Apple Discussed Bumping Google for DuckDuckGo in Private Browsing

Although Apple only recently gave us the ability to use an alternative search engine in Safari’s Private Browsing mode, it seems that the company has been pondering the idea since at least 2018.

As reported by Bloomberg, recently unsealed transcripts of testimony in the US government’s antitrust trial against Google reveal that Apple and DuckDuckGo held several meetings and phone calls to discuss making DuckDuckGo the default search engine for users operating in Safari’s private browsing mode.

During the trial, DuckDuckGo’s founder and CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, testified that he and his company representatives spoke with Apple executives on about 20 different occasions in face-to-face meetings and phone calls. Still, despite the positive vibes that Weinberg got from those discussions, nothing ever came of it.

The discussions took place in 2018 and 2019, long before iOS, iPadOS, and macOS offered any way to select an alternate search engine for private browsing. Weinberg noted that Apple had been open to integrating some of DuckDuckGo’s other privacy technologies into Safari, and DuckDuckGo has been available for users to choose as an alternative search engine since 2014. However, that’s been an all-or-nothing choice until this year’s release of iOS 17 added a separate Private Search Engine setting.

We were talking about it, I thought they would launch it. Multiple times we’ve gotten integrations all the way through the finish line. Really, almost everything we’ve pitched except for search.Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo CEO

Had the initiative gained traction, we may have found that setting arriving far sooner than it did. However, when Apple passed on the idea and decided to remain with Google as its default search engine across the board, it became less of a priority.

While it’s not clear from the unsealed testimonies exactly why the deal fell through, it was likely partially related to the lucrative revenue-sharing agreement Google made with Apple to remain the default search engine. Google pays Apple billions of dollars every year to maintain its default placement. The terms of the deal that have started to come out in the trial also reveal that Apple has promised not to create its own search engine that would compete with Google, nor even ask users if they’d like an alternative default search engine when setting up a new device.

However, John Giannandrea, who left his position as head of search and AI at Google in 2018 to become Apple’s Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, testified that as far as he knew, Apple never seriously considered switching to DuckDuckGo. In a February 2019 email, he told other Apple executives that such a switch was “probably a bad idea” because he believed DuckDuckGo’s “marketing about privacy is somewhat incongruent with the details.” Giannandrea noted that Apple shouldn’t make the “assumption” that DuckDuckGo is more private than Google since it uses Bing on the back end, therefore likely providing Microsoft with some user information.

I would probably insist on doing a lot more due diligence with DuckDuckGoJohn Giannandrea, Apple Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy

During his testimony, Giannandrea also pointed out the new iOS 17 feature that allows users to select a search engine other than Google’s for private browsing, adding that users can easily pick Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Ecosia as alternatives.

While it seems Giannandrea wasn’t involved in the talks with DuckDuckGo, he did reveal in his testimony that Apple CEO Tim Cook specifically asked him to speak with Microsoft executives about a switch to Bing, which began in 2018 and culminated in late 2020 when Microsoft offered to sell its search engine o Apple outright.

Earlier this week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that his company was so eager to persuade Apple to adopt Bing over Google that it “was willing to lose billions of dollars if Apple made the switch.” However, Apple studied Bing’s search results and found in an early 2021 study that Google provided better results nearly everywhere and was the best choice for its customers. Senior VP Eddy Cue testified earlier that “there wasn’t a valid alternative.”

When we’re picking search engines, we pick the best one, and we let the customer easily change them.Eddy Cue, Apple Senior VP of Services

The US government is trying to build a case that Google has a monopoly in search engines and has cornered the market and deliberately made it nearly impossible for other companies to compete. Testimony by Apple executives about discussions they’ve had with Google’s competitors confirms this to at least some degree, and the Justice Department claims that Google’s dominance on platforms like the iPhone and, of course, its own Android operating system have prevented competitors from ever gaining enough users to hope to compete with Google.

While Apple and Google have both requested that the testimony of their executives remain private, US District Judge Amit Mehta, who is overseeing the antitrust trial, ruled Wednesday that the testimony by Weinberg and Giannandrea “goes to the heart of the case,” along with other testimony concerning potential deals Apple could have made with Microsoft or DuckDuckGo.

Mehta issued an order from the bench that all such testimony should be unsealed as “critical to the case” and went through the transcripts “line by line,” releasing all comments that didn’t involve specific trade secrets such as project names and exact financial figures.