Wednesday, October 28, 2020

If you doubt that Google is a monopoly here's the process to select a different browser on an Android phone

 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:
  1. Open Google Play
  2. Search “DuckDuckGo” (technically at least three clicks)
  3. Tap DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser
  4. Tap Install
  5. Navigate to the DuckDuckGo icon
  6. Long-press the DuckDuckGo icon
  7. Tap the widgets icon
  8. Long-press the widget and place on home screen
  9. Long-press the Google widget
  10. Tap Remove (process may differ and doesn't work on all devices, e.g., Google Pixel phones – go figure!)
Now you need to either make DuckDuckGo your default browser or make DuckDuckGo your default search engine in your preferred browser. Similar number of steps in either case, but we'll do the former since it is much better for privacy.
  1. Open Settings
  2. Search “browser” (technically at least two clicks)
  3. Tap Default browser app
  4. Tap DuckDuckGo
  5. 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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