[indubitable]

I think your first example is somewhat disingenuous.

The vast majority of people will never change their default settings on the vast majority of things. The ability to change something does not contradict the view that a company is engaging in that behavior, and persisting it, for money. E.g. Mozilla/Firefox recently swapping to Google as their default browser would be the same thing, even if they know it's likely somewhat antithetical to many of their users - they will profit from those who are too lazy, or too ill informed, to change it.

[csydas]

I get what you're saying, but your point is also self-defeating for your argument. I would posit that someone who goes out of their way to install Puffin for its benefits would also be aware enough of the ability to change search providers. I have difficulty envisioning the user interested enough to research alternative browsers that are not Safari/Chrome/Firefox who also is not aware of changing default search settings.

[indubitable]

It's not just those that would be aware of changing default search settings, but those that actually would. So we have a Venn Diagram of users that would be willing to try out something marketed as "a wicked fast mobile browser" and those that would go out of their way to change Google as the default search engine. What's the exact intersection there? I think we're both left to just wildly speculate, but I do think we can agree it wouldn't be even remotely close to 100%.