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Give up Google in exchange for money? Put that way, it sounds tempting. But in practice, changing habits can be more complex than you might think… That’s the conclusion of a study carried out a few months ago in the United States, the results of which are indisputable.
Would you be willing to leave the Google search engine behind and replace it with an alternative, and get paid for it? In January 2025, this question was asked of 2,500 American Internet users who took part in an extensive study conducted by researchers from Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT.
Participants were divided into different groups. Members of the first group were allowed to choose their alternative search engine, before being guided through the process of setting it up. Members of the second group were asked to stop using Google in favor of Bing for 2 days, in exchange for $10. Finally, members of the third group were given the same instruction, but for 14 days. In this group, the average “bonus” was $10, but some sub-groups received $1 or $25.
To check that the study participants were playing the game, the researchers took care to monitor their computers via a Chrome browser extension. With all these elements in place, the experiment got underway… and its conclusion will probably come as no surprise to many.
Bing, okay, but paid is better
“Before the experiment, 96% of participants used Google for the majority of their searches,” explains the study. In the first group, only 1.1% of participants deliberately chose to switch to Bing. In the third group, 58% of Google users agreed to switch to Bing for 14 days in exchange for $10. 33% of those who switched to Bing continued to use it several weeks later.
Finally, in the second, two-day group, 81% of Google users agreed to use Bing during this period. And it was in this group, with the shortest commitment, that Bing was best accepted: two months after the experiment, 46% were still using Bing.
However, it also emerged that financial interest was an important factor in users’ decision to switch to Bing. For example, $1 increased Bing’s market share to 32%, $10 to 64%, and $25 to 74%. In short, the more researchers paid, the more Bing’s market share increased, without growing exponentially – proof that Google remains firmly anchored in Internet users’ preferences. And, needless to say, the vast majority of experiment participants switched back to Google at the end of the experiment.
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Overexposure to Google leads to “false choice”
This study‘s conclusions highlight the fact that “the majority really do prefer Google”, but that the search engine’s omnipresence in browsers, among its partners and even within Android – even though the European Union requires consumers to have a choice – is helping to reinforce its dominant position.But remedying this situation doesn’t look easy. Researchers have explored various scenarios, including an active search engine choice screen when Chrome starts up. But even if they did this, “Bing’s market share would increase by just 1.3 points”, the study points out. “This confirms that poor quality perception is the main obstacle to competition.
The fairest solution, according to the researchers, would be to position Bing as the default search engine within Chrome, so that users can really try it out. After a few days, a choice screen could then be proposed. With Bing’s experience, Internet users could then make a more informed choice. It’s just one of a number of avenues that raise the question of Google’s dominant position, which is difficult to dislodge from minds despite various initiatives launched years ago.
