I fail to see how the remedy proposed by the EU (this bidding/auction method) is benefiting me, the consumer, when the most popular Google alternative is eliminated from the options because they don't monetize as aggressively.
1. Give it to the highest bidders (current method)
2. Give it to the highest ranking sites
From what I see, #2 is even worse for newcomers. Do you have a different suggestion that's better?
Chromium is a browser.
They could show a semi-random segmented ranking: - split all companies into X buckets by ranking - pick the top from each bucket from 1 to X, then the second best from each bucket etc.
I'm kind of very curious about some of the small names on it. Like how do they have more money than DDG. PirvacyWall seems to be using the Bing API like DDG, so I just don't see how they'd be about to outspend DDG so easily.
They probably are private-equity/venture-funded and are a bet on trying to capture some of the market which they can monetize for more than they spent on the auction.
e: well they appear to be a class B corp, so actually perhaps not