The question is does Google have any other options? No.
Apple could use many alternatives (DDG, Startpage) or make their own. Google is lucky they get to pay a few billion instead of contending with Apple Search or Apple switching to alternatives.
Apple could use many alternatives (DDG, Startpage) or make their own. Google is lucky they get to pay a few billion instead of contending with Apple Search or Apple switching to alternatives.
There are only two [general purpose, global] search engines in the world right now: Google and Bing.
And of the two Google is clearly superior. I suspect most people would use it even if Bing was the default.
That contradicts what I find on Wikipedia.
DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS; Wikipedia; Wolfram Alpha; Bing; its own Web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); and others. It also uses data from crowdsourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate "Zero-click Info" boxes – grey boxes above the results that display topic summaries and related topics.
I suspect that they initially attempted to do this, but as far as I know these days it's basically Bing. Maybe with a small amount of other sources mixed in.
I'd imagine legal ramifications for Apple but I do think Apple has options that keep Google paying billions.