The monopoly power is being questioned.
DOJ filed anti-trust lawsuit against Google
When we need to know something, we just Google it. Whether it's a question about movie actors, or hunting for a restaurant, or researching support information for articles. We usually get the answer in a matter of seconds, but getting to that answer isn’t simple. So, how does Google comes up with search results? Algorithms — a series of invisible and database rules is making decisions for us, and algorithms are updating every minute, even every second. Google evaluates all the relevant information together including keywords you typed, categories, and also your personal preferences to deliver search results.
Oct 20, 2020, Google faced the challenge to its dominance in online advertising. Justice Department Sues Monopolist Google For Violating Antitrust Laws.
The merging issue over the decades
You may already familiar with this scenario, DOJ won an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft in 2002 for monopolizing its market. That case gave other tech companies a moment to gain market share at the time, such as Firefox.
Google’s own regulatory issue merged in 2008. From 2000 through 2004, Yahoo partnered with Google for search results and used some of Google’s “editorial” results as well as its ads. In 2008, DOJ anti-trust division scuttled a proposed partnership between Google and Yahoo, because the partnership gave Google too much power to advertising. Then Yahoo tried again for a deal with Microsoft, to handle the search ads for both companies. But Microsoft and Yahoo combined market share was less than half of Google’s (2009/Comscore). Googke’s online advertising kept on growing to date, its annual ad revenue had surpassed a hundred billion dollars.
“Google no longer competes only on the merits but instead uses its monopoly power - and billions in monopoly profits - to lock up key pathways to search on mobile phones, browsers, and next generation devices…The end result is that no one can feasibly challenge Google’s dominance in search and search advertising.” — Willam Barr Attorney General
Anti-trust law is focusing on harm to the consumer
Competition in this industry is vitally important. Anti-trust law is formed to encourage fair competition by ensuring no particular firm take control over the market and protect all sectors of businesses by promoting healthy competition. Becoming a monopoly isn't illegal in the US, but using anti-competitive means to maintain the monopoly is illegal.
Google dominates the search market by controlling 90% of online search market, setting default search engine on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and paying Apple $8 billion/year to be default. This situation resulted in higher prices for both advertisers and consumers.
How the consumer affected by the “editorial” search results by Google? This is intangeble harm and also hard to prove. Users’ information and attention are products which selling hundreds of billions dollars to advertisers. And the intangeble harm is our mental health.
The anti-trust lawsuit is a signal a new era in enforcing the power of big tech companies. Still, here we are commenting and writing on Google platform
