Australia wants to put an end to Google's monopoly and give users the option to choose which search engine they opt to use. Several tech giants have been under strict scrutiny by competition watchdogs worldwide, and Google has been locking horns with ACCC for quite some time now. Now, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or short for ACCC, wants Google to show Australians search engine options on Android phones.
ACCC wants Google to mandatorily include a "choice screen" for search engines on all Android devices in its latest report. Notably, this is not the first time Australia's competition watchdog has pulled up Google for search engines.
In 2019, ACCC wanted Google to show Australians the EU search engine options, which meant users could choose what search engine to type for their respective searches.
"Google continues to have substantial market power in the supply of general search engine services and search advertising in Australia, with 94 per cent and 97 per cent market shares respectively," the ACCC notes in its September edition of Digital platform services inquiry report.
The findings further point out how internet search engine dominance is shared between Google and Apple.
"Browsers are a key gateway for consumers to access and use internet search engines. Across both desktop and mobile devices, the supply of browsers in Australia is highly concentrated between Google's browser, Chrome, and Apple's browser, Safari. Safari is pre-installed on all mobile and desktop devices supplied by Apple. Chrome is pre-installed on the majority of Android mobile devices," the report adds.
"Google Search is the default search engine on the two most used browsers in Australia, Chrome and Safari. Google Search is also the default search engine for the voice assistants on iOS and Android mobile devices. It is also pre-installed as a search app and search widget on most Android mobile devices," it adds.
The report also points out revenue sharing between Google and Apple from search engines. ZDNet was the first to report ACCC's latest inquiry.
It notes that the United States Department of Justice, or short for DOJ, referred to public estimates that the share of Google Search advertising revenue which Apple receives is between $8-12 billion per year globally for Google's default status for search through Safari, and to use Google for Siri and Spotlight in response to general search queries, on Apple devices.
The EU already has search engine options
In case you're wondering whether Australia will become the first country to implement a choice screen for search engines, you should know that the EU has already implemented this. However, ACCC wants to take a new approach where Google should offer an option to new as well as existing Android users to have a choice screen.
ACCC has also shared some data points it gathered, like on mobile devices. It claims 70 per cent of consumers reported that the primary web browser they used had been pre-installed. While 86 per cent retained the pre-set default search engine on their web browser.
The watchdog further added that in the last two years, only around a fifth (18 per cent) of consumers reported changing the pre-set default search engine on their mobile device, and around 23 per cent changed it on their desktop device.
ACCC has also mentioned names of alternative search engines that offer innovative offerings, like DuckDuck Go, a privacy-focused search engine, and Brave Search, which uses an independent index for commonly searched queries.
At the moment, ACCC's demands are submitted to Google, and we will have to wait to see what the company comes up with.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Welcome To My Blog.