After the European Union slapped a little $5+ billion fine on Google for blocking rivals on Android devices, Google set up an auction for those rivals to bid on placement as a default search engine on their devices. That seems ‘okay’ or at the least profit generating… But recently DuckDuckGo has requested a trilateral meeting with EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, Google and DuckDuckGo in an attempt to level the playing field even further. For competitors like Ecosia or DuckDuckGo who’s mission is environmental or privacy related, the ability to compete fairly in an auction is arguably limited; though DuckDuckGo won that auction in 8 countries. According to this article on Reuters how much these bids are bringing in hasn’t been disclosed. Surprise.
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