Monopoly powers are not necessarily an antitrust violation, but are a necessary element of a monopoly charge. Google is a company with such monopoly powers over the search engine industry. They are one of three major players in that industry, the other two being DuckDuckGo and Bing.
On October 20, 2020, a lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court in the District of Columbia alleging that Google has been using anticompetitive practices in order to keep their position as the most popular search engine on the Internet.
While it has contracted with all major web browsers, with the exception of Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, to be the default search engine upon installation or first use of the particular software. They pay millions of dollars to maintain an exclusive status in Apple’s Spotlight and Siri applications, with a significant portion of Apple’s revenue being made up of these payments.
What has been found is that very few people will change their default search engine and will use Google without a second thought.
Google also maintains significant influence in the mobile device arena through the Android mobile operating system.
Android was originally released as open source software by Google, around the time that smartphones really began to gain popularity. This was a great way for various manufacturers to build and sell smartphones to compete with the iPhone without investing in developing their own operating system.
The Android system allowed for an “ecosystem” to form where developers could create apps that would be compatible with multiple devices upon release.
Eventually the App Market developed into the Google Play Store, where most Android applications can be found.
While the key Android system is indeed open source, to access Google services, manufacturers need to implement Google’s version. To use their version, a manufacturer must sign a anti-forking agreement, or else they would be kept from the ecosystem. This means that manufacturers are unable to add any exceptional innovations to their system and must follow the lead of Google.
Manufacturers are forced to include Google’s entire bundle of applications if they want even one of their key apps or APIs. These applications, by design, should be unable to be uninstalled. These are Google Play, Chrome, Google Search, Gmail, Maps and YouTube. This also keeps their services like Maps and YouTube dominant in their respective spaces.
A Google Search widget is often required to be present on the home screen which excludes any other search engines.
Almost all Android devices sold in the United States are covered under these agreements.
Manufacturers would not be able to include any innovations, or even introduce other search engines onto their phones.
In the case of Google Assistant, they are actively keeping competition out. Manufacturers are required to enable an “always on” microphone and special methods of accessing Google Assistant, including a hotword and special home screen gestures. These APIs are not available to competitors, including Amazon’s Alexa or Microsoft’s Cortana.
This case will definitely be a case to watch and in the complaint, another notable case is referenced.
“Almost 20 years ago, the D.C. Circuit in United States v. Microsoft recognized that anti competitive agreements by a high-tech monopolist shutting off effective distribution channels for rivals, such as requiring preset default status (as Google does) and making software undeletable (as Google does), were exclusionary and unlawful under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
In the Microsoft case, they were attempting to increase the market share of Internet Explorer by including it in Windows 98 by default and in that case it was indeed undeletable. Manufacturers were unable to add any other browsers without facing adverse action from Microsoft.
If Google is engaging in the same actions, change might be coming soon.
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