Ironically there’s only one browser with a sane business model and it’s Safari. You have to buy an Apple product to use it. Simple.
That’s probably why it’s the only mainstream browser, outside of obscure open source browsers like Falkon and Gnome Web, that doesn’t have any built-in ties to third party services.
Apple gets billions and billions each year to make Google the default search engine in Safari on iOS and Mac OS. (reported to be 12 billion in 2019 [1])
Apples privacy efforts and signaling are motivated by differentiation to Android/Google and are mostly just marketing targeted at increasingly privacy-aware consumers. Not some value judgement. (in my opinion)
Also increasingly apple is moving to compete in services. Every incentive in the world will be to adopt the practices the other guys do. Putting your trust in apple right now on the privacy issue seems pretty misguided.
I think Apple still get revenue from Google (and probably Bing?) searches.
Could be wrong but I thought I remember details about Google paying Apple for this. But it was years ago I last seen it
Edit: quick search for “safari google search revenue” got me a few links from prior years about Google paying to be the default search engine. Last mention was 2019 so who knows how long that contract is or whatever
Safari is also mainstream because you have no choice but to use it on iOS. Even if you manually install another browser (which can't be made default), you're still using the underlying Safari engine.
That’s probably why it’s the only mainstream browser, outside of obscure open source browsers like Falkon and Gnome Web, that doesn’t have any built-in ties to third party services.