Google on trial
It took a few years, but it is here, finally - the trial brought by the Justice Department (DoJ) together with 11 states to stop Google from unlawfully maintaining monopolies through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices in the search and search advertising markets.
The whole saga started in 2020 when the DoJ filed a complaint against Google.
The DoJ is trying to demonstrate how anti-competitive practices protected Google from innovative competition and suppressed its rivals. What were these practices? Requiring Google Search to be a default search engine and the Chrome browser to be a default browser on any device using Android OS.
Google, which was founded 1998, introduced an innovative way to rank pages on the internet. It was distinguished from its competition by a minimalist home page and a very fast response time.
Some of you might remember the search engines of that era - Altavista, Lycos, Infoseek, Yahoo, Excite - there were plenty. They all had a head start on Google. That was especially true of Yahoo, the behemoth of online search, email and financial information.
It wasn't until 2000 when Google started selling advertising on its platform. And it was that year when Yahoo replaced its own search engine with Google.
Why do I mention all this? One can say that Google had entered an already very crowded space and its chance to succeed was doubtful. And let's not forget Microsoft, which introduced MS Search in 1998. Despite that, Google prevailed and became the search engine on the Internet. For the last 10+ years it has commanded 80%+ search traffic.
Yes, the introduction of advertising (selling ads) created the money machine which fueled its growth. Microsoft could do that, Yahoo could do that. But they didn't.
If the search function of its search engine wouldn't work better than its competition, nobody would ever use it. And we know how Microsoft is trying with Bing and still is hitting around 10% of the traffic. And if someone has a (unfair) competitive advantage with over a billion PCs installed around the world where the default browser has Bing as a default search engine configured and still can't get traction...
One of the complaints from the DoJ is that Google was paying billions of dollars to Apple to have Google as a default search engine.
What would you do if you were Apple? Apple's objective is to have the best experience for its users and despite the rumors that it is building its own search engine it is still using Google. And since there is no other viable alternative, why not take money from Google?
I don't think that the DoJ has a case here. I think that a simple question from the judge to Plaintiffs - 'What search engine did you use while putting your Complaint together?' will be enough to close this case.
However, there is a much bigger issue coming towards Google. There is another Complaint, filed in January 2023 which is accusing Google of monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. It is a far better built case and goes after the money machine of Google, the advertising engine. It describes how Google became the dominant Ad Tech Stack, how it locked out any competition and how it manipulated the ad auctions while working against its own customers. When you read the Complaint, you will understand why Google changed its tag line from 'Don't be evil' to 'Do the right thing (for Google)'.
The recurrent pattern in all this? Don't turn your unfair advantage into illegal practice. It is not good for business in the long term.