"EU antitrust regulators plan to order Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google to stop paying financial incentives to smartphone makers to pre-install Google Search exclusively on their devices and warned the company of a large fine, an EU document showed."
Actually, it is 100% the point. I never personally agreed with the Microsoft anti-trust scandal (and a lot of people on HN don't): nothing stopped you from installing another browser and making it the default for relevant URI schemes and file types.
Microsoft got nailed because they were popular, not because they forced people to not use Netscape. Now, everyone includes a default browser, and no one sues Apple over forcing all iOS users to use Safari no matter what, even "alternative browsers" must use Safari for their HTML canvas underneath.
If the EU get their way, you may not be able to change it anymore. Microsoft quite liked to pay companies to set Bing as the only search option and disable the setting to change it.
So it's going to end up just like with MS. Now when you start your new phone, you have to select what search engine to use, even though everyone will select Google anyway. The only victory here is the EU getting a big wad of cash...
"EU antitrust regulators plan to order Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google to stop paying financial incentives to smartphone makers to pre-install Google Search exclusively on their devices and warned the company of a large fine, an EU document showed."