Following the changes we made to comply with the European Commission’s ruling last year, we’ll start presenting new screens to Android users in Europe with an option to download search apps and browsers.
These new screens will be displayed the first time a user opens Google Play after receiving an upcoming update. Two screens will surface: one for search apps and another for browsers, each containing a total of five apps, including any that are already installed. Apps that are not already installed on the device will be included based on their popularity and shown in a random order.
This all seems very similar to the browser choice window Microsoft displayed in Windows for a while. It will be available to both new and existing Android users within the EU.
I don’t care about the screens but I’m extremely pleased that they were finally forced to offer a better choice of search engines in Chrome for Android.
A few years ago I wanted to use Qwant in Chrome for Android but was only provided with a very limited list of Google or Bing or Yahoo if I remember well.
I wonder if this will still be a limited list or a real configurable field.
Great. Instead of a browser ballot, people get stuck with a search ballot. Meanwhile, most users will just opt for the defaults anyway, and competitors will still bitch to the EU that Google has an unfair advantage. It can’t ever be that their service just might be better than, say, Bing for example. Oh, no, it’s evil, monopolistic practices!