By Ulvi Hagverdi
Your commercial awareness dose
Google LLC is an American multinational technology company offering Internet-related services and products, from online advertising technologies to cloud computing. The company constitutes ‘Big Five’ Tech block, together with other 4 tech giants – Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. Having been founded in 1998 by two Stratford students, Google became the main subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, the conglomerate organizing Google’s operation.
The tech giant’s rapid expansion can be observed through certain products, such as Google Chrome, Google Search and Gmail. The shift to the hardware industry following partnering with Nexus also contributed to the company’s’ ongoing success. However, such a substantial growth undoubtedly brought its controversies and public attention to Google. Monopolizing 90% of the US search market and possessing a crucial impact on search engines globally led to different global institutions suing the tech giant one behind another.
The first main hit to Google came from the European Union when the world’s biggest trading block fined the company for the record amount of nearly $2.5 billion for “promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results.” Google appealed on the finding of the case and litigation is yet to be heard at the General Court of Luxembourg in the upcoming months. The next string of the hit for Google’s business came again from the European Union in 2018. The company was fined for inconceivable amount of $4.5 billion following being accused of breaching EU antitrust rules. Nevertheless, the fine only amounted to 40% of Google profits in 2018 only in the European Union.
In terms of current developments, Google is facing one of the biggest antitrust claims in the US history by the Department of Justice. The filing is based on the accusations that Google paying other companies significant funds to give a priority to its search engine in their products harms the competition law. The litigation is going to be the biggest antitrust dispute (even bigger than Microsoft case in 1998 that tried to break out Mr. Gate’s monopoly) in the US history that is forecasted to last several years till the final verdict.
“Google is so dominant that “Google” is not only a noun to identify the company and the Google search engine but also a verb that means to search the internet” – this is how Financial Times describe the monopolization of the market by the Google. 90% of all general-search-engine queries in the United States were conducted through Google’s platform. To hold Google accountable, the Department of Justice must demonstrate Google monopolizing the market using abusive power. On contrast, Google’s counsels will endeavor to argue that the government failed to correctly estimate the tech giant’s power by narrowly characterizing its market.
Some experts allege that if Biden comes to the administration, this will have an encouraging impact on the government’s quest to strain Google’s enlargement. Nevertheless, with $120 bn. in cash reserves, it seems for now unlikely that even significant fines by the US government will disrupt the world’s biggest search engine’s business to great extent.
One can also question that what are the alternative for search engines in case Google’s influence is contracted? Microsoft’s search engine Bing can be strongly named as at the most promising alternative to Google. The current lawsuits against Google marks an enormous opportunity for search engines such as Bing to improve their search engines and outline concrete future growth plans.
Another platform that can take an advantage of the filing faced by Google is Ecosia. With its jaw-dropping concept of planting trees with the advertising profits, the venture has already achieved to 15 million users in the US. Its CEO supported the Google antitrust lawsuit by stating that legislative action is essential. To sum up, it can be confidently put forward that the upcoming long-lasting litigation will be a cornerstone for the Big Tech dominance in the US.
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