In the report of the House Antitrust Committee it said:
“in an internal presentation about [Microsoft] Internet Explorer’s default search selection, Google recommended that users be given an initial opportunity to select a search engine and that browsers minimize the steps required to change the default search provider.”But here are the steps it takes to change default browsers on Android phones--remember Google provides the Android OS to phone vendors:
- Open Google Play
- Search “DuckDuckGo” (technically at least three clicks)
- Tap DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser
- Tap Install
- Navigate to the DuckDuckGo icon
- Long-press the DuckDuckGo icon
- Tap the widgets icon
- Long-press the widget and place on home screen
- Long-press the Google widget
- Tap Remove (process may differ and doesn't work on all devices, e.g., Google Pixel phones – go figure!)
- Open Settings
- Search “browser” (technically at least two clicks)
- Tap Default browser app
- Tap DuckDuckGo
- Tap Home
Clearly Google is intentionally making it very hard for users to use anything other than Google.
By making it very hard for competitors to get a foothold Google is effectively a monopoly.
Time to break Google up or at least make it trivial for users to select other search engines.
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