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Will the Google ruling change the way we use the internet? This question is being asked with force after a historic ruling convicting the company of monopolistic practices.
After years of dominating the search market, Google is now facing legal challenges that could reshape the tech landscape as we know it. Will new competitors emerge that can challenge the search giant? How will this impact the quality of the search results we receive every day? What are the potential implications for our privacy in the age of big data? These and other questions are being asked in light of this major shift in the tech industry.
Last Monday, a US federal judge ruled that Google You have acted illegally. to maintain on monopolize it For the internet search sector, a historic decision targeting the power of giant technology companies and may radically change the way they operate in the future.
The lawsuit accuses Google of illegally establishing its dominance, in part by paying billions of dollars a year to other companies, such as Apple and Samsung, so that Google can virtually handle search queries on smartphones and browsers. Internet Private to these companies.
I doubt it a report in New York Times What happened to Google in 2000, when the ruling in the US antitrust case against Microsoft helped set the rules of competition for the largest technology company of its time.
At the time, a federal judge ruled that Microsoft had abused the monopoly power of its Windows operating system, and ordered the company to be broken up. Microsoft overturned the breakup on appeal, but the basic legal findings were upheld.
Microsoft was then barred from imposing onerous contracts on its industry partners and ordered to make some of its technology available to other companies, preventing it from dominating the Internet alone, the New York Times noted.
wide-ranging impact
What industry experts believe is that the ruling in the antitrust case against Google could reshape the rules of competition in the technology industry, and thus our use of the Internet could be affected in the coming period.
“This is the most important antitrust case of the century, and the first of a wave of cases against Big Tech,” said Rebecca Howe Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who studies antitrust. “It’s a historic turning point.”
Bill Baer, a former top antitrust official at the U.S. Justice Department, said the Google ruling was important because it “applies to the largest tech companies the notion that even if you are dominant, you can’t abuse that dominance.”
As seen Mark Weinsteina privacy expert, said the decision was right and long overdue, and that the ruling could reshape the tech industry for the better.
The lawsuit is one of a series the U.S. government has brought against big tech companies. Regulators have also accused Apple, Amazon and Meta of violating antitrust laws by favoring their own products over the platforms they run and by acquiring smaller rivals.
The ruling against Google — and the potential damages the judge will award — is likely to have a profound impact on these cases, including a second lawsuit against the company over online advertising technology that is set to go to trial next month, according to the New York Times.
What does the decision mean for Google and the broader tech sector?
That’s the biggest question yet to come after the case. The judge’s decision sets another legal stage in which what changes or penalties should be imposed on Google to protect competition. The outcome could have a major impact on the tech sector, with the changes potentially as severe as requiring the company to break up parts of its online empire or barring it from spending huge sums of money each year to ensure Google search is the default on iPhones and other devices. Or the judge could decide that only more modest changes are needed to protect competition and consumers, leaving Google relatively unscathed. Any changes imposed would come at a crucial time for the sector, as Google competes with Microsoft and others for industry leadership as it enters the age of artificial intelligence.
digital iron fist
In the 1990s, Microsoft had an iron grip on the digital landscape of operating systems, with its Windows operating system dominating user experiences on more than 90% of personal computers. Today, Google has a similar grip on internet search.
But that changed for Microsoft after a judge ruled it had a monopoly. Lawmakers filed the suit after Microsoft launched a campaign against a startup, Netscape, which had pioneered web browsers. Microsoft imposed contracts on PC makers that effectively prevented them from offering Netscape on their machines.
Ultimately, Microsoft was prohibited in its contracts from imposing restrictions on PC makers to provide other software, and according to some antitrust experts, the effort, cost, and public disapproval made Microsoft more cautious about its actions later.
Unlike Microsoft, Google is an entirely Internet company with a very different business model, relying primarily on advertising rather than selling software licenses as Microsoft does.
The court in the Google case also found that the company’s contracts illegally excluded competitors. But unlike Microsoft, Google’s contracts were more of a carrot than a stick, offering industry partners generous payouts rather than threats, and paying smartphone and browser companies more than $26 billion in 2021, according to court testimony, to set its search engine as the default on those companies’ devices and browsers.
These agreements prevent any potential competitor from achieving the scale needed to challenge the company, allowing Google to charge advertisers higher prices without competitive pressure, Mark Weinstein noted.
Google Dominance
In the Google case, data was described as a critical asset. The more user queries flow through the search engine, the more data is collected and then used to improve search results, attracting more users and generating more data.
Google, in a statement from its global affairs chief Kent Walker, said the ruling recognizes that “Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we should not be allowed to make it easily available.” In court, Google argued that its search engine is the industry leader because it is a distinct product, that data is important but that the company’s smart software is its real advantage, and that its contracts were arm’s length deals entered into by its industry partners.
But Google has found it hard to explain why it would pay so much to gain access to these partners, if its search software is clearly the best technology around.
In 2020, the US Department of Justice and states filed a lawsuit over Google’s dominance of internet search, which generates billions in profits annually. The department reported that Google’s search engine accounts for about 90% of internet searches, a figure the company disputes.
The company spends billions of dollars a year to become the default search engine on browsers like Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox. Google paid Apple about $18 billion to make its search engine the default on the company’s devices in 2021, the New York Times reported.
The US government argues that when the company pays billions of dollars to become the default search engine on consumers’ devices, it deprives its competitors of the opportunity to build a large enough business to compete with its search engine. But what Google has done is collect more data about consumers, and has used it to improve its search engine and further consolidate its dominance.
The judge sided with the government, saying Google had a monopoly on general internet search services. The company’s agreements to be the default search engine on devices and web browsers had hurt competition, making it harder for rivals to challenge Google’s dominance.
Finally, Mark believes that the online technology industry is only about 30 years old, and it is too early to close the doors to the free market and allow a small group of technology companies to dominate without any objection.
