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Comment by fbelzile | Hacker News Reader

I never thought I'd have to defend Google, but the steps to change the default search engine for your browser seem perfectly appropriate. This "open letter" comes across as DDG uncovering some Google conspiracy or exposing a dark pattern, but I don't think this is the case.

DDG is a private company seeking profits, just like Google. I'm a happy customer of DDG but empty marketing like this isn't going to move anyone. It feels like one company complaining about it's competitor. You don't see ProtonMail complaining that Gmail comes pre-installed on the OS.

There's plenty of other reasons to criticize Google, changing default settings doesn't seem to be a hill to die on.

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> There's plenty of other reasons to criticize Google, changing default settings doesn't seem to be a hill to die on.

This statement is ironic considering that when Google was the profit driven upstart, changing default settings on IE was literally the hill Google chose to die on, as far as anti trust regulation against Microsoft was concerned.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-seeks-to-join-internet-...

You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Seems like now we have an official timeline for the hero-->villain transition, and it is ~11 years!

How time flies!

https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2009/02/browsers-powered... was posted by Sundar Pichai himself!

> Google believes that the browser market is still largely uncompetitive ... This is because Internet Explorer is tied to Microsoft's dominant computer operating system, giving it an unfair advantage over other browsers. Compare this to the mobile market, where Microsoft cannot tie Internet Explorer to a dominant operating system, and its browser therefore has a much lower usage. The value of competition for users (even in the limited form we see today) is clear: tabbed browsing, faster downloads, private browsing features, and more.

Wow, this is enlightening. I'll take back my last statement. Maybe Google should be offering users to pick a default search engine from the start like they wanted Microsoft to do...

If you remember the "good old days" of Microsoft, Internet Explorer monopoly only when they were forced out of being default and had to actively ask the users which browser they want and make the users' effort equal for every choice.

Power of defaults is just too massive to be ignored. And default is always easier than any "easy way of changing".

I also remember how that did nothing to beat IE until someone actually built a better browser - Mozilla/Firebird/Firefox and later Chrome.

Should that matter? If you do monopoly while having a better product you should still be charge with monopoly. That is you should be forced to gain market share fairly even if your product is better then the competition.

Depends on the country. In the US (as I understand it) a key component to being charge with a monopoly is you have to show that consumers/users are negatively impacted.

Philosophically I don't know whether or not I agree that's best, but it's the way it is currently.

I also remember Google's marketing campaign to shove Chrome in installers for Windows.

Yep, when fighting against the browser that's baked into the operating system.

Then again, Edge now happily sets itself as default browser (and "fixes" default search engine selection) every few weeks on my W10 machine so nothing much has changed in this fight.

DDG doesn't even want an even system. They complained that the auction was too expensive for them.

Not directly related, but whack-a-mole default settings are actually one of my biggest pet peeves. For instance, how many times have you had to tell the same piece of software after an update, "No, I do not want to send telemetry data, please stop reverting my answer to yes."

Do they not use ... ... ... cookies?

Yes and no. I think you are vastly underselling how valuable being the default setting is.

I agree with you. Your statement made me want to test it, and my first thought was: "I'll right-click on the search bar". And there was the option to manage the search engines.

The only non-intuitive thing was that I then had to click on the 3-vertical-dot-menu of the search engine which I wanted to set as default. A separate drop-down list would have been more appropriate (or a radio button column).

And on Chrome on Android it's 4 taps.

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