It's one thing to just not promote a search engine to your users. That I could understand. It's another thing entirely to intentionally override the user's pref

It's one thing to just not promote a search engine to your users. That I could understand. It's another thing entirely to intentionally override the user's preference and lie to them about why you're doing it. (Assuming they are actually lying and there isn't some sort of bizarre legal reason why they really do have to do things this way.)