> This means they are not only tracking what you search for, they're also tracking which websites you visit, and using all your data for ads that follow you around the internet
Apple may be doing the exact same thing as well, so they should not recommend Apple on the same principle. Otherwise it's just preposterous.
I've gone very far in limiting what Google has on me. But if my goal was simply to ditch Google completely, iOS is a completely valid point. So is Vimeo.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio...
It seems that you are hardly going out of the loop by searching for stuff on an iOS device. Google still ends up serving the results and collecting information on you. And by default Safari does not block ads that track you either.
This way of stating that Google pays to be the default search engine in Safari is inaccurate at best or disingenuous at worst. Phrasing it as you did makes it sound like Apple is hiding the fact that you're using Google and surreptitiously passing on your search information to Google.
Sure, one could argue that Apple should use a different engine by default and forgo that $3 billion. That certainly would be something. What's the trade off for them? At this point what major search engine doesn't track? (Yes, DuckDuckGo doesn't, and I use it as my default, but I also think people can reasonably disagree whether it's a major search engine, and I also recognize that the results aren't always as good as Google.) Apple does make it dirt simple to change the default, and doesn't nag you after you've changed it.
Definitely different than Apple "selling search requests". If you switch your search provider to anything non-Google, (presumably) Google is not going to get your search requests.
While I do agree that Apple is no better at preserving privacy, it doesn't fit the scope of this article.