Following the EU's record antitrust ruling against Google back in 2018, the European Commission asked the company to give Android users the option to set other search engines as default. That prompted Google to take the opportunity to make even more money by auctioning which companies to feature as default search engine providers. The winners have now been published, and it looks like privacy advocate DuckDuckGo and meta search engine Info.com have taken the crown across the continent.

As previously reported, the "Choice Screen" will be rolled out to Android users in Europe in March 2020 and will allow them to choose their standard search engine when they first set up their phones. Once selected, the search provider's app will be installed, and the engine will be accessible via the homescreen widget and in Google Chrome. You can manually alter your choice later on.

The choice screen will look like this and includes short descriptions of the providers.

Google allows three alternative choices besides itself per country, and the bidding took place for each location individually. DuckDuckGo and Info.com managed to win everywhere, while Bing is only a choice in the UK. Qwant and Privacy Wall most frequently share the remaining spot, though in some countries, there are outliers: German GMX is predominantly seen in German-speaking locations, and Russian Yandex is a choice in many East European states. Czech Seznam can be found in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

  • Austria: DuckDuckGo, GMX, Info.com
  • Belgium: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Qwant
  • Bulgaria: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, PrivacyWall
  • Croatia: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, PrivacyWall
  • Czech Republic: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Seznam
  • Denmark: DuckDuckGo, Givero, Info.com
  • Estonia: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Yandex
  • Finland: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Yandex
  • France: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Qwant
  • Germany: DuckDuckGo, GMX, Info.com
  • Greece: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Qwant
  • Hungary: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, PrivacyWall
  • Iceland: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, PrivacyWall
  • Ireland: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, PrivacyWall
  • Italy: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Qwant
  • Latvia: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Yandex
  • Liechtenstein: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Qwant
  • Lithuania: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Yandex
  • Luxembourg: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Qwant
  • Malta: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, PrivacyWall
  • Netherlands: DuckDuckGo, GMX, Info.com
  • Norway: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, PrivacyWall
  • Poland: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Yandex
  • Portugal: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Qwant
  • Republic of Cyprus: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, PrivacyWall
  • Romania: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, PrivacyWall
  • Slovakia: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Seznam
  • Slovenia: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, PrivacyWall
  • Spain: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, Qwant
  • Sweden: DuckDuckGo, Info.com, PrivacyWall
  • United Kingdom: Bing, DuckDuckGo, Info.com

Google will receive a fee every time someone chooses one of the competing search engines on the Choice Screen. We will probably never know how much the company charges as auctioneers were forced to sign an NDA forbidding them to talk about finances. Google sure found an ingenious way to profit from a ruling that was supposed to limit its market-dominating power.

Source: Google