The (very good) idea is that Google Search should be competing fairly with the other search engines.
It's not fair to make these other search engines, already the victims of anti-competitive behaviour, pay millions of dollars (or whatever) into Google's bank account to be listed, while Google pays nothing.
It's like if Ford owned the roads and GM had to pay Ford for each car they sold.
1) Excludes Google from Android/Chrome's default search engine options. This clearly doesn't make sense for Google and I don't think there's an easy way to enforce this. 2) Lists all every search engine that exists on the planet. This still doesn't answer the question who should be placed on the top of the list. 3) Break google up into Android/Chrome and the rest. This is not even an option for EU since their jurisdiction doesn't reach to Google.
Maybe Google can say something like, "all of the profits from this auction will go back to the society!", which practically doesn't make any differences to them since the profit from this auction will likely be a minute fraction compared to the Google's yearly revenues.
I know, I know, what about the less popular search engines?
Well. It's better than Google takes all, and customers get easier access to 5 search engines instead of 1. (Yes they can already choose others. Almost no one bothers)
Maybe they could rotate the last 2 choices between a field of say, 20.
Thing is, if no one's heard of the option, I doubt they'll choose it, so there's not much point offering beyond say, 5 choices.
I'm guessing though.
Choice of third party is tricky, but a dedicated or existing trade association that includes them and any interested major competitors on equal terms would probably do it.
The root problem is a trust issue and I still don't see how Google can convince bidders that the auction is run by some entities which won't do any (implicitly) good for Google in return of selecting them, especially Google still owns a full control on picking the "third party". This can be solved if a state picks the third party, but now we have even bigger problems; you will have to enforce the same policy on most of the platform holders with similar issues (virtually every single major tech firms)
Hoo boy.
It would also harm not for profit search engines.
Why not choose based on popularity?
2) DuckDuckGo has a list of search providers using their !bang query. It’s not exhaustive, but adding one to the list is a form submission to DuckDuckGo.
3) A break up is not necessary: the EU can charge Google increasing fines and significantly hamper Google’s European operations.
I think 1) and 2) together could work: the browser could have no list of search engines but could download a list of search engines from a known good URL when it run for the first time. The owners of the known good URL could be a consortium of search engine providers. There are definitely flaws with this approach, and it gives the user an extra choice, but giving the user this extra choice is the point.
If Google handed administration of the auction over to an independent third party, who would accept all of the paid-in fees from the winners, thus bearing the same cost as everyone else, then it would be a lot harder to make a case against this arrangement.
There are tons of search engines out there, how do you decide which ones to show above the fold on a user’s tiny screen?
And the "tiny screen" doesn't seem to be an issue when picking one of the dozens of languages during the phone's setup. Or any of the countless activities on a phone that overflow one screen.
This particular list shouldn't be treated differently unless it's purely a money grab.
My question still stands and (downvotes and the "small screen" non-issue aside) nobody is able to explain why Google should get a different treatment from Microsoft given the similar position.
I think it's easy to see how customers are harmed by this, their choice becomes the supermarket brand or whoever shelled out the most for shelf space.
So Google search is an android home brand?
(Also why isn't the supermarket thing deemed anti-competitive?)
Indeed, it's great that they've never tried building their entire business model on auctioning off the ad spots in search results. It's much more fair to everyone to just allow anyone to apply for a spot for each keyword for free, and then choose randomly from that set.