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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by devoply on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @08:32AM (#14644767)
On operating systems you set preferences for which service/program to open when a certain extension is clicked. Similarly Google should be forced to allow you to set your preferences through your browser, i.e. not forcing you to login, on where you want to go when you type certain types of queries, like for instance directions or products. That would improve competition and give other service providers at least a good chance of their services being used instead of Google. And keep the system more competitive. Then Google can go and claim that this is what their users actually prefer.

This could work through cookies that the browser always makes available to certain or all sites that indicate preferences of the user.

Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by cbr on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @08:49AM (#14644867)

    Google should be forced to allow you to set your 
    preferences through your browser, i.e. not forcing
    you to login ...
I see how this is at least possible in Chrome, but how would this work in browsers Google doesn't control?
Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by simias on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @08:54AM (#14644900)
You could simply store an "anonymous" cookie. They already do it anyway for other settings. The first time I go on google on a new computer it asks me to review the privacy policy, it could also ask about those widgets.