Even if not explicitly conditioned, which I don't believe came out as being the case in this case, there's still an inherent motivation. Google will pay more for a default on an OS where it's hard to switch the default than it will for a default where it's easy to switch away. Google might pay $20 billion for defaults on iOS as-is where 99% of people stick with Google, but if Apple started asking users if they were sure and offering alternatives and Google only remained the default for half of people, they logically would only offer maybe $10 billion to remain default on the same actual terms.
It seems plausible. Mostly I think people should be explicit and clear about their accusations.
Something that doesn’t make a ton of sense to me in this theory is that, despite it being hard to add a new engine (which is not great), it is easy to switch away from Google on iOS. And the big search engines are in their pre-populated list. So it seems Google and Apple have engaged in a conspiracy to keep people from switching… just to the niche engines? That doesn’t make a ton of sense, right? Google is probably not more scared of Kagi than Bing.
My first guess is that Apple lived through the era of confused non-technical people adding a bunch of scam search engines and didn’t want a repeat of that.
> That doesn’t make a ton of sense, right? Google is probably not more scared of Kagi than Bing.
Google certainly should be more scared of Kagi than Bing. Bing is a known quantity that's not going to suddenly shoot ahead of them. A smaller, newer competitor might. Just like how it wasn't Lycos or Jeeves that dethroned Yahoo, it was the two guys in a garage.
