DOJ is going after Google… For all the wrong reasons.

The US Department of Justice moved against Google because of a perceived monopoly as a search engine. A monopoly is not the real problem with Google - or Facebook, or Amazon, etc. There is a much serious issue, the lack of transparency. If the government was going to make a move, it should have been on that basis.

Before I get to the transparency issue, first, a monopoly is only a problem in the sense of what it enables-- for Google or any of the other tech giants.

Let’s look at Google’s market share for search: it is above 90 percent. Does it have a monopoly, preventing others from participating? Or is it just better than anything else on the market? The second biggest company with a search engine is Microsoft. However, as of the writing of this post Microsoft’s market cap is $1.6T (as in trillion). Google’s is $1T. Microsoft has spent billions developing Bing, but it is still below 3 percent of market share. Either Microsoft doesn’t find search that important, or it is just that difficult. However, either way, does anyone really think Google is bullying Microsoft around?

Also the term ‘search’ is vague enough. As Mark Ritson argues, if you start splitting search into categories, Google is losing to Amazon. Big time.

Interestingly, Microsoft has been in the hot seat before when it comes to the question of monopolies. You might remember a similar trial: DOJ vs Microsoft. The issue then? Internet Explorer was embedded into the Windows operating system. Netscape (and few others) were the victim then. Looking back, was the browser really the issue? Google came along and built a better product. Now it is the most used browser. Sometimes, companies dominate because they’re just the best thing on the market. And some might even argue that competition is for losers.

So, let’s set aside the controversy over monopoly and focus on the real problem with the biggest tech companies: no transparency.

Companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter created unaccountable systems with no visibility into the information they are providing to their users. Few know how they are using the information collected about their users.

Google is returning answers which it “thinks” are the best answers -- for you. And its results, the “best answers” might not actually answer your questions. They are meant to encourage you to stay as long as possible on the platform - and in return, you are served with ads.

Facebook was experimenting (and no reason to believe that it ever stopped) with changing the mood of its users on purpose.

Market dominance by itself isn’t the issue. The problem is that through market dominance, these organizations are in a unique position to modify our behaviors and affect our beliefs. That’s the real danger.

History showed us that there always will be a better, faster, more innovative company even if the incumbent seems to have a monopolistic position. But being manipulated always leads to bad outcomes.

That’s the recurrent pattern.