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UK Regulators Call Google's Search Engine Deal With Apple a 'Significant Barrier' for Competitors

cmaier said:
Those other search engines can market themselves and then you are free to make them your default.

Why do we need yet another screen to deal with when we setup a new device? There are already a dozen.
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How do you market yourself against someone who has the dominant market position, and who buys, or owns, all the advertising space?

When did you make a choice about which search engine you use?
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jayducharme said:
IMO this is really deceptive phrasing. What's the significant barrier? Clicking on Settings and choosing a different default? I agree that yet another choice to make when first using an iPhone would start to get really tiresome. I guess Apple could just have a "Later" button to bypass it. But this isn't like the old MS days when you were forced to use Internet Exploder; with Apple you can select any default search engine you want, and you can choose to use a different browser as well.
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Do you think that Google would be paying Apple billions, if a significant proportion of users were exercising their “choice”? The fact that you have a choice, but don’t use it, is a “significant” factor.
 
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Alan Wynn said:
Funny, that was exactly what I was going to post. The problem is that there is no real competitor for the space. I use DuckDuckGo, but only people who know and care about privacy would even consider them.
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One hopes that people understand the privacy issues with Google, but I think they generally do not care, because it is too complex an issue for them to think about. I’ve been using startpage.com for a while. It uses Google's engine for search, but without the tracking. It’s remarkable what a difference this has made to the obvious tracking that Google undertakes.
 
Switched search settings to DuckDuckGo.com A few weeks ago and don't miss Google.com at all.
Is there a U.K. version of duckduckgo.co.uk ?
 
Speaking of search engines. I keep running Safari in and out of privacy mode to stop the tracking madness.
Too bad there wasn't a way to have a white list of all the sites I want to run in normal mode and anything not in that list would be viewed in privacy mode. IE: MR views in normal mode with cookies and history and Google, YouTube and FB links runs in private mode with no history or cookies.
Any ideas? Maybe iOS 14.

Right now I have several browsers installed for various accounts Signed in to each site.
 
The only barrier to consumers choosing another search engine is the number of choices that give quality results! I've had DuckDuckGo set as my default on my Mac and my iPhone, but I still *manually* go to Google(dot)com every-single-time because I know I'll get the results that I expect! DDG just hasn't delivered for me.
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DblHelix said:
My question for them is who wants to use Yahoo, bing, or duck duck go. We had yahoo and msn search before google and people all switched to google.
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Google is powerful. I've got a colleague that absolutely refuses, passionately, to use anything except Google Chrome for browsing, a Google Pixel phone, and Google Mail/G-Suite. He just can't bring himself to realize that there's a whole world outside of that monopoly. He doesn't "trust" anything else. It's really sad to see how closed-minded that is, but that's the power that Google has over consumers by "giving away for free".
 
Google pays $1B just to be the default search engine in the UK that people use for free? That must be some beefy data they are collecting.

The problem is not that Google is the default search engine, the problem is that the people don't know there is an alternative search engine. They actually call searching the web "googling".
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JosephAW said:
Speaking of search engines. I keep running Safari in and out of privacy mode to stop the tracking madness.
Too bad there wasn't a way to have a white list of all the sites I want to run in normal mode and anything not in that list would be viewed in privacy mode. IE: MR views in normal mode with cookies and history and Google, YouTube and FB links runs in private mode with no history or cookies.
Any ideas? Maybe iOS 14.

Right now I have several browsers installed for various accounts Signed in to each site.
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I think you will be happy to hear of a plugin for FireFox called containers. Also firefox focus for smartphones. Also Brave browser which is basically degoogled Chrome+open source.
 
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Chances are Apple would just build their own search engine and take away all choice if they didn't charge for prominent placement.
 
Honestly I wish it just remembered my choice - all my Apple devices have been set to DuckDuckGo, across all browsers, for years. Any time I upgrade, I have to flip it over again.
 
Jay42 said:
Hilarious. The user can already change the default search engine at will. What should Apple do to reduce this supposed barrier? Ask the user every day which search engine they prefer?
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I bet most people don’t know there are options. Can’t imagine many people going into Safari settings.
 
urnotl33t said:
In the Microsoft consent decree was a clause: Microsoft had to open up the descriptions of their Office file types. This meant other platforms and had apps to be able to read Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoints docs. This meant platforms like the Mac could now read and write "Microsoft-compatible" documents for the first time. This clause was one of the most crucial elements that created the vacuum that allowed Apple and the Mac to rise to the prominence it is today. It wasn't Linux that rose from this ash-heap. It was Apple, the Mac, and eventually the iPhone.

Without that DOJ case and consent decree, Apple wouldn't be where it is today. We likely wouldn't even have the iPhone. Hard to imagine.
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The Mac could write Microsoft compatible documents before Windows even existed. Word was released for Mac in 1985.
Additionally Office file formats were documented before the anti-trust trial. The consent decree required Microsoft to document various APIs, which are quite different from file formats. Apples growth had nothing to do with the ability to read Microsoft office documents, it had to do with the success of the smartphone, an area that Microsoft never had broad success in anyway.
 
By the way, I’m genuinely curious, does Samsung ask what search engine you want when you set up? Or is there a default? I mean it always seems Apple is the only ones with a bullseye on them with stories like this.
 
There's always a default choice for the user, it's their choice to go with the default or choose another option. Duh!
 
LeeW said:
I get it, but really is there any other sensible choices for the masses that give them the results they want as effectively as Google? No, don't tell me Yahoo or Bing.

Give people the choice, they will still select Google.
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I agree...I can never understand why Google pay Apple for prominence when the majority would select Google search anyway.
 
ani4ani said:
I agree...I can never understand why Google pay Apple for prominence when everyone would select Google search anyway.
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A lot of people wouldn’t know how, I guess. And if Apple picked Bing as the default, a lot of people might not care enough to change. And, there’s always the possibility that Google is worried that Apple will roll its own search engines or buy DDG or something; they probably should be at least a little worried about an Apple Maps redux situation.
 
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ani4ani said:
I agree...I can never understand why Google pay Apple for prominence when the majority would select Google search anyway.
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Because Bing would happily pay Apple to be the default.

Also because maybe if Apple wasn't earning billions of dollars by selling the default search engine, maybe Apple would use their own search engine instead as the default. Siri has a built in search engine — it's not a very good one but it could be improved.
 
It's simple for those companies. Do better prove you you should be given default. Sick of companies complaining about devices they do not make or own. Apple has promoted Duck Duck Go before in regards to privacy and Bing and Yahoo are rubbish. It seems these days that if something is not fair you complain and hope you get what you want. But then what you want may not be fair for others so the circle continues.
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cmaier said:
A lot of people wouldn’t know how, I guess. And if Apple picked Bing as the default, a lot of people might not care enough to change. And, there’s always the possibility that Google is worried that Apple will roll its own search engines or buy DDG or something; they probably should be at least a little worried about an Apple Maps redux situation.
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I believe Google started paying when Siri was released because they were concerned she would be bypassing search engines and thus Google would miss out on Ad revenue.
 
MacBH928 said:
The problem is not that Google is the default search engine, the problem is that the people don't know there is an alternative search engine. They actually call searching the web "googling".
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And that's when you know you've won. What if DuckDuckGo was the dominant search engine? What would folks call searching web then? Quacking?

Some large number, probably 90+%, of people won't care at all what they use to search the web. Just what % of those folks, if given a chance through a new setup screen, would even think to select something other than google? Some Microsoft users might select Bing over Google because that is the DEFAULT on windows, so there's some logic here that Microsoft could benefit. I suppose Bing being the Windows default must have irked the UK as well.
 
cmaier said:
Yes it is. They say they either want apple to offer a choice screen, or they want apple to not be paid by google, or both.

My point is that not being paid by google does not solve the problem (if there is a problem) because if apple just continues to make google the default search engine, that doesn’t help any competitors.
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Why should there be a default? If I buy a new TV it does not give me a default channel, which just happens to be the one the TV maker is paid handsomely for setting as the default, with all the others hidden away in a menu somewhere under settings/viewing/channels/...... If I buy a new radio it does not default to the most profitable commercial radio station for the radio manufacturer when I turn it on for the first time and make it hard to retune to any other. Imagine a world where self driving cars all headed to a Shell station when they needed fuel and there was no obvious way of the user changing this default setting?

Let’s also be realistic about users. The vast majority have no clue that you can change the default let alone know how to do so. This only serves to reinforce Google’s dominant position. That is very unhealthy for everyone except Google. There would be no Google had this insidious system existed 20 years ago.
 
"impacts Microsoft's Bing, Verizon's Yahoo, and independent search engine DuckDuckGo"

those are Bing back end
 
You change it once on your first iPhone (I use DuckDuckGo — took 45 seconds to setup), then every phone after is set if you restore from backups.

But sure, this is a critical issue and definitely more important than the UK government hoovering up personal data and trying to create a surveillance state.
 
urnotl33t said:
IIRC, this was only the EU version of Windows ME. I might be fuzzy on this because I had bailed out on Windows stuff by the time the EU made their decision and enforcement. I don’t *think* rest of world got that.

(I’m willing to be corrected, tho).
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I believe that's correct.

(Windows 7, though, not ME.)
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incoherent_1 said:
But sure, this is a critical issue and definitely more important than the UK government hoovering up personal data and trying to create a surveillance state.
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I'm pretty sure a government can do two things at once.
 
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ruka.snow said:
A choice screen on setup sounds like a good idea. There has to be room for other search engines to grow, we've already been down dark routes on the web before with IE6 and now Chrome on its way down that path too.
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In case you missed it, Apple DOES offer a choice of search engines.
I've used Duck-Duck-Go for years.
 
I am starting to see a trend.

US antitrust law tends to protect the consumer, while EU laws tend to favour businesses.

Guess that explains why Apple is getting sued over matters that they have pretty much gotten away scot-free with in their home country.
 
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