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Comment by richardsocher | Hacker News Reader

Yea... Requiring the default was a tough choice.

You actually can try it out in incognito mode and any other browser. But we found that without the convenience of a navbar search, most people won't give it a proper try either way.

I hope we can drop this requirement even in Chrome when we become one of the default options.

If you set your search engine default to http://you.com manually in Chrome with "https://you.com/search?q=%s" you will not need the extension... but for most people convenience wins and well...

It's tough to go up against a monopoly that controls the browser too?

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I get that and appreciate that this was a tough choice, but the alternative you're proposing (1) requires several more clicks, (2) expects the end user to trust an extension that is unknown to them at the onset, and (3) does not provide an intuitive way for the average user to know they can use incognito to try it out.

You have an extremely memorable URL and in my view, the quality and accuracy of the results should naturally help spread the word for you if you do indeed provide a compelling alternative.

I'm sorry, I just don't buy your argument about "monopoly and controlling the browser" when you don't require an extension for those using Firefox, Edge, etc. - yet you _hope_ that Google will still add you to the default list of search engines.

Thanks. Yea. We hear you and dropped the requirement. Keep you feedback coming.

>> It's tough to go up against a monopoly that controls the browser too?

So the idea was to force people using Chromium/Chrome to install an extension, driving off a huge percentage of power users with the hopes that the every day person (who couldn't even tell you what search engine they use) will adopt the extension without questioning it?

I don't think this is a tough choice. I think it was one you didn't think through at all.

What's the unofficial requirements to become a default search engine in the major browsers?

We don't even know. It's not made public anywhere :( Hence our extension requirement for the time being.

At least Chromium-based browsers have 5 second extension install/uninstall options whereas in Safari it's several minutes and so many clicks, we didn't even bother trying to build the extension.

You contact the company and offer to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars a year (see Google and Safari and Firefox).

Smaller browsers (if they at all exist) will default to Google because that's what users expect. Except Edge. Edge will stick to Bing.

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