“If antitrust regulation doesn’t tackle defaults, it is only addressing 5% of the problem. That’s really the elephant in the room,” explained Andy Yen, Proton CEO. “If you don’t tackle that piece, you don’t break the monopoly.”
Gabriel Weinberg, CEO at DuckDuckGo, made a similar complaint in relation to the way Google handles default services on its Android platform. “On Android right now, it takes fifteen-plus clicks to change the default search engine, but we really think that should be one click. If this kind of system were in place, we could be five or ten times bigger today,” he told us.
“It’s very important to open up these kinds of industries. The answer to this problem is a regulatory one, so we’re working with bodies across the world to make this happen.”Although the odds are stacked in Microsoft’s favor, there are some signs the company may have overstepped the mark in its efforts to funnel people towards Edge.that added an unreasonable amount of friction to the process of changing the default browser after users made their displeasure known.
Although the power of the default is strong, so too is consumer sentiment, so it’s possible that missteps of this kind will play into the hands of smaller challengers.