To paraphrase Lenin: There are decades when nothing happens and there are days when everything happens.
Presearch, the first blockchain-based alt-engine, has just taken a chunk out of Google’s market share courtesy of the European Commission.
Google recognised the potential of the Android operating system and acquired it in 2005, and from then on until just recently has utilised it to solidify its search engine dominance on 70% of smartphones in the EU.
Despite the fact that Android source code is published online as free and open software, the Google search-engine has been illegally entrenched on Android phones as a matter of contractual arrangement with manufacturers and mobile network operators to the exclusion of competitors since 2011.
In 2018, The European Commission decisively addressed Google’s search engine dominance, and in an important decision, that smacks almost of divine intervention, its antitrust regulators fined them an eye-watering 4.24 billion euros and more to come if Google didn’t break its monopoly.
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: "Today, mobile internet makes up more than half of global internet traffic. It has changed the lives of millions of Europeans. Our case is about three types of restrictions that Google has imposed on Android device manufacturers and network operators to ensure that traffic on Android devices goes to the Google search engine. In this way, Google has used Android as a vehicle to cement the dominance of its search engine. These practices have denied rivals the chance to innovate and compete on the merits. They have denied European consumers the benefits of effective competition in the important mobile sphere. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules." (European Commission, 2018).
In June 2019, Google announced that it would cater for alternative search engine options such as DuckDuckGo and Bing for free on Android devices. And as from September 1st, Presearch was added to the mix as a default option on all new or factory reset Android phones in EU countries and the UK.
As a consequence, the Canadian crypto start-up that only kicked off in 2017 has seen its coin (PRE) triple in value in less than a week.
With potentially hundreds of millions of users just a click away on the Search Choice screen, this is one of the biggest wins for mainstream adoption for any project within the crypto space, and a huge opportunity to gain exposure for Presearch’s private, decentralized search experience (Presearch, 2021).
References
European Commission. 2021. Press corner. [online] Available at:
Medium. 2021. Android Choice Screen—Mass Adoption for Presearch. [online] Available at:
