Huawei’s Petal Search: 5 Key Differences with Google Search

Huawei has been busy developing its Harmony operating system, including a new maps product (I wrote about that here) and a whole new search engine (I wrote about that here).

There is a slowly growing consensus that Google has taken its eye off the search ball, but it does still dominate the industry. Niche upstarts (like You.com, which I wrote about here) are different; just not different — or rich — enough to stake a challenge.

Maybe Huawei has a better shot?

Their Petal search engine is live now, so I gave it a whirl. (You can try the desktop version here and the mobile app is available in most countries now.)

It’s pretty similar to Google, in that it starts like this:

But then, things diverge.

I used my normal sample set of queries to try it out, starting with ‘cashmere jumper’.

Here’s what I found:

Petal’s on the left and you can see that it’s easier to digest than Google’s overwhelming, ad-saturated experience. I’ve tried to highlight the key differences in the image.