See my comment below. I meant a more general sense of open, maybe "unbiased" or "biased towards their users preferences". ie., where any decision about the platform (including defaults) is left to the users, or defaulted to their clear general preference.

The "issue" is that they are charging for something the users would set themselves, and otherwise, already want.

Google is being "forced" into paying for this only because apple is willing to act against its users preferences, and eg., set a Bing default.

> Well, consider that if Apple were an open platform, this default would be set by most "for free".

> If the platform invited the user to set a default, or was "biased towards their user's preferences", as most would select google, google would be the "natural default".

You almost make it sound like defaulting to Google without making people aware of the alternatives is “open” and unbiased.”

iOS/macOS users can set their own default search engine. Google just know that most people won't change what's set by default.

Paying for access is different than paying for promotion. Mozilla is paid to promote Google as default search engine.