$ 17.9 billion: this is the amount of net profit generated by Google in the first quarter.
A situation that is debated in the United States, where the question of the domination of the tech giants is increasingly being asked.
Google, Facebook, Apple ... Gafa's profits are getting higher and higher. And the question begins to arise in the United States: is it completely healthy?
And to ask the question is already a little to answer it.
Let's start with the scale of these super or hyper profits: Google posted a net profit of $ 17.9 billion in the first quarter, almost three times more than last year.
But do the math: that's a billion and a half dollars in profit a week, over $ 200 million a day.
You will tell me: so much the better for them, it is thanks to these profits that Google and other Facebook, Apple or Amazon invest and finance innovation.
Except that there is a time when too much profit can also be a sign of a lack of competition, the sign that a group has become so powerful that it adopts predatory behavior to turn into a super annuitant.
And we are there with the Gafa?
In the United States, and in particular in the Biden administration, more and more influential voices think so and even want to act to curb the power of these digital empires.
Which, basically, clash with the American liberal tradition: the United States is the country of free enterprise or a Google or a Facebook now have sufficient resources to kill their competitors as soon as they become a little threatening .
As soon as they threaten their income, their position is acquired.
In short, the tech giants are undermining this spirit of competition and free enterprise which is the foundation of the American economy.
In any case, this is the criticism made of them.
And the Biden administration says it is ready to cross swords.
Yes ! Joe Biden has just appointed a 32-year-old lawyer, Lina Khan, who has become known for her radically new vision of the fight against monopolies as Competition Commissioner. In the classic American tradition, a company is deemed to be in a dominant position if it charges consumers more for its products. Lina Khan has shown that this vision is no longer valid in the digital age and that the criterion for judging whether a company is dominant, and therefore must be eventually dismantled, is to see if the consumer really has a choice.
We can see that that changes everything: if a search engine is archi-dominant like Google or if an Amazon trusts online commerce, there is a problem. The super-profits of the Gafa are also a sign of their dominant position. But will they one day be dismantled? This is an other story.