Google is the default search engine in Safari, Chrome, Firefox on both mobile and web. Nobody is going out of their way to look for or type Google.com.
And not sure why on earth you are bringing up Yandex or Baidu which are both country specific engines with very strong ties to their respective governments.
I rebut your naked assertion with anecdata. Once a retailer offered to look up something on her computer for me. She opened up internet explorer, the default browser on her operating system. It loaded Bing. Then she typed "Google" into Bing. Then she clicked the first result. Then she typed her question into Google.
The fact that Google search is a free service with no lock in and with many other free alternatives still stands. It's also strange that a search engine is a target of such hostility in the continent. No one is being prevented to visit any website or install any app they like.
Also the political aspect of this situation shouldn't be so easily dismissed, I don't see how tax or intangible privacy concerns have to do with the competitive question, this whole thing boils down to powerful newspaper publishers which have outsized influence on politicians seeking to punish Google, this is not unlike corrupt third world government behaviour.
The hostility comes from Google being the gatekeeper to the internet for most people. And them using that privilege to unfairly promote their products above alternatives.
And you must be deluded if you think the privacy concerns aren't a serious concern for Europeans. The US was implicated in hacking the phones of the German Chancellor and Snowden showed the extent of NSA data capture/mining. What do you expect them to do .. put their head in the ground and do nothing ?
if the europeans were bothered enough by boeing to create airbus, why aren't they bothered enough to create their own search engine?
the chinese don't seem to have a problem not using google..
So google became popular because people have found them to be the most useful. Anyone can switch to a different search engine with a few keystrokes. They haven't forced themselves to become the default browser on anything, nor any quid pro quo I believe.
Yet another comment that seems to hate google since now they are the big guy, and we hate the big guy, since we on HN are the broke little guys. Until of course we become the big guy and IPO.
What is wrong with making google apps get top billing on an an ecosystem provided by them? This is like having your number one sponsor logo front and center of your top donors page. Seems fine to me.
If you're free to use another service at no cost to yourself, then there is no gatekeeper.
If the primary problem (supposed "cost") in switching, is that you have to use an inferior product, then you're proving your position to be wrong to begin with.
Their position is not a privilege, and as such promoting their own products and services with their own service is and should be their right.
Google either owns its property, and has full control over that property, or it does not. If you claim it does not, then you're claiming the right to revoke property rights any time and any place when it's matching with your personal ideology.
Google isn't the gateway to the Internet not in any physical nor even metaphorical sense, it's Facebook were most folks spend most of their time, also the "promote their products above alternatives" is a loaded statement and accusation, when they show shopping results it's not their appliances they are selling, when show maps it's because it's a geographical query, and so on, and when they just show answers and not links it's because that is how search engines are supposed to work.
The perceived importance of privacy is irrelevant when the question is about competition, when other matters entirely are invoked to pressure or punish them then that is just plain old corruption.
And not sure why on earth you are bringing up Yandex or Baidu which are both country specific engines with very strong ties to their respective governments.