Australia’s competition watchdog wants Google to provide a dedicated ‘choice screen’ to allow users to choose which search engine they want to use, after finding over a third of consumers don’t know how to change default browsers on smartphones.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has reiterated its call for Google to implement a mandatory search engine «choice screen» after finding the company’s dominance in the online search market has harmed competition and consumers. A choice screen is a setup page that presents consumers with a selection of search engines to use, rather than sending consumers to a preset default search engine. «Choice screens can give consumers the opportunity to make an informed choice about the search engine they use. Choice screens can also help reduce barriers to expansion for competitors to Google, who may offer consumers more options for alternative search engines around issues like privacy and how personal data is collected and used,» ACCC chair Rod Sims said. The call was made as part of the competition watchdog’s third interim report [PDF] for its five-year Digital Platforms Inquiry, which specifically looked at the market dominance of Google Search. In the interim report, the ACCC said Google currently owns 94% of the online search market, which was in large part due to Google Search being the preset default search engine for Google Chrome and Apple Safari. Chrome and Safari have a combined browser market share of over 80% on desktop devices and almost 90% on mobile devices.
