Last week, a hearing was held before the European Court of General Justice in Luxembourg regarding Google’s appeal regarding the € 4.34 billion fine imposed by the European Commission in 2018 in connection with the Google’s use of its leadership position in the mobile systems market since 2011 to suppress competitors.
Google: people are not stupid and choose our search engine because it is the best
According to the European Commission, Google has used the Android platform to strengthen its dominance in Internet search. The company has asked mobile phone makers to ship Android devices with a preinstalled Google Search and Chrome browser as well as the Google Play store, and has also blocked the use of certain Android variants created by third-party developers.
During the hearing, Google attempted to substantiate the unfounded decision of the European Commission on the fine. “The reason billions of people choose Google as their search engine every day is not because of abuse of dominance. It’s because it’s the best, â€lawyer Meredith Pickford said last Friday.
Pickford noted that the deals with phone makers were more about keeping Google competitive. “Consumers are by no means stupid. If Bing or some other search engine was better than Google, people would turn to it, â€he said, referring to Microsoft’s search engine.
In turn, European Commission lawyer Nicholas Khan called on judges to support the European Commission’s decision to fine the US tech giant. “Google is giving itself a laurel wreath before the start of the race,” said Khan, adding that the extent of Google’s use of the practice fully justifies the fine.
Google has stopped supporting its search engine in Internet Explorer browser
Microsoft has long since shifted its focus from the archaic Internet Explorer browser to the much more modern and advanced Edge, especially after the latter moved to the Chromium engine. The next nail in the Internet Explorer coffin will be that has stopped supporting its search service for this browser.
Remember that the latest version of Internet Explorer was available in 2013 with Windows 8.1. It wasn’t until 2021 that Google decided to end support. Now only basic information will appear in the search. The service does not completely stop working with the browser; but the search user will only have access to the most basic functions.
According to Google programmer Malta Ubl, the company has conducted an internal assessment; and concluded that the old browser is simply not worth the company resources to support it. For overly stubborn retrogrades, there will be a few opportunities to use, but the new features will not be available.
Microsoft itself intends to end browser support entirely on June 15, 2022; when the corresponding software will be removed from all user versions of Windows 10. At the moment, the operating system is bundled with it as a solution for obsolete websites; but with the appearance in Edge of the possibility of automatically browsing sites in IE mode; it is necessary in the old version; it has in fact completely disappeared.
Windows 11 will ship without Internet Explorer by default, only Microsoft Edge will be available. Moreover, even now, using Internet Explorer to surf modern sites is not only impractical, but also quite simply dangerous.
