Apple Considered, Rejected Switch To DuckDuckGo From Google

Apple held talks with DuckDuckGo to replace Alphabet's Google as the default search engine for the private mode on Apple's Safari browser, but ultimately rejected the idea. From a report: The details of those talks -- and Apple's discussions about buying Microsoft's Bing search engine in 2018 and 2020 -- were revealed late Wednesday in transcripts unsealed by the judge overseeing the US government's antitrust trial against Google. US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled Wednesday that he would unseal the testimony of DuckDuckGo Chief Executive Officer Gabriel Weinberg and Apple executive John Giannandrea, both of whom testified in the Washington trial in closed sessions. Weinberg testified that DuckDuckGo had about 20 meetings and phone calls with Apple executives, including the head of Safari, in 2018 and 2019 about becoming the default search engine for private browsing mode. In private mode, Safari doesn't track websites that a user visits or keep a history of what a person has accessed.

'We were talking about it, I thought they would launch it,' Weinberg said, noting that Apple had integrated several of DuckDuckGo's other privacy technologies into Safari. 'Multiple times we've gotten integrations all the way through the finish line. Really, almost everything we've pitched except for search.' But Giannandrea, who joined Apple as the head of search in 2018, said that to his knowledge Apple hadn't considered switching to DuckDuckGo. In a February 2019 email to other Apple executives, Giannandrea said it was 'probably a bad idea' to switch to DuckDuckGo for private browsing in Safari. 'The motivating factor for setting DuckDuckGo as the default for private browsing was an assumption' that it would be more private, Giannandrea testified. Because DuckDuckGo relies on Bing for its search information, it also likely provides Microsoft some user information, he said, which led him to believe that DuckDuckGo's 'marketing about privacy is somewhat incongruent with the details.'

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