DuckDuckGo slams Google following EU antitrust decision

In the wake of the European Union fining Google a record $5 billion for anti-competitive behavior with its Android products, rival search engine DuckDuckGo claims that the company’s antitrust issues don’t stop there.

The allegation came in a series of tweets from the DuckDuckGo Twitter account as a response to the fine. In them, the search engine claims that the company’s “anti-competitive search behavior isn’t limited to Android,” but it also exists in other products, like the Chrome browser as well. “Every time we update our Chrome browser extension, all of our users are faced with an official-looking dialogue asking them if they’d like to revert their search settings and disable the entire extension,” the tweet said.

DuckDuckGo also highlights that Google currently owns the “duck.com” domain name, and it has since at least 2011. (Duckduckgo launched in 2008.) That means when potential users of the lesser-known search engine type in the seemingly similar address, they are then redirected to Google “which consistently confuses DuckDuckGo users,” the company said. A report from the Independent points out that the domain was registered before either company was created, but it is unclear when exactly it came under Google’s ownership.