On October 20th, 2020, The United States government, along with several states (AR, FL, GA, IN, KY, LA, MS, MO, MT SC, and TX), filed an antitrust lawsuit against technology company, Google LLC, for illicitly continuing monopolies in general search services, general search text advertising, and search advertising. Google has been accused of maintaining control of these markets through exclusionary practices, which prohibits the expansion of competition throughout the internet technology industry. The basis for this accusation is Google’s alleged violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 2, which bans monopolies in trade and commerce. Along with previous antitrust cases, it is important to review the nature of the lawsuit. Since Google is being accused of antitrust in several areas, the case’s foundation will be broken up into two sections.
1. General Search Services: Within the last twenty years, Google has transitioned from a new start-up to one of the richest companies on Earth, making as much as $160 billion a year. Because search engines are dispersed throughout a variety of devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops, user search queries in the United States have surged in the last decade. Search engines are the most effective when they are set as the default. For example, if a consumer uses a Dell, they are more likely to have Bing as the default search engine, unless the user changes it to Google, Firefox, etc., which rarely occurs. In addition, Google pays billions to a plethora of distributors spanning from device manufacturers, wireless carriers, and browser developers to set their search engine services as the default. Because Google pays companies like Apple, Motorola, Mozilla, AT&T, and UCWeb to secure their search engine as the default, along with the lack of users changing their default engine themselves, the lawsuit alleges the deals made by Google were intended to eliminate competition among other search engine providers. In fact, 90% of all generated-search engine queries have been searched through Google. It does not cost anything to search online. So, it begs the question: how were they able to make billions of dollars?
2. Search Advertising/General Search Text Advertising: Google utilizes consumer information and search queries to sell advertising. Since Google is the default search engine for various devices, they receive almost $40 billion from advertisers to place ads on their search engine results pages (SERP). Because Google receives 90% of search engine traffic (that’s billions of eyeballs on tailored ads), these deals create difficulty for smaller rival search businesses to compete and incentivizes advertisers to stay with Google rather than switching to another company that cannot perform on such a grand scale. The services Google provides require intricate algorithms which collect vast amounts of data used to tailor content based on a user’s search query. For example, if you search holiday discounts for a Keurig coffee maker, you might see an ad for the exact search entry two days later, which is what advertisers want. These deals ultimately engender a continuous cycle of anticompetitive behavior from Google and thwart potential competition, giving the United States government and various states another reason to issue an antitrust lawsuit.
With the nature of the case in mind, Google’s ever-growing power is concerning. Is Big Tech too influential in the economic and advertising sectors? Shouldn’t consumers be aware of Google’s seemingly anticompetitive tactics? As the world continues to enter a digital age, how will this case change the ways in which internet companies conduct business ventures? Stay tuned as our Experts.com Members give their input on the subject in Part 2: coming soon.
