“WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge on Monday ruled that Google’s ubiquitous search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation in a seismic decision that could shake up the internet and hobble one of the world’s best-known companies…”
They’ve confused economic reality with their own ideal reality.
… and the irony in this statement is overwhelming, after the fairy tale you’ve just outlined about those providing the most value to society gathering the most power & influence.
Ideal reality: Google doesn’t buy advantage from browsers to make their search engine the default. This way, other search engines can compete at the same level, right?
Reality: browser developers will have their income cut down because now their main source of income is dead (see recent news on Mozilla).
Usually these kinds of policies that may or may not come up out of goodwill results in unintended consequences that negatively affect others.
The winner here are the politicians.