With the entry into force of the DMA, Google complies its services with European legislation. Now, Chrome asks you to designate your default search engine, on desktop and mobile. And there is choice!
Since the Digital Market Act (DMA) came into force in Europe, the big six gatekeepers – Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta (Facebook) and Microsoft – are understood to have taken arrangements to comply with the legislation. As a reminder, this aims to better regulate digital companies, in particular GAFAM, and their activities in the European Union, in order to prevent abuses linked to their dominant position. Thus, the DMA must make it possible to fight against anti-competitive practices – by preventing these companies from favoring their own services to the detriment of those of other market players –, to encourage innovation and to better protect users and consumers. Unable to escape this, Google had brought a certain number of its services into compliance with European legislation (see our article).
The digital giant had already had to remove Google Maps results from Google search results a few months ago. This time, Google must stop favoring its own search engine in its web browser. Until now, Chrome automatically used Google as its default search engine. A choice that obviously suited the company, since users were not necessarily looking to modify it. Also, in recent days, many users are receiving notifications asking them to choose their default search engine in Chrome on PC, as well as their web browser and search engine on Android.
Google Chrome: no favored search engine!
For several days now, when Chrome starts, Google has been displaying a pop-up window titled “Your search engine in Chrome”. “Depending on your region’s laws, Chrome requires you to select a default search engine. These search engines are popular in your region and are displayed in random order“, we can read, followed by a list of eight search engines, from which to choose to configure as the new default search engine: Google, Brave, Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo Search, Lilo, Ecosia and Qwant.
Each of them is accompanied by a short sentence summarizing its positioning or its major asset. For example, DuckDuckGo is described as “private, fast, fewer ads, DuckDuckGo never tracks you”while Qwant presents itself as “trusted search engine and browser”. For its part, Microsoft highlights the fact that it is powered by GPT-4 from ChatGPT, Brave emphasizes that it blocks advertisements and advertising tracking, Ecosia that it allows you to plant trees, Lilo that it finances associations, etc.
According to initial feedback, Pixel smartphone users are also offered the option to select a default search engine, which will allow searches to be launched from the home screen, but also from Chrome. As an alternative to Google, we find Microsoft Bing, Qwant, Brave, PrivacyWall, Ecosia, DuckDuckGo, WWF Panda Search, OceanHero, etc. The mobile also asks to determine the default browser, choosing between Firefox, Samsung Internet, Google Chrome, Opera Browser, Mi Browser, Internet Browser, DuckDuckGo and Qwant. Of course, it will be entirely possible, subsequently, to modify them at any time, from the device settings.