In a new update of the chromium engine, which is an open source engine to form the basis of the chrome browser, they have quietly updated its lists of default search engines and also expanded the choice of search product for the users to pick from the markets over the world, accessing from anywhere.
Most importantly, it has also included a pro-privacy rival by expanding its search engine lists to more than 60 markets all around the world.
Most importantly, it has also included a pro-privacy rival by expanding its search engine lists to more than 60 markets all around the world.
These changes, which look like they have been pushed out with the Chromium update release, and at a time when Google is facing rising privacy, accusations of market-distorting behavior, and antitrust scrutiny and at both home and abroad countries from multiple government bodies.
Governments are now questioning how the competition policy needs to be changed to control those in power and help smaller technology innovators to get out of the burden or leave the tech giant shadow.
But the changes to chromium’s default search engine lists on GitHub were published instantly, And Google software engineer Orin Jaworski wrote that the search engine references list are being replaced based on new usage statistics by considering “recently collected data.” per country.
Search Engine Choices
The search engine choices per-country appear to line up with top-four market share. The update appears to be beneficial for pro-privacy Google rival, DuckDuckGo, which is now offered as an option because of its security and their privacy policy. They offer services like no data collection when you use their search engine. They are considered and used in more than 60 markets, according to the expert and as the data show like take GitHub for instance.
There are other pro-privacy search rivals, French search engine Qwant, which has also been considered as a new option —but its only function in its home market, France and they have great influence there.
Countries in Which DuckDuckGo Has Been Added
Brunei, Indonesia, Panama, Bolivia, New Zealand, Poland, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Paraguay Brazil, Belize, Canada, Austria, Australia, Chile, Colombia, Moldova, Macedonia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Germany, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Romania, Serbia, Sweden, El Salvador, Trinidad, Tobago, South Africa Slovenia, Slovakia, Ecuador, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greece, Guatemala, Uruguay, U.S., and Venezuela., Honduras, Hungary, Peru, Philippines, Ireland, Argentina, Belgium India, Iceland, Italy, Jamaica, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Mexico, Nicaragua, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, U.K.
What the Authorities Have to Say?
DuckDuckGo founder Gabe Weinberg said “We’re glad that Google has recognized the importance of offering consumers a private search option,” when he was approached for comment about the change.
DDG has been growing for years and has taken investment from outside to scale its efforts to capitalize on the international growing appetite for pro-privacy products.
The chromium GitHub is dated back to December 2018 which is around the time when the Duck.com domain to DuckDuckGo was passed by Google, after holding onto the domain for years and also pointing it to Google.com.
The reporters asked Google to comment on its changes to search engine options in chromium but they didn’t respond at that time.
Qwant co-founder Eric Leandri had said Google “thank you” for adding the search engine as an option and claimed that “certainly it’s because of the number of users of Qwant” in their home market.
But he also said that their company is still recommending its users to use Mozilla’s Firefox browser or the pro-privacy Brave browser. He said that it would have been nicer if Google had also added Qwant in other countries like Germany and Italy where it also has a following on the search engine.
When he was asked whether he believes that expanded search engine options in Chrome will be enough to keep off from Google’s market dominance, He said no saying that Android OEMs still have to pay Google if they install a non-Google search engine to be used as by default.”
Technology is getting updated day by day and earlier rules reading to the internet were not serious but as the online world is progressing, the rules are also changing to keep the small players in the market.
Written by - Tarun Agrawal
Edited by - Maryam Salim
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