Photo: Leon Neal (Getty Images)
About a year and a half ago, Google began auctioning off the chance to be one of the search engines that European users could choose as their default on Android devices. And for the past year and a half, we’ve seen some familiar ad-targeting giants continue to take those expensive slots.
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This auction was the result of a massive antitrust case spearheaded by European authorities back in 2018. Aside from slamming the company with a $5 billion penalty, regulators also demanded that Google begin offering users a choice upon booting up their Android phones regarding the browser or search app they’d prefer to use, rather than requiring them to use Google’s own. Google obliged, but in the most Google way possible: by requiring that competitors financially duke it out for the chance to be featured in one of four search slots on the coveted Android choice screen.