"Alfred Molon"<alfred_molon@yahoo.com> wrote

| > That meant installing Internet Explorer into the
| > system and blocking Netscape at every opportunity.
|
| It's about the same thing which Google is doing on Android phones and
| devices - Google being the default search engine, other search engines
| being cut off.
|
   Not only Android. Everything Apple, too. And
until recently Google was close to being the sole
income source for Mozilla. I think it was $1 per
download to get a Google search box and auto-search
enabled for the address bar. For years Mozilla were
making about $300 million per year, almost entirely
from Google. They went from a lean company making
a peoples' browser to a bloated behemoth beholden
to an advertising company.

    So many people use auto-search now that I
find many don't understand the idea of "going to
a search engine". They think search is somehow
built into the Internet. As a result they're reporting
every action to Google. (In Firefox I think it's
currently Yahoo that pays for that data.) A friend
visiting last week complained that one of our computers
was acting funny. "It will only go to Wikipedia".
I realized she was searching through the address
bar and didn't know how to go to duckduckgo or
another search engine, even though there were
links in the custom home page.

| Yandex in Russia recognised that, sued and won. Now in Russia buyers of
| smartphones and tablets have the choice of which search engine they want
| to use and the market share of Yandex is climbing back.

  I didn't know that. Perhaps that's why Trump
is so friendly with the Russians. He probably
likes that they respect personal rights over
corporate profits.