Probably not. Apple is cautious about acquisitions and doesn’t generally buy things that have a consumer brand, they don’t really do advertising supported products, and they’re also mindful of anti-trust. My guess is that in the search space they see DDG as a useful partner, much like they see Yelp, but they’re not trying to expand into that business so an acquisition wouldn’t do much for them.

Would people continue to use it if that happened? I feel like that would defeat some of the point of the service.