On Tuesday, Switzerland’s Competition Commission launched a preliminary investigation into Google after the search engine chose to meet Android owners elsewhere in Europe when it launched a new phone in Switzerland.
The feature, known as the Selection Screen, asks users which search engine they want as default during the initial setup of a new device. COMCO says Google recently deleted it in Switzerland While operating in the European Economic Area.
The practical result is that Swiss buyers now get Google Search by default without having to ask for it.
“This new practice by Google could affect the competitiveness of search engine providers and, more broadly, other digital service providers.” said the statement of the institution.
Added a change “It creates unequal treatment between Swiss users and those in the European Economic Area.”
Google has confirmed that it is aware of the incident. “We look forward to cooperating fully with the authorities to answer their questions.” the spokesman said.
The company has not published a rationale for withdrawing the display in Switzerland.
Here, it is worth giving precise information about the tool used. preliminary investigation, Preliminary clarificationIt is the lightest tool of the Swiss competition secretariat.
It carries no charge, no deadline, and no presumption of wrongdoing. Its sole function is to determine whether there are indications of unlawful restraint of competition under the Cartel Act.
If applicable, a full investigation may be conducted and this is the stage where remedies and penalties are possible.
What makes the case interesting is the reasons behind it. Default settings, COMCO argues, play a crucial role in digital markets, and the selection screen exists precisely to mitigate the collateral effect created by defaults.
Remove it, and competing engines lose visibility in a moment of user reconsideration. This removes the barrier to access the regulator frame.
The Commission put it more mildly in its statement. Eliminating the feature said that “It may limit the visibility of search engines competing with Google during device construction, thereby creating barriers to market entry.”
The selection screen, in this reading, was never polite to users. It was a corrective applied to the market.
The size of the award is not in dispute. Google takes approx 82% of Swiss searchA sharing that makes the selection screen look less like a meaningful market and more like an official, according to web analytics firm Statcounter.
Competitors move when conditions change. DuckDuckGo installs increased by 18% With Google reshaping its results page around AI summaries, it shows that there is an appetite for alternatives when users are given a reason to look for alternatives.
The selection screen is a European artifact, and that’s the point. It exists because Brussels first exists through Android abuse A 4.1 billion euro fine has exhausted its complaints against Googleand more recently through the responsibilities of gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act.
Switzerland sits outside of both regimes. It is not in the EEA, the DMA does not reach it, and its regulator is proving abuse of dominance the hard way.
The gap is not small. There is a Commission in the EU It’s about to force Google to open up Android It competes with AI assistants and already has Determine what search data Google should share with competing engines.
Switzerland has none of these mechanisms. What it has is a cartel law, a dominant firm, and a feature that was there in June and is not there now.
COMCO also noted that whatever it found could be relevant to how default settings are evaluated on other mobile devices, a sentence that falls somewhere near Cupertino. The time of the preliminary investigation has not been determined.
Google has not yet been charged with anything, and the preliminary investigation will yield no results. However, he was asked a question that he has so far refused to answer. Why Switzerland and why now.
