Apple is in an outright war with Google and lawsuit wins against Samsung while helpful to the tune of a few hundred million dollars are great, to compete with Android the company must attack the very core of Google which is search. DuckDuckGo is the more secure alternative to Google Search. It isn’t as robust or as useful but at least the chairman of the company didn’t say that if you don’t want people to know what you are doing online, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

While Google spreads itself thinner and thinner, the opportunity may exist to take on their core competency. It is search and the ad network that goes with it that powers Google’s ability to develop self-driving cars, fiber to the home, solar projects and home delivery to millions of people.

Moreover, with so many things going on, it is just a matter of time before things start to get screwed up. It is the law of large organizations. Few companies have been able to grow product lines without significant hiccups along the way.

Today, Fred Wilson predicted Apple won’t be a major tech player by 2020. The company has been counted out before – Fred may or may not be correct. What we do know is if Google does continue to harm Apple by giving away what Apple charges for in terms of mobile innovation, it will become harder for Cupertino to keep charging premium prices.

A gardening analogy… When you have an infestation of weeds strangling your rose garden, you have to deal with the roots or the problem never goes away.

Search is the root of Google.

This is the same reasoning Google used when it got into the office application space – Microsoft’s cash cow.

In order to compete with Google, you need to at least think the way they do. Google does search amazingly well. In addition, they have been buying content like Zagat’s and scraping other content to keep searchers within the Google home page – not needing to go to particular websites for more detail.

Bing hasn’t been a strong counter to the company and Google is a monopoly for all practical purposes.

For competitive reasons, Apple should be the number one choice as an acquirer of DuckDuckGo and as the company unveils its new look with new features, it is also time for Amazon and Facebook to seriously think about how such an asset will help them compete in the search game to counter Google’s tech dominance.