Imagine if every time you went to the supermarket, your
shopping cart came loaded with the same box of cereal.
This cereal happens to be the most popular, so it’s
convenient for the store to have it in the cart. If you don’t like it, it’s
simple enough to put it back on the shelf and grab a different box.
اضافة اعلان
That’s essentially the crux of Google’s defense against the
Justice Department in a consequential antitrust trial — the federal
government’s first such case in the modern internet era — that is now unfolding
in court.
The government has accused Google of illegally using
partnerships with handset makers, computer manufacturers and browser developers
to stifle competitors in online search. Under those partnerships, the Justice
Department argues, Google made its search engine the default service on an
overwhelming majority of consumer electronics, including smartphones. That then
deterred people from trying alternative search engines, such as Bing,
DuckDuckGo, and others.
But Google has argued that it’s easy for people to change
their search engine — just as simple as putting a box of cereal back on the
store shelf.
The trial raises questions about how and why we use Google
search. Many of us grew up doing web searches on Google because it seemed to
deliver the best results with minimal effort. But if something better came
along, would we really have known since Google came loaded on most of our
devices? And even if we had known, would we have just stuck with Google since
its search engine was set as the default?
I decided to test how easy or hard it really is to switch to
a different search engine. In a blog post this month, Google said the change
was a straightforward process and offered three examples:
— On an iPhone, it takes four taps.
— On a Mac’s Safari browser, it takes two clicks.
— On Android phones, it takes two taps.
So I followed Google’s instructions and also shared the
company’s guidance with a panel of three design veterans. The verdict: It’s
hard to switch — and most people would probably give up before completing the
change.
“God help me, I’m dead,” Ted Selker, a product design
veteran who worked at IBM and Xerox PARC, said after reading the steps to
change the search engine on an iPhone.
Harry Brignull, a user-experience consultant in Britain,
concluded about Google search: “Most people will just stick with it.”
I had similar takeaways. Here’s what the design experts and
I found after trying to break up with Google search.
On an iPhone
Google said iPhone owners could switch to a different search
engine in four taps by opening the Settings app, tapping Safari, tapping Search
Engine and then selecting a search engine.
In reality, it’s more complicated.
Once the Settings app is open, Safari doesn’t immediately
appear on the screen. It’s buried under 36 other menu items, so the user has to
swipe upward at least twice to find the Safari menu. In reality, it takes six
taps.
But even four steps would probably be too much for many of
us, Selker said. It might have been simple 15 years ago, when most web browsing
was done on stationary computers, but in the smartphone era, someone looking
for that setting could be interrupted while on the go — to hop on a bus, for
instance.
“You cannot expect people to have multi-stepped memory,” he
said.
On a Mac
With just two clicks, Google said, Mac users can switch the
default search engine on the Safari browser to a different service — by first
clicking on the magnifying glass icon and then selecting a different search
engine, like Yahoo, Bing or DuckDuckGo.
That’s much simpler than on an iPhone. But not everyone
knows that the magnifying glass icon is a button — it allows people to enter a
query in the search bar.
More problematic is that switching search engines can be
confusing, because the steps are inconsistent between Safari on an iPhone and
Safari on a Mac, said Tony Hu, a director at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology who oversees an engineering leadership program.
“Overall, the average person would probably struggle with
this,” he said.
Selker said a better design would have been to make changing
the search engine more “in your face,” like a prompt asking users to choose a
search engine when opening the browser.
“It has to make you aware it’s there until you’ve dismissed
it,” he said.
On Android
On an Android phone, Google said, it takes one long press on
the search bar to prompt the Remove button to appear. Users can then tap on it
to remove the Google search bar widget from the home screen.
This example is especially flawed. First, Google’s steps to
remove the search bar widget work on some Samsung phones, but they do not work
across all Android devices. On Google’s Pixel phones, for example, when a user
long presses on the search bar, no Remove option appears.
Most important, removing the search widget deletes a
shortcut to the Google search bar on the home screen, but it does not change
the search engine in an Android web browser. Changing to a different search
engine requires a different set of steps. Similar to the path on iPhones, it’s
a four-step process that involves opening the browser and changing its
settings.
The Default Option
The overarching lesson from the government’s antitrust trial
against Google is that when companies make arrangements to become a default
option, they are aware you will probably stick with the status quo because
switching to an alternative requires awareness and effort, said Brignull, the
author of “Deceptive Patterns: Exposing the Tricks Tech Companies Use to
Control You.”
Google said in a statement that it was easy for people to
change their default search engine on Android devices and Apple’s Safari. The
company added that on Windows computers, which require a long process to switch
from Bing as the default search engine in Microsoft’s Edge browser, the
overwhelming majority of people chose Google as their search engine.
With all of that in mind, and the instructions now in front
of you, you can try other search engines. If it turns out that you prefer
Google anyway, at least it will be your decision — not Google’s.
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