Equally easy to find recent articles outlining Apple is getting billions from Google to have Google search by default in Safari. Doesn’t sound fitting commitment to privacy.
While I'm sure apple's default choices are partially profit-motivated, defaulting to Duck Duck Go would be a poor UX for the vast majority of iPhone customers.
There is a valid discussion to be had as to whether UX or data privacy should be prioritized, but I'm inclined towards UX--most people just want to get the best search results possible.
If anything, on the UX <--> privacy scale, I'd argue Apple has sometimes been prioritizing privacy too highly as of late. As a heavy user of custom Applescripts, the new TCC dialogs introduced in Mojave have been causing me a lot of grief.
http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng...