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DuckDuckGo CEO Alleges Google Illegally Maintains Search Dominance Through Default Deals

  • DuckDuckGo is a small, privacy-focused search engine that gets about 100 million searches daily vs Google's billions. It has 2.5% US market share.

  • DuckDuckGo's CEO testified that Google pays over $10B per year to be the default search on devices, hurting competition.

  • The DOJ alleges Google illegally maintains its 90% search monopoly by paying to be the default option.

  • DuckDuckGo's CEO said switching defaults away from Google takes too many steps, despite Google claiming it's easy.

  • Default settings favoring Google pose a barrier even for users who value DuckDuckGo's privacy; the company wants one-click switching.

yahoo.com
Relevant topic timeline:
The US Justice Department argues that Google uses its power to stifle competition and maintain its dominance as the most popular search engine, while Google claims that users rely on them due to the quality of their search engine, in a landmark antitrust case that could test the limits of corporate power in the United States.
Google's defense in a federal antitrust trial claims that switching search engines is as easy as putting a box of cereal back on a store shelf, but a panel of designers found that it is actually difficult and most people would likely give up before completing the change.
Google allegedly paid billions of dollars to key companies to maintain its search engine as the default on computers and mobile devices, making it difficult for smaller rival DuckDuckGo to grow its market share, according to testimony by DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg at a trial investigating alleged antitrust violations by Google.
Apple has turned down opportunities to challenge Google's search engine dominance, including the chance to purchase Bing and make DuckDuckGo the default for Safari's private browsing mode, according to court transcripts unsealed in the US government's antitrust lawsuit against Google.