[xbmcuser]

Apple sells default placement to search engines like Google and Bing. If it it really cared about privacy 1. It would not sell it's customers to Google or Bing as search placement 2. It would put duckduckgo or similar as default.

[jolux]

Once they have intelligent tracking protection enabled though it won't matter what search engine you use, because it will prevent tracking on all of them. Just including DuckDuckGo in the defaults is a huge step forward. I also wouldn't be surprised if it was defaulted if Google keeps trying to circumvent adblocking measures.

[amartya916]

This is a fair critique. I wish they didn't sell the search placement in the first place.

[valuearb]

The product manager who picked Google likely did so because of user preference.