DuckDuckGo CEO Claims Google Contract Prevented Partnership with Apple
According to transcripts from a significant antitrust trial involving Alphabet, the CEO of privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo revealed that discussions with Apple for a potential partnership fell through due to Google’s massive contracts with the smartphone manufacturer.
Gabriel Weinberg, who also founded the company, testified Sept. 21 about the impact of Google’s $10 billion in annual payments to DuckDuckGo to smartphone manufacturers and others to keep the search engine the default on computers or mobile devices.
Some of his testimony took place out of public view.
A redacted transcript unsealed late Wednesday showed that DuckDuckGo had struck a deal with Apple in 2014 to appear as an accessory on Apple devices. Soon after, DuckDuckGo began pushing Apple to make it the default choice for users who wanted to work in privacy mode, which limited the information collected about the user.
App makers tend to be defaults in their area, whether it’s search, maps, or anything else, because many users can’t or don’t want to change the default settings.
Weinberg said Apple seemed “really interested” in 2016, and executives from the two companies met in 2017 and 2018 to discuss making DuckDuckGo the default privacy mode. DuckDuckGo has about 2.5% of the search market, he testified.
In those meetings, Weinberg said, Apple executives raise concerns that its distribution agreements with Google could prevent change.
The Justice Department has said that Google, which has about 90 percent of the search market, pays about $10 billion a year to Apple, other smartphone makers and others for default search. This influence in search has made Google a heavy hitter in the lucrative advertising market and boosted its profits.
In 2019, Apple decided not to accept the change and the potential deal died, Weinberg said.
Weinberg said he made similar proposals to Samsung and others, and was also rebuffed.
“Each of these companies’ Google contract was the key thing that prevented us from doing a deal with them,” he added.
