They're not in the search business because the potential is much more limited compared with selling hardware and services. People use YouTube and Facebook for many hours a day and the amount of revenue compared with what Apple can get from ads in app store, news, perhaps iPhone search and other Apple apps are orders of magnitude higher (hundreds of billions of dollars compared with single digit billions for Apple).
Privacy is very different for most of the ads Apple are currently showing too. Search ads work without the need for tracking because when people are searching for something you show them ads for things they are searching for now, not from some model of their interests created from their tracked internet history.
This is why Apple can have an ad business and also destroy Facebooks (and others) ad business based on tracking - they don't need to squeeze every dollar from targeted ads.
Privacy is very different for most of the ads Apple are currently showing too. Search ads work without the need for tracking because when people are searching for something you show them ads for things they are searching for now, not from some model of their interests created from their tracked internet history.
This is why Apple can have an ad business and also destroy Facebooks (and others) ad business based on tracking - they don't need to squeeze every dollar from targeted ads.