Drive around the southeast United States. There are DDG billboards everywhere.

I would if I were allowed to fly overseas ;)

The question is, how many would care if when they searched on their phone the results went to search.apple.com? Again, we're talking about people outside of tech.

No it’s not. No reason to buy duck duck go if you’re not going to use the name. If they want Apple branded Bing search they could just work something out with Microsoft directly.

I would agree, except for DDG's privacy stance, and the advantages Apple would have if they wanted to make that a marketing point as opposed to integrating with a third party.

I actually saw a DDG ad on the highway in my town recently (in the Midwest). I was a pretty surprised seeing this. Unfortunately, it wasn't as clear as it could have been about what it was. (My wife had no clue from the billboard what it was).

So, at least they are trying to get more users (via billboard ads).

DuckDuckGo recently launched a major billboard campaign. I first saw a billboard in the wild then saw their announcement when it was on Hacker News. https://duckduckgo.com/billboards/

They would have heard of it if it were called Apple Search.