[Wytwwww]

Presumably Google, Bing etc. would still be bidding to be the default search engine?

Google is paying Apple $20 billion per year just for that so financing 1000 engineers (which is probably excessive, a few hundred + contributions from other companies using Chromium might be enough) shouldn't be too hard.

[pseudalopex]

Google paying to be the default search engine was ruled anti competitive.

[Wytwwww]

Was it? Or are they just being investigated over it?

[pseudalopex]

It was. The article's 2nd sentence mentioned the ruling and linked to more information.

[Wytwwww]

Yes technically, but the appeal process will likely drag on for years and the outcome isn't clear (now that Republicans are in charge they might just drop it before that happens anyway).