- The DOJ has ruled that Google has illegally monopolized internet search.
- Google pays Apple more than $20 billion per year to be Safari’s default search.
- The judge could break up Google.
The DOJ’s Google antitrust ruling could have massive ripples through the tech world. Or maybe nothing will really change.
Federal judge Amit Mehta ruled on Monday that Google has illegally monopolized internet search by cutting deals with browser and phone companies. For example, Google pays Apple around $20 billion a year to be the default search engine in the Safari browser. The judge will decide next month what to do about this, but it could go as far as forcing Google to separate its search and advertising businesses, similar to the DOJ’s forced breakup of Microsoft in the 1990s.
“I can’t believe that it took this long for the DOJ to do anything about a company that has been the gateway to the entire internet for 20 years, but here we are,” Bill Mann, privacy expert at Cyber Insider, told Lifewire via email. “If the DOJ breaks up Google’s monopoly, it will affect people about as much as the Microsoft antitrust ruling did over 20 years ago. Google will be forced to create some separation between their advertising arm, their mobile technology, and other parts of their business. Even if the advertising becomes a separate entity, it won’t change the fact that the majority of people turn to Google for searches, and have mobile phones packed full of Google apps and services.”
Google’s Coming Battles
After decades of being allowed to do whatever the heck they like in the name of “innovation,” Big Tech companies are finally being reined in by the law, just like every other big industry that requires safety regulations to protect the public. We’re so used to Google serving search ads and ads across the internet that we don’t see the absurd conflict between controlling access to the entire web and also selling ads against that access.
The DOJ ruling isn’t the only legal challenge to Google. Along with Apple and Facebook, Google is already under investigation by the European Union for possible violation of the DMA (Digital Markets Act). The company is also coming under pressure from new technologies, like AI search. Taken together, these spell real danger for the advertising giant.
“With this ruling, Google’s reversal on cookies, and the advent of the first real AI search challengers (SearchGPT and Perplexity), we’re seeing new threats to Google’s dominance that we haven’t seen in a long time, ” Jason Seeba, chief marketing officer at marketing company Session AI, told Lifewire via email. “There are other meta trends that counter Google’s dominance, as well. More consumers are starting their product searches on Amazon, where they would traditionally have started with Google.”
The Cost of This Decision
The most obvious problem for users is that Google’s monopoly means that its search has gotten worse and worse. There are alternatives like Microsoft’s Bing and the search engines that use Bing’s index (DuckDuckGo, for example), but when Google is the default on every device, that doesn’t really matter.
“The fact that Google makes product changes without concern that its users might go elsewhere is something only a firm with monopoly power could do,” writes Judge Mehta in his judgment.
The results could be far-reaching and not all good. If Judge Mehta does decide to break Google up, then its search will have to compete against other searches without the crutch of Google’s massive pile of ad money, which should make its search good again.
Even if he doesn’t go that far, it’s almost certain that Google will no longer be allowed to pay other companies to be the default search engine. That’s going to cost companies like Apple, which puts out upwards of $20 billion per year or around a quarter of its annual services revenue. to have Google as its default search engine.
Boo hoo for Apple, but one big loser worth crying about will be the Mozilla Foundation, the company behind the Firefox browser. Firefox is the only major browser that doesn’t run on Chromium (Google) or Webkit (Apple), and is therefore very important to an open web. In 2021-2022, Google paid Mozilla $510 million for searches. That’s a huge chunk of Mozilla’s total $593 million for the period.
This ruling is going to have a massive effect overall. Even discounting the direct effects of any sanctions on Google, the tech industry as a whole is now on notice—and that’s a very good thing.
“This decision will fundamentally alter the way big tech companies do business in the future. Every CEO of a tech company is going to call in her lawyers and ask them how to change their course of action,” Anat Alon-Beck, professor of law at Case Western Reserve University, told Lifewire via email.
Thanks for letting us know!
News Summary:
- What the Monumental Google DOJ Antitrust Suit Could Mean
- Check all news and articles from the latest Tech updates.
- Please Subscribe us at Google News.