Apple considered switching to DuckDuckGo from Google for Safari

Wow, USB-C and DDG in the same year? Look at Apple trying to stay relevant 😉

They didn’t switch to USB-C out of the goodness of their hearts. They switched because the EU passed a new law that requires that new smartphones have USB-C ports.
- And they actively fought against it for as long as they could, tooth and nail.
- Apple will never do anything for any other reasons besides: regulation and profit. They try and foster this image of humanitarianism and ethics, but meanwhile they build everything in sweatshops and make their own "standards" so that their loyal customers can only use the functions they need by purchasing additional dongles.
  I'm happy that they were forced into an actual standard, but I've already heard at least two apple users IRL claiming that USB-C is inferior for [insert random reasoning here]. Apple has cultivated the idea that they are above standards for a long time and it will take a long time to break.
- I’m cracking a joke
Ah yes, the second largest company in the world “trying to stay relevant”
- Im not really brand loyal to a gizmo company but the way android users are so insecure makes me never want to get them.
- * In terms of profit, after the Saudi Arabian Oil Group. Huh, I had no idea.
- Of all of the things that I vastly prefer since moving to Lemmy from reddit, anything related to Apple is not one of them. I'm actually surprised because talking about anything Apple on reddit was always a circlejerk pitchfork parade, but Lemmy still seems to outdo. The "trying to stay relevant comment" is honestly hilarious. Sure, the richest company with more than 50% of the smartphone market, that basically feeds design to the rest of the industry is trying to stay relevant.
  And another thing worth addressing, It's probably 50/50 whether the EU is forcing them to USB-C, or just providing cover for them to move to USB-C. Modern Apple (after 1997) rarely has used proprietary standards for cables/connectors, and when they have it's pretty obviously because there isn't a better option, or more likely, there isn't an option that is suited to their purpose. Apple is/was largely the reason we're even talking about USB, being one of the first to really adopt it. Then the dock connector for iPods, which is probably the most major example of them using a proprietary connector. If you read that link (just wiki) you'll see that the dock connector did things that no other standard connector did at the time, and it did it in a form factor that would work with iPods. Fast forward 10 years and Apple eats shit in the press for changing to Lightning, which pre-dated USB-C and has obvious advantages over one of the worst computer connectors in modern history - micro-USB. Apple contributed significantly to the USB-C spec, which includes many of the advantages that Lightning had first, built off of the work they did with Intel in creating another standard, Thunderbolt.
  And then on to today, where Apple is "forced" to use USB-C. Again, in 2016, Apple moved all of their high end laptops to exclusively USB-C, for which they would again be pilloried. People are still pissed those laptops dropped USB-A and MagSafe in favor of trying to drive adoption of USB-C and a one-connector-rules-them-all world. They also moved their Pro iPads over to C in 2018. Basically, Apple started moving its high-end, less price conscious customers to C long before legislation was a gleam in anyone's eye. Their cheaper products (base model iPads) and mass-consumer products (iPhones) they moved much slower on, and even then there were a slate of "Apple keeps changing connectors all of the time!" (twice in 20 years) outrage-bait articles.
  Yes, Apple was "forced" to use the connector they created the first design references for (Lightning/Thunderbolt, and to a lesser extend Mini-DisplayPort) and then helped design, then moved to before most, in a bid to stay "relevant" in a field they already dominate.
  Also worth noting that Apple was a main driver of adoption of USB-A, and took heat when they converted iMacs to it over PS/2, far before most PC vendors did.
  This alone, the amount of negative press they garnered, meant that there was likely no way Apple was going to move iPhones off of Lightning for 10 years.
I really really don’t think Apple needs to do much to stay relevant.
- Strangely, it kinda was. They helped invent the original specification. Just not so sure they wanted to put it on iphone yet (or ever)
- and they only did it because the EU forced them to

Surprised to see so many plugging kagi in this thread. A subscription to search the internet seems crazy to me. Is it that good?

This article is a pretty good summary of why, by Google's own words, an ad driven search experience will be rubbish:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics
Not only does Kagi produce great search results, as good as "old Google" IMO, its business model means the above cannot (or at least, shouldn't) happen. If it ever changed its model to include ads etc it would collapse so fast.
So for me, unlike the other poster, I'd recommend it to everyone who's finding the existing search engines are rubbish and full of useless Etsy and SEO etc links.
- Pinterest links are the worst. I just don’t want that shit and images of random crap isn’t what I’m after.
- I can't find any information about their search engine crawler. Isn't it standard for search engines to label their crawlers or something?
- Brave words divorced from reality.
  Cable companies wouldn’t insert ads, people pay for a premium experience with cable instead of getting their TV free over the air. If they did people would just cancel and watch free tv.
  Then later: Streaming companies wouldn’t insert ads, the ability to watch on your time, terms and without interruption is part of the appeal, if they did their customers would leave them and they’d collapse. It would be the death of any company foolish enough to do so.
  🤡
  Markets and competition will save us cried the fool with no knowledge of history.
  If they grow they need to keep growing, if their results are good enough they’ll introduce “limited” tracking for “trusted partners” with limited ads that are “valuable and relevant”. And from there it can spiral more but you’ve already lost.
  As revenue, tracking, taking a big yearly check from Zuck or whoever to share your data with them. It’s a good source of revenue and unless this company is privately financed by one weirdo entirely out of their own pockets they have a responsibility to investors to get them ever increasing year over year returns.
  Of course the typical thing to do is to get big enough first like streaming. Train the fool consumers to pay for something they’re getting for free, normalize that, grow, then sock them with ads, tracking, inconveniences and train them to accept more and more of it.
- Every good result they serve you could have been an ad, so they're incentivised to replace as many with ads as possible.
Paying for a service ensures your incentives (mostly) align. Kagi's incentive is to make a good search that makes you want to pay for it, google's incentives are to gather your data to either sell or use themselves, and show you as many ads as possible.
I thought it sounded pretty silly, too. I gave the free trial a shot and for technical searches it was the best I had seen by far. Being able to lower certain sites and raise other sites makes it much easier to filter through shitty results like blog posts and stuff. I pay for it now and it's worth it to me just for the time savings on technical searches. It definitely is still pretty far behind for things like local business info and stuff, but as a general purpose search engine it's been extremely good for me.
- Or the most annoying thing, trying to research a topic with one word matching that of a recent news event. So you only ever see news sites.
- Yeah, I scoffed at the idea of paying. And paying $10/mo. Then I used it. And I keep using it. A lot. And now0 looks like I'm going to be paying for it for a while.
I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone because it’s really expensive, but for me it’s great, and I save at least one hour a day at work since I don’t waste my time filtering the results from DDG or Google.
It’s subjective of course but I’m happy about it so far.
- Recently I get good result with Ecosia.
Yeah, it's very good. Not having results full of shit like geeksforgeeks or Pinterest is nice, but possible with browser extensions. Being able to influence the rank of different sites, to either bubble up or down in your results is one of the secret killer features

Doesn't Google pay billions to Apple for the top spot? Why would they want to lose that stream of free cash?

If the goodwill they garner from that makes APPL go up because it matches the privacy expectation they are branding themselves with, they might be making even more money anyway.
- Exactly. They are trying to win the privacy game, so a small sacrifice now could turn to be quite profitable.
To harm a competitors stock prices more than they are paying out
Could be that Apple will acquire DuckDuckGo. A little hasty to presume it I suppose, but Apple has to wonder how much money they are leaving on the table by taking Google’s payments. If Google will pay them more than $9 billion/year just to be default—what does that say about how profitable Apple’s absolutely huge and locked-in base can be?
- Could apple be using the press as part of their bargaining strategy with google over the default search engine fee?
- How is Apple going to monetize DuckDuckGo to make up for that $9 billion, without compromising their other efforts w/r/t user and data privacy?
A Washington post article I was reading yesterday said google pays apple $19 billion this year to be the default browser on iPhones.
- With DuckDuckGo?

I've been trying to use DDG but honestly it sucks. I can't imagine Apple switching to it, it would just make things worse for users, who commonly can't figure out how to switch defaults. I think it's just a negotiating point.

Google search has been fundamentally broken for at least two years. When the protests started on Reddit 90% of Google's search results we're broken.
- I found this too. After the reddit fiasco, I found DDG to have no downside. The search syntax is a little different (google's is better) but the outputs arent radically different.
What difficulties are you finding with it and are you switching from Google? The results are as custom as Google given they haven't scraped your life history so wondering if that's it? I've been using DDG without any issues. About once every 6 months I struggle to find something so try the Google bang but have never found better results. In fact, I was shocked last time how crap the Google results were, just full of AI generated crap and SEO based crap.
To be honest, DDG is also struggling with that now as it's based on Bing. I have been trying a public searxg but not found it very good so far.
- I love DDG and use it as my default, but there's no doubt that its index is shallower and its semantic matching can't compare to Google's. I'm a biogeochemist and spend a lot of time coding in R. Google is just better at surfacing rare science articles/blogs and stackoverflow pages where my query doesn't match exactly, but it is a relevant result. I use DDG for my personal searching and Google for professional searching
- Results suck, it can't find anything. I really don't think it's related to lack of browsing history.
That didn't stop them from plowing ahead with Apple Maps, even though its debut was total garbage.
- Debut and still is garbage.
  There's a reason why Apple users have both installed.
  Does Apple Maps even have reviews?
I primarily use it. What sucks about it? It isn't as flashy without those little quick answers that Google throws together, but those are garbage a lot of the time anyway imo. Otherwise, I don't really have any issues finding what I need that I can think of
- You are not going to get a more constructive criticism from OP.
  I use mainly ddg but I have occasionally needed to switch to Google, but it's happening less and less.
  But then again with Google you need to frequently add keywords such as discussions or Reddit to find something that in the word's of OP doesn't suck balls.
- Only thing I miss is Google shopping sometimes. That actually is really useful when you need a super obscure part that's not available on ebay or Amazon and just sold on three random websites. Google shopping will show them and let you compare prices perfectly.
- I find the results suck donkey balls.
Don't agree.
I switched from Google quite recently, as I knew it was hard...
But now I'm mostly not using !g unless for few cache: searches or when I want use few features (sport results, without going to specific websites).
You've to use some search syntax items more as + but otherwise it's quite good and clear to read.

I mean, it makes sense, DDG already use apple maps for their maps platform.

I started using duck duck go a few months ago and have felt like my search results are a lot more useful since.

The maps function on it sucks though

DDG uses Apple Maps.
- that explains that then
The maps it used were a lot worse, so this is a recent improvement
I wish they would use leaflet

Duck duck go sucks for porn I stopped using it a while ago. Until they fix that I'm out.

The man has priorities
Bing image search is surpringly efficient for this
- Isn’t it the same search index?
Or piracy
Oddly enough I used DDG once for an artist and actually got results meanwhile Google gave me irrelevant shit

I’ve been using it this way for years. I don’t use google products at all now and don’t miss it.

On Safari (iOS), Apple makes it easy to switch. Settings > Safari > Search Engine and select which one you want. I’ve been using DDG not quite a year and at first the change felt a lil jarring, but knowing I’m contributing less to Google’s ad revenue and their long list of privacy violations, I’m comfortable now sticking with DDG. Change isn’t always easy, convenient, or comfortable, but it can be done with just the tiniest bit of effort.

All browsers make it easy. In fact, Chrome on Android is quicker.
Settings > Search Engine > and select which one you want.
Currently you can pick between;
Google
Yahoo
Bing
DuckDuckGo
Ecosia
That's not the point at all.
- The point is MOST users don't change it or even know how. I seriously doubt anyone in my family would even know that it is possible, know that there are other search engines, or that Google knowing everything about their searches is not a good thing. And yes they all use Facebook too.🤦‍♂️
- I would imagine you can add your own in as well, the same as Firefox allows.
this is a very poor argument. every browser I've used, even Chrome, makes it easy to change the default search engine in the settings.
- Were they making an argument?

I've been using duckduckgo for the last month and change and I'm not really a fan. Especially for things here in Japan, it can give really wonky results (today I was looking for the closest post office and searched '\ post office'. It gave me a website to get directions, but no indication of where it might be nor, y'know, even the post office's website). Google has gotten continually worse for me, but this was, in most cases, just barely as good or worse.

It's been my default for years. Usually I find what I want. When I don't, I go back to the search box and put !g at the front, which sends the search to google.
- !sp (Startpage) gives you the same results as Google but without personalized ads or ad tracking.
To confirm, are you also toggling the Japan region for searches?
- I didn't notice that was a thing, but it defaulted to Japan so we're safe there.

Duck duck go needs a lot of work to replace Google search.

I've used it for years but often I still get the shits and just bring Google up after duck duck go fails to find what I'm looking for.

Huh I'm also a regular DDG user but I never have that experience.
For 9 of 10 search DDG give me what I'm looking for in the top results, for the other time I just add g! to the search and its sends me to google.
For me the direct opposite is true. About two years ago Google stopped giving me any accurate results, feeding me a bunch of semi-related garbage instead. DuckDuckGo feels like the Google of old: results that actually (literally) contain the terms of the query and not much else. I'd hate using the internet without it.
- I felt the same way. Lately, though, ddg has been serving unrelated garbage ads in the middle of my searches. I am now looking for something new. Startpage has some decent results so far....
I usually forget I'm using it. Exception is for work - I frequently have to specify g! to get Stackoverflow results to show up at the top.
The android app is nice, especially the app tracking blocker. It takes up the VPN connection tho

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Oct 4 (Reuters) - Apple (AAPL.O) held talks with DuckDuckGo to replace Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google as the default search engine for the private mode on Apple's Safari browser, the Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the discussions.

The details of the talks are expected to be released later this week, according to the report, after Judge Amit Mehta, overseeing a federal antitrust suit against Google, ruled on Wednesday that he would unseal the testimony of DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg and Apple executive John Giannandrea.

Apple, DuckDuckGo and Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice in a landmark U.S. trial argued Google, which has some 90% of the search market, illegally paid $10 billion annually to smartphone makers such as Apple and wireless carriers like AT&T (T.N) and others to be the default in search on their devices in order to stay on top.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified on Monday, saying that tech giants were competing for vast troves of content needed to train artificial intelligence, and complained Google was locking up content with expensive and exclusive deals with publishers.

He added that Microsoft had sought to make its Bing search engine the default on Apple smartphones but was rebuffed.

The original article contains 241 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 11%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I tried to switch to DDG as my default search on iOS but my adblocker doesn’t block ads on it but it does on google, so I switched back

DDG has a built-in option to determine whether you want to see ads or not.
- Sweet, I can switch back then
I tried to switch but the results were terrible. I ended up on bing which is still inferior to google but better than being google even if it is another behemoth data gathering company. At this point im just trying to stop centralizing who gets all my data don’t lest it’s a bit fragmented.
- ddg gets its results from bing, I'd recommend startpage if you want google results while being privacy respecting.

Did DDG move away from consolidating results from Google and other engines?

Bing now

Is ddg any good?

I feel like Bing would just be better at this point.

DDG is great, highly recommended. It reminds me of what Google used to be.
- It's garbage outside of the US for local results. Bing is somewhat better, but still not good enough. In the US though, plenty of good alternatives to Google search
- I honestly might have to look into it then. Google is still pretty decent got me but I’m just finding myself either using Reddit to find an answer or asking chat gpt (purely excel related questions)
It does show you more relevant results based on your query, withou doing any guessing about what you might have meant by it. That being said, sometimes I use Google to search for something when DDG is giving me bad results. But overall I would recommend, it's muxh more better experience with the results I am seeing. I have tried Bing for a while as well, but it was thinking too much instead of just showing me the results.
- The only reason I had to use Google was to search by image. Which is a feature DDG doesn't have sadly.
  For specific search, I found perplexity.ai to be much better and faster, it uses AI to scan the websites and give summaries as to why they are relevant to your query.
- I find that when I’m looking for very specific things Google is still king but DDG is much better for broad strokes.
yep it is quite good
Ddg is Bing with less tracking. I mean, literally it is Bing.
Ddg results are pretty horrible in my experience. Statpage (google results) and brave search both have better results.
- Shout out to startpage! I use it almost exclusively and it is great.
- Brave Search is awful for non-English results. Startpage is decent but only because it's basically Google results.
- Yeah, brave search is what I use for my main searches, but ddg bangs do come in useful. Brave has it too.
After 2 years of exclusive use: yes. It's just as good if not better. Google is filled with ads and Bing just sucks.
I just switched from ddg (after years of using it across all my devices) to kagi, but ddg is good. The results can be iffy at times, especially on unusual or niche queries, but their bang system lets you forward the query to other engines to see if they have the result you are looking for. In my household where I control and direct the tech, ddg has been the standard for many years for all our devices. I recommend it to everyone who is still using a big-name search engine.
I've used it for a few months, and in the end I was always using !g
It's just not good enough in a lot of contexts. I'm having a much better time with kagi
It’s okay. If you want something genuinely as good as Google, if not better, Kagi is what you want.
I have been using it exclusively for years. Does its job most of the time and when it doesn't and I include Google results (via bang !g) Google doesn't really find it either.
However, I've opted out of most Google services in parallel, so their model of me probably isn't the best anymore. If in their bubble, their results may still be better (creeps me out though, so I live with non-perfect search).
Upvote this question, it's pretty relevant to the issue of whether this would have been good for Apple (no, it would not have been)
DDG is my default search on mobile, but half the time I end up back on Google. Google is better at guessing exactly what I want and giving that content fast, such as the weather, people always ask answers, or quick facts about things that saves me from loading the site underneath the result.
But sometimes I know exactly what I want and Google won't give it to me - because it decided I want something else.
That's where a well built query can work better on DDG. However... DDG is more susceptible to backlink spamming and old school SEO techniques to rank content near the top. So depending on the people behind the search results, some queries are fine and some can still be garbage.
Also for image and video search Google is top.
- Strong disagree on Google having a better video/image search. Bing is top there, then Google, then DDG, imo.