to be Safari or Chrome like it is for most users, that meant Spotlight would typically send users to a Google search results page if they hadn’t changed their default preference. Now, Apple is listing Bing searches– but not Google– as a feature of Spotlight regardless of the default option (pictured above). We’ve yet to confirm that Bing is the only web search option for Spotlight in OS X Yosemite, as we’ve not yet been able to get the new Spotlight web search feature to work properly in the first beta.

While Spotlight is going to use Bing, Apple’s revamped search bar in Safari still uses Google as does iOS 8. Its easy to imagine Apple is only continuing to use Google search in Safari due to contractual agreements, but it’s harder to imagine it just decided to use Bing for Spotlight with no plans to possibly use it in its other products down the road.

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Comments

  1. Jason Edwards - 10 years ago

    The less Google the better.

  2. David Deese (@Thoths_Pen) - 10 years ago

    Any idea if a terminal hack can fix that? I guess we won’t know until Yosemite is released. I can’t stand Bing search.

    • Tim Jr. - 10 years ago

      It’s transparent.. you don’t goto Bing.. they just list the results.. You click on it and goto the site, etc you were searching for.

      • James Cobalt - 10 years ago

        Does it honor your default browser setting? Or does Apple force all opens to occur in Safari only?

  3. oreomuncher - 10 years ago

    I really don’t care anymore, The search results with bing are perfectly acceptable.

  4. Jassi Sikand - 10 years ago

    That’s not true. They list Bing as a translation feature, not as an exclusive search feature

  5. jenkins41 - 10 years ago

    Not a big fan of Bing at all. I’ll be chaining that back to Google if this is true.

  6. Neil Anderson - 10 years ago

    Any truth to the rumor that for Yosemite Apple was going to have a little paperclip varmint named Sam?

  7. tijeladeacai - 10 years ago

    Understandable. Since Android is destroying iOS.

  8. I hope they keep Google as default search. Google is a great company, I wish Apple and Google would start working together again.

  9. megab4k3r - 10 years ago

    Please no, just make it an option.

  10. 311sie - 10 years ago

    Not likely, Federighi’s demo clearly included Google hits during the keynote. Not to say that it could be a future decision, but not based on today’s demo.

  11. Marco Brandão - 10 years ago

    Safari will also support DuckDuckGo. Look left in the iOS 8 new features slide and you will DuckDuckGo support in Safari.

  12. rettun1 - 10 years ago

    I kind of want to see Apple and Microsoft, who were once bitter enemies, collaborate. Otherwise Google gonna come in and dominate

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.