The CEO of privacy-oriented search engine DuckDuckGo said his talks with Apple about a potential contract failed because the smartphone maker was reluctant to give up Google’s billion-dollar salary, according to new transcripts of a landmark antitrust trial of the Alphabet unit. Was.
Gabriel Weinberg, who also founded the company, testified The impact on DuckDuckGo of Google’s $10 billion annual payment to smartphone makers and others to keep its search engine as the default on computers or mobile devices will be reported on September 21.
Some of his testimony took place out of public view.
A redacted transcript was unsealed late Wednesday, showing that DuckDuckGo had struck a deal with Apple in 2014 to be shown as an option on Apple devices. Soon after, DuckDuckGo began pressuring Apple to make it a default option for users who wanted to operate in privacy mode, thereby limiting the data collected on the user.
App makers want to have a default in their area, whether it’s search or maps or anything else, because many users are unable or unwilling to change the default.
Weinberg said Apple was “really interested” in 2016, and executives from both companies held meetings in 2017 and 2018 to discuss changes to DuckDuckGo as the default in privacy mode. He testified that DuckDuckGo has about 2.5% of the search market.
At those meetings, Weinberg said, Apple executives will bring up concerns that changes to its distribution agreement with Google could block changes. Weinberg argued that the potential deal fell through in 2019 because of Google payments.
Apple’s John Giannandrea, in charge of machine learning and AI strategy, whose behind-closed-doors testimony also emerged late Wednesday, testified in September that Apple compared Bing and Google to play the two off against each other. Did it on purpose.
Giannandrea testified about Apple’s idea of purchasing Bing or using it as a default search engine instead of Google, an idea that Giannandrea opposed due to Bing’s low quality search results.
The Justice Department has said Google, which has about 90% of the search market, pays Apple, other smartphone makers and others about $10 billion annually for default search. That dominance in search has made Google a major competitor in the lucrative advertising market, boosting its profits.
