As we reported a few months ago, Google received a penalty imposed by the European Union resulting from the monopolization of Android. The European Union recognized that pre-installing Google-created applications on Android phones was illegal and prevented companies from competing with Google equally, and that's why in addition to Google's financial penalties firm had to make some changes in Android. To increase competition in the aspect of choosing Internet browsers and search engines, Android users living in the European Union from 1st of March will have option of choosing a different browser or search engine than applications developed by Google. We have already met specific applications that will appear in various countries of European Union.
The lists of applications to choose from will vary by country. Interestingly, to appear on the list firms will have to pay appropriate fee to Google. Each of producers must specify the amount that may transfer to Google in exchange for each user who chooses their application. Three best offers were selected to the lists, which haven't officially seen the light of day yet, but the first leaks appeared. It's noticeable that Bing, a search engine developed by Microsoft, will only appear on the list for users from the United Kingdom. It seems that Microsoft thinks promoting their company on other markets is not a very profitable business. In other countries, DuckDuckGo will take first place on the lists of search engines.