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A comment on US alleges Google got rich because people stick with search defaults. Parent comment

Re:US alleges Google got rich because people stick with sear... by elashri on Thursday September 14, 2023 @01:43PM (#37512243)
No according to this dataset [1] about US search engine marketshare

[1] https://datahub.io/rufuspollock/search-engine-market-shares

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Re:US alleges Google got rich because people stick with sear... by notatallshaw on Thursday September 14, 2023 @02:02PM (#37512504)
The link you've given shows Google had the majority of market share by October 2004, which is in line with what the parent comment states (at least the way I parse it).

What were they paying to be default on prior to October 2004? Smartphones didn't exist, Firefox didn't exist, Internet Explorer didn't have a dedicated UI element that led you to a search engine.

Are we talking about software that made Google the default home page? IE Toolbars? Feature phones like the Blackberry?

I was active on the Internet since the late 90s, but I only remember having to type "www.google.com" prior to 2005, but I'm certainly no means an expert.

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Re:US alleges Google got rich because people stick with sear... by qbrass on Thursday September 14, 2023 @03:38PM (#37513790)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop

To be fair, I don't know if they actually had to pay anyone.

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Re:US alleges Google got rich because people stick with sear... by notatallshaw on Friday September 15, 2023 @12:58PM (#37526032)
Google Desktop was not released before October 2004 though.

And even then, what was its significance on the general desktop space? I used it heavily, but I didn't know anyone else who had it installed.

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