{"id":30530,"date":"2020-10-23T15:40:02","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T19:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=30530"},"modified":"2023-02-21T15:32:36","modified_gmt":"2023-02-21T20:32:36","slug":"google-antitrust-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/23\/google-antitrust-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Antitrust Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

William P. Barr<\/a> (tweet<\/a>, PDF<\/a>):<\/p>\n

This morning the Department of Justice, along with eleven states, filed a civil lawsuit against Google for unlawfully maintaining a monopoly in general search services and search advertising in violation of the U.S. antitrust laws.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Over the course of the last 16 months, the Antitrust Division collected convincing evidence that Google no longer competes only on the merits but instead uses its monopoly power – and billions in monopoly profits – to lock up key pathways to search on mobile phones, browsers, and next generation devices, depriving rivals of distribution and scale. The end result is that no one can feasibly challenge Google’s dominance in search and search advertising.<\/p>\n

This lack of competition harms users, advertisers, and small businesses in the form of fewer choices, reduced quality (including on metrics like privacy), higher advertising prices, and less innovation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

David McCabe, Cecilia Kang, and Daisuke Wakabayashi<\/a> (Hacker<\/a> News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

In a 57-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, the agency accused Google of locking out competition in search by obtaining several exclusive business contracts and agreements. Google’s deals with Apple, mobile carriers and other handset makers to place its search engine as the default option for consumers accounted for most of its dominant market share in search, the agency said, a figure that it put at around 80 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Google<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Today’s lawsuit by the Department of Justice is deeply flawed. People use Google because they choose to, not because they’re forced to, or because they can’t find alternatives.<\/p>\n

This lawsuit would do nothing to help consumers. To the contrary, it would artificially prop up lower-quality search alternatives, raise phone prices, and make it harder for people to get the search services they want to use.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

DuckDuckGo<\/a> (tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

So, Google, given that you’ve often said competition is one click away, and you’re aware a complicated process suppresses competition, why does it take fifteen+ clicks to make DuckDuckGo Search or any other alternative the default on Android devices?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Ben Thompson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Apparently being sued for antitrust is like graduating from college for tech companies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Sandeep Vaheesan<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Great excerpt in U.S. v. Google on how Google shares its monopoly profits with Apple. Google pays billions for exclusive pre-installation on Apple devices--payments that are as much as one-fifth of Apple’s annual net income.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Michael Y. Lee<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

To me it reveals how fragile their dominance is that they’d feel the need to pay apple billions for making them the default search engine on iPhones<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Mark Gurman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The U.S. government said Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai met in 2018 to discuss the deal. After that, an unidentified senior Apple employee wrote to a Google counterpart that “our vision is that we work as if we are one company.”<\/p>\n

The DOJ also cited internal Google documents that call the Apple search deal a “significant revenue channel” for the search giant and one that, if lost, would result in a “Code Red” scenario. That’s because nearly half of Google search traffic in 2019 came from Apple products, according to the lawsuit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Jeff Johnson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It’s certainly not a good look when Google pays Apple $billions per year, they agree to “work as if we are one company”, and both Safari and Chrome kneecap the browser extension ad blocking API.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Mozilla<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Unintended harm to smaller innovators from enforcement actions will be detrimental to the system as a whole, without any meaningful benefit to consumers — and is not how anyone will fix Big Tech.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Tim Bray<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It’s not obvious that end-users are hurt directly. Google provides, at the end of the day, a pretty awesome search service.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The problem is (to steal a phrase from the Complaint) “monopoly rents from advertisers”. Search advertising is a context where you know exactly what the user is looking for, and it’s amazingly effective, and Google enjoys a monopoly, which means they can charge what the market will bear, and they do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n