Wasn’t Google’s original appeal the lack of clutter?
Yes
I meant, the “no ads” thing was only feasible in the very beginning, when they were solely funded by venture capital.
This just shows that too many people are dependent on google, even though their search results are shit. The power of defaults and brand names.
deleted by creator
Google controls one set of roads, people choose which roads to use.
On Android, you’re free to install any browser and search engine you wish. For example, “Bing for Android” is already a thing.
deleted by creator
MS got dinged because they claimed Windows couldn’t work without MSIE, which was a lie… and they had a large market share.
Nowadays Apple forces everyone to use Safari on iOS, and nobody bats an eye.
I’m not sure the choice between Bing or Google, two search engines controlled by giant corporations who make money from advertising, is enough of a choice for a truly free Internet. And as the Bing outage last week showed us, most other search engines are just Bing repackaged.
Search engines are not baked into Android, they get exposed through apps like everything else.
The choice is limited to every search engine out there… which are not many, but what can you do, it takes a lot of resources to spin up a search engine.
People choose not to choose. They’re not interested in engaging with the space or technology any deeper than the default.
Exploiting this fact to the point of defacto monopoly should still be considered wrong.
Actually Google has been forced to offer choices on Android in the EU, but for existing devices the prompt only consists of a permanent notification that you can easily ignore: my partner has been ignoring it for the past month.
