It is alleged Google protects its franchise by shelling out billions of dollars annually to be the default search engine on the iPhone and on web browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox.
This has never been a secret, for years (decades) browsers like firefox, back when it was the dominant browser, would have its default search engine choice given to the highest bidder. At times, it was yahoo, or bing, before google outbid them in the following release of the browser. Obviously the same happens for safari, to noone’s surprise.
So, the real question is: why does this come up only now as potentially illegal?