Ask HN: Should Apple buy DuckDuckGo?

Given Apple commitment to privacy, and sharing almost every service with Google (Maps, storage, browser, OS, etc.) except search and DuckDuckGo having a great momentum, this looks like an obvious step, what would stop Apple from doing that?

Given that DDG doesn't run their own full index (as far as I know), what would Apple gain? + I suspect many users would be wary of it being owned by any large player, even if it's Apple.

They also make a lot of money from Google providing the search.

It would be better for Apple to develop their own search engine. I really, truly hope they are working on one.

I personally don't want to see that, but who am I? I understand why these companies sell out to larger conglomerates, but it simply narrows the spectrum for regular users and as we've seen with Google, that doesn't add true value in the end.

Apple Maps is a complete joke compared to Google Maps, especially when in a city.

Apple Maps is horrendous with navigation and is frequently out of date. For example, my partner was sent an address, they clicked the address and Apple Maps opened. After two hours of driving, we realized Apple Maps had silently changed the address slightly because it thought we were wrong.

We caught the error and tried to correct. Apple was insistent that the address didn't exist, while Google Maps happily did what we asked.

I uninstalled Apple Maps from my partner's phone.

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All of this is to say: Apple is not competitive with Google in a lot of respects. Even in OS, they are different ideals and aren't interchangeable in my opinion.