14 DAY TRIAL // Google has announced a series of changes for Android users in Europe in response to the latest antitrust concerns raised by the European Commission.
Users will be allowed to choose what browser and search engine they want to use on Android out of the box. Currently, Android devices come with Google Chrome pre-installed and Google set as the default search engine, but in the near future, this is all going to change, Google says.
While details on the browsers that would be offered to users haven’t been provided, today’s announcement is clearly good news for other browser developers, like Mozilla.
Change possibly coming later this year
At the same time, Microsoft is likely to significantly benefit from this change, as the company has launched an Android version of Microsoft Edge browser and is also the owner of Bing, the main alternative to Google search.
“Now we’ll also do more to ensure that Android phone owners know about the wide choice of browsers and search engines available to download to their phones. This will involve asking users of existing and new Android devices in Europe which browser and search apps they would like to use,” Kent Walker, SVP of Global Affairs, explains.
There are no specifics as to when this change is going to take place for Android, but Google says both new and existing users will be asked to choose their preferred browser and search engine.
Google is the second tech giant to provide users with a choice of browsers out of the box after Microsoft was forced by the European Commission to do the same in Windows. Internet Explorer was pre-installed in all versions of Windows, but following this decision, European users were also allowed to set other browsers as default when running the operating system the first time.