It’s unclear what Apple ultimately decided
We recently learned that Apple could buy Bing and was in talks with Microsoft about this back in 2020. It turned out that Apple was also looking at the DuckDuckGo search service.
True, for some reason Apple was not considering the possibility of buying DuckDuckGo, but only the possibility of using this search service in the Safari browser by default. But not always, but only in private mode.
Apple’s Safari browser could use the DuckDuckGo search service by default.
The relevant data surfaced on the Internet as part of the consideration of a federal antitrust lawsuit against Google.
Apple and Google asked the judge to keep their testimony confidential, but the judge decided it would be made public except for trade secrets.
Thus, more details about this Apple initiative will appear in the near future, while now it is not even clear when exactly the company considered such a move and what it ultimately decided.