Google pays Apple a large sum of money to be the default search engine on the iPhone. According to Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi, Apple receives about $8 billion a year just so Google can be the default search engine on iOS devices like the iPhone. This generates plenty of advertising revenue for Google, as much as $25 billion a year from iOS, and the money that Apple receives from the search firm goes right to its bottom line. So why should either firm make a change?

Analyst says Apple should buy DuckDuckGo

Sacconaghi says that such a purchase can be made by Apple for less than $1 billion. That would amount to less than one week of Apple’s cash flow. Calling it a “really tricky three-legged stool,” he notes that the revenue it receives from Google equals more than 10% of Apple’s operating earnings and reiterates how owning a search engine could provide Apple with some insurance.

With 93 employees as of last month, Duck Duck Go is a little larger than the typical Apple acquisition and conducts 61.75 million searches daily as of May 2020. While search terms are stored, they cannot be connected with any individual user. The creator of the search engine, Gabriel Weinberg, says, “By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell.” The company’s estimated net worth is $901 million but the company is not public. That means Apple would have to sit down with the firm and hash out a specific price as it has done with the majority of its acquisitions.

Besides DuckDuckGo, Yahoo Search could be pried away from Verizon for the appropriate amount of money. Yahoo Search owned a 3.62% market share in the U.S. last month; however, it would surely be more expensive for Apple to buy that DuckDuckGo and the latter’s policy privacy would dovetail perfectly with Apple’s.