[ankit219]

It's a widespread assumption that defaults matter. But to what degree? I came across it first when I saw Dan Ariely's talk and his work on defaults (may not be the proponent)[1] but my takeaway is that it matters when you don't care about the as much.

For everyone with Windows, you start off with Edge/IE and then Bing as a default search engine. Yet, most switch to Chrome + Google almost instantly. People care about their browsing experience more than we give them credit for. Remember in 2009-10 when Chrome was new, it managed to win market share cos of superior product when it was not the default on Windows/Linux/MacOSX. On mobile too, the behavior is likely going to be there to a certain degree. While Google pays Apple a massive fee, there was an admission earlier in the trial that both Mozilla and Apple would still go ahead w Google (even without the deals) because of superior UX. Not sure if both said it, but one of them certainly did.

[1] https://danariely.com/the-power-of-defaults-in-how-we-eat/

[dmvdoug]

Maybe look at some of the trial exhibits that have been posted on the DOJ website. Google sure as hell thinks defaults matter a lot. And intent matters at trial.

[ankit219]

From the trial itself, Google has argued and questioned the expert witness from DOJ if defaults really matter. Whole Microsoft question was raised by them too. Exhibits are good with context, but without supplementing the context they are misleading. Hard to argue for something DOJ did not think would make their case stronger and did not refer to in the trial.