Google Bows To EU, Rivals With Android Choice-Screen Tweaks (bloomberg.com) 15
Google will scrap a fee and add more mobile search apps for users to choose from on new Android phones, bowing to pressure from the European Union and smaller rivals. From a report: The U.S. tech giant will make the changes from September "following further feedback" from the European Commission, it said in a Tuesday blog post. The EU authority said the tweaks were "positive" and addressed a number of complaints by other search companies.
The move may help Google avoid growing criticism over its compliance with the European Commission's 2018 order to offer more choice to rivals. Google had a stable 97% market share for mobile search in Europe last month, a figure that's barely budged despite rolling out a "choice screen" to prompt downloads of search alternatives for new phones. DuckDuckGo and others have complained that the choice screen solution isn't working and an auction model to pick only three apps is "fundamentally flawed." App providers bid against each other for the slot and pay only if users downloaded a search app.
The move may help Google avoid growing criticism over its compliance with the European Commission's 2018 order to offer more choice to rivals. Google had a stable 97% market share for mobile search in Europe last month, a figure that's barely budged despite rolling out a "choice screen" to prompt downloads of search alternatives for new phones. DuckDuckGo and others have complained that the choice screen solution isn't working and an auction model to pick only three apps is "fundamentally flawed." App providers bid against each other for the slot and pay only if users downloaded a search app.
Apple (Score:2)
Great, a fucking paywall (Score:1)
If Bloomberg wants to put things behind a paywall, they can take it off the internet and hide it in some shit apps.
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./ needs to stop posting stories I cannot read. If Bloomberg wants to put things behind a paywall, they can take it off the internet and hide it in some shit apps.
./ needs to stop posting stories I cannot read. If Bloomberg wants to put things behind a paywall, they can take it off the internet and hide it in some shit apps.
yes this it https://modalkonten.com/ [modalkonten.com]
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It is their fault. They should own up to it.
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You keep posting this shit on numerous stories. The Bloomberg link works fine for me on legacy Waterfox browser. It also works fine on the Brave browser and Edge and Firefox, because I just tried them. It looks to me like the problem is YOU. You get one free Bloomberg story a month. If that's not enough then clear your fucking cookies
What is the point? (Score:2)
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Anyways, isn't the search app just a browser set to a single page? I thought they were one and the same. Which is why the Google search app is useless without an account or Chrome.
I tried DuckDuckGo (Score:5, Insightful)
The search results were noticeably worse in quality. It's rare I can't find anything with a Google search, but with DuckDuckGo it would happen regularly.
It's tempting in situations like this, where there would be clear bias, to call bull. But occasionally just because Company X offers Product Y with Service Z by default, doesn't mean that Service Z is poor and users of Product Y would rather use something else. I won't be surprised if Google still comes out on top with the new selection of search engines.
Also, as a developer, requiring the user to make a choice when there is a reasonable default is bad design. So in general I am not a fan of these dialogs. I don't consider them a suitable replacement for user education on how to customize computers/smartphones.
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And after Bing's tank man fiasco being perfectly replicated on DDG, we can clearly call them on their bullshit. They use Bing. Everything else is window dressing at best, ranked down to irrelevance or simply not taken into account at all.
If you need anonymised (sorta kinda) Google, you go to startpage.com. If you want anonymised Bing, you go to DDG. It's really that simple.
What about Apple? (Score:2)
Open Source Mobile OS Alternatives To Android (Score:1)