Alphabet subsidiary Google is “a monopolist, and has acted as one to maintain its monopoly” in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on Monday, August 5th.
Jonathan Guilford for Reuters:
Google now shares an ignominy with Microsoft. Judged by the same legal yardstick, Alphabet’s web search colossus is a monopolist just as the software developer was deemed to be in 2001. It might also suffer a similar fate.
Regardless of the remedies, which will be determined later, the victory is a significant one for Jonathan Kanter, the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust chief, and his counterpart at the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan. Both have filed a panoply of lawsuits against tech giants, and the findings in this case will be an important signal to courts presiding over the others, including another one against Google’s ad-tech business.
Mehta’s opinion also finesses the uncomfortable finding that Google is the “highest quality search engine.” Resources play a part. Google estimated that Apple would need to spend $20 billion to build a similar product and billions more to operate it. The primary concern, however, is establishing ubiquity. In 2022, Google paid about $20 billion to be the default option for iPhone buyers, according to the ruling.
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MacDailyNews Take: This is a decade or so too late, but at least it’s finally happening!
As regular readers know, we’ve been talking about this issue for years, as ad revenue dwindled – yet Alphabet/Google magically got richer. We’ve all lost many great sites over recent years as the Google-dominated broken ad-supported model failed. This is the very reason why there are too many ads on the site (cluttered is better than dead).
Candidly, it may be too late for us (but, for now, we’re still trying to survive). This will take many years to be rectified and for the once-vibrant digital advertising model to begin working again for publishers, if it ever happens. If you can contribute a couple buck monthly help keep our very independent Apple-focused blog afloat, you can do so here. Thank you in advance!
Even as we attempt to move away from the ad-supported model, we back whatever remedy or remedies will introduce competition back into the online advertising business, which is broken, in part, because far too much power is concentrated with Google/Facebook. This situation is exactly why antitrust laws exist. — MacDailyNews, February 2, 2021
Imagine if your livelihood depended on one company that had not only monopolized web search (and, thereby, basically controlled how new customers find you), but also controlled the bulk of online advertising dollars which funded your business and which they could pull, simply threaten to pull, or reduce rates at any time? Now also imagine if you believe this monopolist basically stole the product of another company that is the very subject of your business? How much would you criticize the monopolist thief’s business practices?
You might guess that it would be a tough road to walk. (We’re only imagining, of course!)
That would be a good example of why monopolies are bad for everyone…
In the meantime, stop using Google search and Google products wherever possible. Monopolies are bad for everyone. — MacDailyNews, July 14, 2016
If you haven’t already, give DuckDuckGo a try! https://duckduckgo.com
With this unprecedented power, platforms have the ability to redirect into their pockets the advertising dollars that once went to newspapers and magazines. No one company should have the power to pick and choose which content reaches consumers and which doesn’t. — MacDailyNews, November 9, 2017
We’d like to see real competition in the online search and advertising markets restored someday. — MacDailyNews, March 20, 2019
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@MacDailyNews editors– move to Substack. Happy to subscribe there.
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The title is misinformation: a monopoly is not illegal! What’s illegal is using ones monopoly power to retain ones monopoly – e.g. drive out competition. In the case of GOOG, it’s been using its monopoly power (and money) to keep competitors from becoming the default search engine on Apple devices.
So you’re saying users can’t switch easily from Google Search to another search engine? In Microsoft’s case IE was so integrated in the Windows OS it was impossible to completely escape using it in the normal course of using the PC. There is no similar restriction to Google Search.
The only 2 reasons that Google retains it’s ‘monopoly’ is either because 1) users prefer it to other engines 2) Users are too lazy and have no significant incentive to switch the default which does not take much effort.
I’d wager at this point regardless of what happens, given the choice most users will intentionally choose to use Google Search as their ‘main’ search engine.
In my opinion, Apple is as much to blame. Apple should have gone with buying a search engine or developing its own. I think Apple just wanted to get money the easy way. That’s just my thinking. Apple should have purchased DuckDuckGo. The $20B a year was good while it lasted. Now I guess it’s bye-bye Google Search default. Everyone wants to break up big tech, so it will likely happen sooner or later.
Unfortunately, Duck Duck Go is just Bing with less ads. Yep, Bing is the back end of DDG. Not a good choice for me. I would like to be able to set any search engine on my iOS devices as default, not the 4 or 5 that Apple gives me to choose.
Two BIG problems with this argument:
If Google thinks it’s worth it to be the default browser on iPhones, why doesn’t Microsoft? MS has plenty of money, they could pay Apple >$20B to make Bing the default browser—but they don’t. Apparently nobody but Google thinks paying Apple $20 billion is worth it.
And what happens if the government forces Google to cease paying Apple to be the default browser, but people choose Google anyways?
I think there were a few articles in the past that mentioned MS actually tried paying to be default but Apple decided to still go with Google because the decision makers at Apple found Bing to be lacking in contrast to Google Search.
I’m not sure Apple will completely come out of this unscathed and have repercussions above and beyond simply ‘losing’ $20B in income. It takes two to have made the Google ‘monopoly’ possible after all in regards to this case.
Would be more than happy to support MDN as a monthly subscription, whatever the cost, WITHOUT ADS. Been reading you guys for over a decade, and love your commentary!
Thank you! Soft-launching on Substack:
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