[cookiengineer]

All of those choices were bought in and had to pay the most amount for that region to win.

Google later even refused to say what the competitors were paying for that rank, so they probably just overbid themselves for a while now.

Note that they do this for Android, too.

[gmurphy]

The search engine choice screen in Android did have a bid model (and complicated EU regulation around it), but the search engine choice screen in the early versions of Chrome were not a bid model - we just felt it was a cool thing to do, but we removed it because practically everyone chose Google anyway and first run screens are bad for retention.