I don’t get that reasoning. The value of the searches doesn’t come from the abilities google has with them. At least not primarily. It comes from the ability of

I don’t get that reasoning. The value of the searches doesn’t come from the abilities google has with them. At least not primarily. It comes from the ability of iPhone _users_ to pay for purchases. It is this purchase power that makes the searches valuable to advertisers (and hence google). iPhone searches are valuable because iPhone users tend to have higher disposable income^. Additionally I’d say that the number of users switching over the search results of google vs DDG is approximately zero ;) ^ Of course in second order there is an added value of being able to subdivide iPhone users in smaller segments which might add some value (to google). But I’d bet that loosing out on >95% of those searches would be bad for google. Especially strategically as a significant fraction of their former income would then fund someone else’s search engine development. This sounds eerily like Intel’s refusal to build the chips Apple wanted, which pretty much funded TSMC’s technical advantage. And back then nobody knew that those would go into a >200bn$/year product with 30% margins.