> Thesr analysts don't get why people use ddg!

I think people who use DDG don’t get it’s mostly just bing’s search API with better branding and privacy features.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it just makes DDG much more of a Microsoft acquisition target than an Apple one.

These so called “analysts” have no idea what they are talking about. Google pays Apple nearly $8 billion a year at this point to stay the default search on safari iOS.

Why would Apple throw away that free money to instead pay it back to Microsoft operating a business that can only be monetized by advertising?

I doubt search will ever be part of the Apple portfolio. Users won’t pay for it and Apple is not interested in becoming an ad network.

An independent DDG that's seen as an independent alternative, slightly hurts Google and provides impressions for Microsoft-managed ads is likely a lot more valuable to Microsoft than another Microsoft-owned brand that nobody will believe is actually independent and more privacy-friendly.

The source of results is irrelevant. Pagerank based revenue model and how they prioritize relevancy (e.g.: programming related query will have the top stackoveflow answer on the first page and their bangs) is why I like them in addition to their privacy promises. Ddg is still very simple,especially their /lite search. Google is cluttered and weighty but I still need it for some results. Bing results are often different than ddg for me as well.

DuckDuckGo is a Bing frontend, no? An acquisition by Apple wouldn't make sense, because they'd just be writing checks to Microsoft. In any case, I don't think the proposition is something to get upset over.

There's more to the services DDG offers than just private search via Bing. DDG has built its own technology around specific types of searches and queries. The main search product is powered by Bing, but it's not fair to say it's just "a Bing frontend".

https://duck.co/ia

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/features/i...

I'm not trying to de-value the company, just explaining why I don't think an Apple acquisition makes sense. If the main search product, or even the majority of the search results, are coming from Bing...I think that makes an acquisition kind of silly. But, bookmark this for when the sale is announced in a few months!

Seconded

It's also probably not as bad as Oracle taking over Sun, for that matter.

These times prove that people do not go out to protest only the thing that is most worthy of protest, since whatever that thing is, it is not seeing significantly more protestors than other things that are also important.

And that's OK. It's good if things that are important, but not quite most important, have people working to improve them as well.

Privacy is not "inside baseball"