Huawei search is Huawei\’s surprise for Google and you there\’s even more.
The launch of Huawei\’s P40 Pro smartphone is in a few days and its loss of Google has taken a toll. The back and forth squabble between Huawei and google in the U.S has been dominant on the blacklist headlines for some time now and this has pushed the Chinese giants to develop its very own service replacement for Google which will feature an app store and underlying services such as navigation.
Due to the fact that both giants are in a tug of war, leaks from Huawei this week suggests that Huawei intends to launch its own search engine called Huawei search as part of its own ecosystem. This does not only presents a further business risk to google from the ongoing technology split, east versus west, but this begs the question around who curates and filter the news for the user. Huawei boasts of being the second-largest supplier of smartphones worldwide as its global audience goes beyond the boards of china.
The team at XDA-Developers tested the search engine by Huawei and reported that it is “a basic search app that just lets you input query to search the internet for webpages, news articles, videos or images”. For instance, the weather data on Huawei “is powered by Huafeng-AccuWeather which is a joint venture that sources its forecast data from the China Meteorological Administration \’\’.
There is no concrete data available showing the source of the wider search result but XDA-developers reported that “ we could not match the search results from Huawei search with results from Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Ask, or AOL”. They also said “ it would be premature to say that the Huawei search is an alternative to Google search or Microsoft Bing, but there is a possibility that this service could evolve into a decent competitor down the line” as the software is licenced from Huawei’s Irish subsidiary and it appears to comply with General Data Protection regulations the surrounds removing search data.
Whether you believe the allegation by the US that Huawei is controlled by the state of China and that it is subject to Beijing\’s national security laws, this isn\’t a mapping app or a payment processing engine. This is potentially a filter that resides just above the World Wide Web, dishing out contents from hundreds of millions of websites to its users worldwide. The tech giants Huawei is unarguably a company based in the most highly censored country in the world as of today.
For the time being, Google has reportedly applied for a licence from the U.S. commerce development to restore its supply lines to Huawei. This licence will return its software and services to the tech giants android users around the world. And when this happens, there will be a different question: which of Huawei”s alternative applications and offerings will be shut down and restricted to just china or carried as alternatives on its device?
Very helpful….looking ahead to visiting again.