Apple has billed DuckDuckGo as a Safari search engine for private browsing

DuckDuckGo also wanted to replace Google!

at the moment, Google faces the United States in a landmark antitrust trial. To prove the accusations, Leaders of several technology companies were forced to sit on stage and make their statementsWhere Apple has become a recurring topic. this week, It’s DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg’s turn.

In his statement Weinberg confirmed that his company is in negotiations with Apple to become the company’s default search engine, replacing Google.. Between 2018 and 2019, DuckDuckGo’s CEO had about 20 meetings and phone calls with Apple executives, including the head of Safari. Naturally, it was not successful.

DuckDuckGo also wanted to negotiate with Apple

The trial examined all of Google’s negotiations in the million-dollar agreement between Google and Apple. Although the accused party has proven that other companies e.g Microsoft was also behind the agreement that became the default search engine for Apple devicesThe defense responded with the same argument: Google is the best search engine out there.

Apple’s head of services, ‌Eddy Cue‌, also had to testify and explain why Google is the default search engine on the ‌iPhone‌.. “We made Google the default search engine because we always thought it was the best.” He went on to say that Apple did not choose another search engine provider because there was no “viable alternative.”

Fortunately for Google, even competitors have acknowledged this. And also this week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadel admitted that Microsoft did its best to obtain this deal.

Nadel did not hide the benefit they sought with the association. Microsoft was willing to give Apple all the financial benefits of the deal if Apple switched to Bing, and said it was willing to lose up to $15 billion a year in the process. They even considered hiding the Bing branding in Apple users’ search engines and respecting all privacy wishes of the company.

Although the agreement numbers between Google and Apple have not been released publicly, several reports indicated that in 2020 Google paid $12 billion to be the default search engine in Safari. In 2022, the number was expected to rise to $15 billion and will continue to rise in the coming years.