Google Monopoly Remains Under Fire
The US Justice Department has trained its sights on Google again, just when it was forced to change its stand on monopoly after India's SC verdict
Make no mistake! Google is under fire from multiple locations for their monopolistic practices. Barely a week after the Supreme Court refused to strike down an order that fined the search giant for monopolizing Android, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) was joined by eight states to sue the company over its online advertising business.
The US courts were told that Google was abusing its monopoly and harming both advertisers and publishers by having “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry” by seizing control of online ad systems and inserting “itself into all aspects of the digital advertising marketplace.” In other words, Google wants to own and operate the whole ecosystem!
DoJ sues Google over its ad tech monopoly
The complaint by the DoJ alleges that Google had eliminated competition through acquiring competitors to push advertisers to only use its products. It names Google as the defendant and calls it to sell part of its ad tech business. It also pointed out that Google punishes websites that use competing ad tech products and uses its dominance in the ad tech space.
The latest case against Google is a rare one where the DoJ has also sought a breakup of the company. Similar face-offs happened some years ago when mainframe maker IBM had to spin-off some of its businesses in the 1970s, AT&T did so in 1982 and then Microsoft followed suit in 2000.
The lawsuit comes at a time when governments across the world are seeking to curb Big Tech due to the ever-growing financial influence they appear to be wielding. Over the past 12 months, the US Senate had sought to bring the American Innovation and Choice Online Act to curtain the influence of Amazon, Apple and Google.
This comes after Google got a rap from India’s SC
Coming barely a few days after India’s Supreme Court refused to stay a fine of Rs.1317 crore imposed by the Competition Commission of India on Google over what it called the company’s anti-competitive policy related to Android smartphones that restricted others from making their own apps available on the operating system.
In fact, the Apex Court also asked Google to deposit 10% of the fine within a week. Several Indian startups were euphoric over the latest court order with some like MapmyIndia that builds digital maps claiming that in spite of pioneering this business in India, Google’s pre-installation of its own map on the Android system was curbing its growth potential.
Many of these business owners were critical of Google’s appeal against the CCI order – first at the NCLAT and then the SC – where it claimed that removing monopoly would result in handsets getting expensive in India and also questioned the security capabilities of app builders. Both these were attempts to get users on their side, but to no avail as of now.
In fact, the company wrote an elaborate blog post around the topic, which attracted more mirth than serious discussion. By claiming that costs of smartphones would go up, Google is actually telling us that it was cornering all the revenues from such activity, says the owner of a startup based in Bangalore that operates in the payment space.
True to form. Google also came out with statements on the DoJ lawsuit It said the Federal Government was attempting to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive ad tech sector. The blogpost, which seems to be its go-to option to “educate the public” claims that the lawsuit will slow innovation, raise advertising costs and make it tougher for business and publishers.
The latest case appears to be another example of how governments across the world are seeking to rein in Big Tech, given that most of these 900-pound gorillas wield immense power over our lives and over enterprises across the world.
