I would say that the technological barrier exists for google just like with IE and MSFT: Google is the default browser in Firefox + Chrome.
The IE solution was to offer an explicit browser choice in EU versions of windows. A similar one could be imagined here. The "solution" would be to disallow Google from making an exclusivity agreement with FF and to have a choice screen in Chrome. Unfortunately this would cause immense harm to Mozilla...
> The IE solution was to offer an explicit browser choice in EU versions of windows.
And what did that solve, really?
> to disallow Google from making an exclusivity agreement with FF
They do not have an exclusive agreement with Firefox and in Firefox Google's Search is only the default, not the only one. Mozilla is also switching to Yahoo as the default in the US, Yandex in Russia and other local search engines where it applies. That doesn't sound exclusive to me.
The IE solution was to offer an explicit browser choice in EU versions of windows. A similar one could be imagined here. The "solution" would be to disallow Google from making an exclusivity agreement with FF and to have a choice screen in Chrome. Unfortunately this would cause immense harm to Mozilla...