Fundamentally, Google protects its search by owning all entry points to it (or paying massive fees for competition-prohibitive distribution deals.

The strategy can be seen at play with the Chrome browser, Android and its licensing model for hardware manufacturers, paying Firefox and Apple for placing search as default in their respective platforms. They know that once distribution barriers for search fall, their existence is threatened, explaining even moves like Google Fiber.

We wrote at length about this issue in our blog https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-22/google-competition-is-just-...