The United States’ Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering one of the strongest ruling against Google, which includes breaking up the company’s businesses, as the search engine giant is deemed illegally monopolizing the online search engine market. Per Bloomberg (via Reuters), DOJ spokesperson said it is evaluating the court’s decision, though no decision has been made thus far.
Google In Deep Legal Trouble
So how did Google ended up in this legal predicament? The short answer is tie-ins and exclusivity deals. For over a decade, Google has preloaded every Android smartphone with Google Search, and paid Apple hefty sums (reportedly up to $20 billion per year) to make sure every iPhone, iPad and Mac uses its search engine. This resulted in competing services like Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo unable to compete on equal grounds, which constitute as illegal monopoly for Google’s service.
If Google were to be broken up into several companies, it is reported that one of the first targets will be the Android operating system, as Search greatly benefitted from the tie-ins in a way similar to Microsoft’s antitrust case with Internet Explorer two decades ago. However, laxer options are considered as well, which includes forcing Google to share data to its competitors, or implementing measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage.
The ruling made last week can be considered historic in the context of technology industry, as the last major tech giant that was hit by antitrust laws has to be traced all the way back to the early 2000s. Back then, Microsoft was the offender for illegally monopolizing the web browser market, as Internet Explorer was pre-installed in all Windows systems, whilst users were restricted from uninstalling it and use competing programs like Netscape.
However, in the case of Microsoft, the ruling mostly ended up as a settlement deal with several changes made to its practices – the company itself was largely unaffected on the organizational level. Some argued that this outcome has only marginally penalized the Redmond software giant, and two decades later, Google might be facing significantly worse outcomes for itself, if the aftermath of Microsoft case is anything to go by.
In the meantime, DOJ is also hunting down other tech giants, including Amazon, Meta, and Apple, for various monopolistic practices. Over at Europe, the continent has took a different approach in the form of Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act to keep these giants in check by designating them as “gatekeepers”, which are subjected to more stringent oversights.
Pokdepinion: Tech giants has gotten away for too long – it’s about time they get reeled back in.
