Huawei Officially Launches Google's Competitor Petal Search

JAKARTA - Huawei secretly launched a competitor to Google Search, named Petal Search. This search engine was launched in June 2020 as a way to quickly find applications for new Huawei phones.

Officially, President of Huawei Consumer Business Cloud Services Zhang Pingan announced the search engine at the 2020 Huawei Developer Conference which was held today.

Petal Search has visual and voice search functions, because Huawei already has a visual search tool, HiTouch. Extensive artificial intelligence (AI) expertise will also be a feature in Petal Search. This was reported by GizChina, Friday, September 11.

In fact, Huawei is focusing this application only on accessing local news, shopping, travel and business results. Since its inception Huawei has focused on making Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) and App Galleries relevant to specific local markets, so that it has an effort to attract local partners for search according to its overall strategy.

Huawei's innovation is an important step to smooth the transition or, as an alternative, from phones equipped with Google Play or Apple App Store, to phones with HMS and the App Gallery store.

Since losing access to Google Mobile Services (GMS), Huawei has been working on its own replacements for months for apps that aren't already in its app store, such as maps, so its phones need a more extensive search system.

Huawei says the technology itself will be used in several regions, where PetalBot will index the web for results. But search content comes mostly from third-party partners, including Qwant, Europe's largest search engine, and Yandex, Russia's largest search engine.