Litigation: Google defends its dominance
The case against Google is straightforward, said Adi Robertson in The Verge. The government, which last week started laying out its argument in Google’s antitrust trial, believes that “around 2010, Google began using anti-competitive tactics to maintain an overwhelming search monopoly.” It exercised its clout by striking deals “to make Google the default engine in Safari and Firefox and requiring that Android manufacturers prominently display a Google search widget on phones.” And as Google has grown, it has continued using “vast quantities of search data to improve its engine, creating a feedback loop” that has further cemented its dominance. Google’s consistent counterpoint: Microsoft sets Bing as its default option on Windows computers—and “that hasn’t stopped Google from dominating the market anyway.”
Google’s right, said Barbara Comstock in USA Today. Americans much prefer Google to any of its alternatives. How do I know? Mozilla used to use Yahoo as its default search engine, “but that move turned consumers against Firefox, so it returned to using Google.” If consumers do prefer it the other way, it only takes a few clicks to change it. Just because something is overwhelmingly popular and successful “does not transform it into an antitrust violation.” There’s no agreement preventing consumers from getting what they want. Historically, in a cruel twist, “the mostsearched term on Microsoft’s Bing has been ‘Google.’”
We also like Google, said the New York Daily News in an editorial. But that doesn’t mean that the people who built it have not “abused their dominant market position.” Google pays roughly $10 billion per year to device manufacturers and browser companies to maintain its search authority. Google’s search engine “is effectively the operating system of the internet, an absolutely central tool without which users simply can’t find anything.” If consumers are really choosing Google because they want to, then Google should not mind a ban on “payments locking in Google as a default and give them a simple choice of browser upon setting up a new device or browser.”
That’s what Europe has already done, and it “does not seem to have done much for Google’s competitors,” said Casey Newton in Platformer. This is an area in which Congress has failed to act despite many chances, and it’s unlikely that a U.S. judge would go further than the Europeans and try to break up Google over search dominance. And it’s far from clear the government will get that far. It has to prove not only that Google is dominant but also that it got there “through illegal means.” And few experts believe the government “is on firm ground here.”