In theory it is and yet the extremely high price Google is willing to pay to keep it default suggests that it's harder than it looks.
Plenty of non techies are deathly afraid of changing any settings. Google is paying a high price to erect an artificial barrier to entry against less well capitalized competitors looking to target them.
Google paying a high price suggests people will not change the default. It does not suggest changing the default is hard.
People may not change the default because they
1. find it too difficult
2. they do not believe they are negatively effected by not changing the default
3. they do not even know it is a choice
4. or they prefer Google.
Going into 2022, I would rather governments focus on educating people how to use computing devices than nannying them by barring two businesses from engaging in business. #1 thru #3 can be changed via public education, or even requiring more transparency from search engines to make comparing them easier.
The physical actions of changing the default are not hard.
> Going into 2022, I would rather governments focus on educating people how to use computing devices than nannying them by barring two businesses from engaging in business. #1 thru #3 can be changed via public education, or even requiring more transparency from search engines to make comparing them easier.
Google/Microsoft/etc will donate tons of hardware and software to public schools to ensure teaching kids to use their products become the lesson plan. They're already doing this; they pay schools to be the default just like they pay Mozilla to be the default.
So you still have to solve the same sort of problem, except "company donates computers to school" sounds like a sort of charity and that makes it relatively politically unassailable.
>Going into 2022, I would rather governments focus on educating people
Yes, thats what most corporations engaged in abusive or anticompetitive business practices say. Credit card companies rake in the dough from abusive interest rates and then feign an interest in helping "educate" the consumers out of being exploited by them to keep regulators off their back and the senators they purchase do the same.
Rinse and repeat, feigning concern for "financial literacy" for 30 years with nothing changing because nothing was supposed to. The system was "working".
I say put the regulators on their backs. If a business transaction is bad for the public then f*king prohibit it. End of story. "Educating users" out of avoiding abusive practices isnt meant to work.
>If a business transaction is bad for the public then f*king prohibit it.
If only life were that easy. Is it bad for the public that Costco and Walmart deliver lower prices to customers via efficiencies if scale? Or is it better to have more inefficient local stores?
It is not obvious to me. Maybe it is better for a society to have redundancies in supply chains and business operations. Or having businesses spread out through a region as opposed to conglomerated in a few spots with big box stores.
Or maybe it is worth the lower prices. Or maybe it is not in society’s best interest if Walmart is so big they can force suppliers to cut quality to meet their prices.
Plenty of non techies are deathly afraid of changing any settings. Google is paying a high price to erect an artificial barrier to entry against less well capitalized competitors looking to target them.