[pmarreck]

Taking money for a thing that most people would probably set to the default anyway is pretty much "free money" and I wouldn't fault them for taking it.

Is there any search engine that approaches the quality of Google search results yet, or ideally, improves on them?

[bogomipz]

So you might as well take their money because they're a near monopoly anyways and in exchange for that money we will continue to make sure they stay a near monopoly? You don't see anything self-perpetuating in that? Why not duckduckgo or even startpage.com to least have an intermediary if they really care about these things?

[yoasif_]

They had Yahoo! as a default for a decent amount of time. The got out because promised quality improvements didn't materialize, according to court filings.

[pmarreck]

Monopolies eventually die. All of them. Believe it or not.