Microsoft has released two devices under the Nokia Lumia brand since it took over Nokia’s smartphone division, and now according to a recent report by The Verge, the company has removed the ability to set Google as the default search provider on these new devices.
The two new devices are the Nokia Lumia 930 and the Nokia Lumia 630, and they apparently don’t come with the option to change the default search provider to Google.
This appears to be happening on these two new Windows Phone 8.1 devices out of the box, but existing owners of Nokia Lumia devices who are updating to Windows Phone 8.1 are able to change their default search engine to Google.
In the past the Lumia devices always came with Microsoft’s Bing as the default search engine from the physical search button, although you could choose to set Google as the default search in Internet Explorer, this is apparently no longer possible on these two handsets.
Google has come under scrutiny in the past, and is currently subject to an antitrust lawsuit, where it is claimed that Google is forcing Android handset makers to use Google as the default search engine, even though it allows you to change the default search engine in Chrome to Bing, Yahoo, Ask and others.
Source The Verge