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A comment on DDG founder says Google's phone, manufacturing partnerships thwart competition. Parent comment

Re:DDG founder says Google's phone, manufacturing partnershi... by whstl on Friday November 24, 2023 @07:56AM (#38403500)
"In the US, iOS has no search engine choice at all, in europe DDG quietly pays Apple a fee to be one of the choices. Android is the only reason anyone outside of europe can use DDG on the phone at all."

Wait, what? Where does this information comes from? When I was in the USA I bought an iPhone and could choose DDG. Isn't it like that for all phones bought in the US? Did they somehow "knew" I was from Europe and showed me an extra option? It is the same for my relatives who live in South America and friends in Asia.

In fact CNET claims that the choice was added because of the USA's DOJ: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/in-ios-17-apple-adds-abilit...

Also, is it confirmed anyehere that DDG pays Apple, or is this just conjecture? The only thing I can find about this is DDG's CEO criticizing Google/Apple for exchanging money so Google is the default.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:DDG founder says Google's phone, manufacturing partnershi... by jsnell on Friday November 24, 2023 @08:37AM (#38403805)
> Also, is it confirmed anyehere that DDG pays Apple, or is this just conjecture?

It came out during the trial, in Weinberg's testimony. They pay Apple a revenue share for all searches done via the Safari search integration if the search engine is set to DDG.

As far as I know, none of this was even conjectured before that testimony. That he is so happy paying a revshare to Apple is pretty surprising given how vehement DDG was about the original Android search engine choice screen in the EU.

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