There is a new antitrust bill for big tech companies, and this law will have the biggest impact on Google.
In an article published by "Vox", writer Sarah Morrison says that a group of lawmakers - led by Senator Mike Lee - introduced competition and transparency legislation in the Digital Advertising Act last Thursday, as this legislation would prevent any company with more than $ 20 billion in revenue. Digital advertising, from owning multiple parts of the digital advertising chain.
Accordingly, Google will have to choose between being a buyer or a seller, or running ads interchangeably between the two, as the company currently owns all three parts, and has faced allegations that it is using this power to unfairly manipulate this market to its advantage.
The writer quoted Google's response, which said - in a statement - that this "wrong legislation, came at the wrong time, and focused on the wrong target," and that its advertising tools produce better quality ads and protect user privacy.
The writer explained that the new legislation is part of the growing antitrust problems at Google, and while the media has paid more attention to the antitrust issues of competitors "Apple" and "Meta", it is possible that Google is in greater trouble than any Another tech giant, state and federal governments have filed 4 antitrust lawsuits, all within one year, and most states have sued Google over their search business.
The writer pointed out that the legislation - which will turn into laws by the end of next summer - will prevent Google from giving its own products preference over the platforms it owns and manages. US online innovation and choice Self-preferring over platforms owned and operated by big tech companies, for example, will not allow Google to give its own products a prominent place in Google search results, unless those products earn their due for that place.
Google was seen as a huge improvement over slower search engines that are easier to manipulate (Getty Images)
The writer indicated that all this addresses the strength and spread of Google;
The once humble search engine company has become so deeply ingrained in everything we do online that it's hard to imagine how the internet would work without it, but that power may have been obtained and maintained unfairly, in ways that hurt competitors and consumers, even with Many Google products remain popular and free.
This was not always the case, as Google was once seen as a startup that changed the industry, and was a huge improvement over the slower, easier-to-manipulate search engines that were produced by Yahoo and Altavista. Its algorithms showed better results, quickly became the market leader, and then changed the market again by placing ads specific to what people would like on search results, an idea that the company got from an unknown search engine called Go2. Google's search advertising has been so successful that this trade is its biggest source of revenue to date. In 2021, search ads raised nearly $150 billion, more than Google's combined revenue streams.
The author pointed out that the Federal Trade Commission turned its attention to Google in 2011, and opened an investigation into the company's alleged anti-competitive behavior in search and advertising, but did not follow up on it.
In return, it tended to either obtain agreements from Google to change some business practices, or to decide that Google's actions were justified because it improved its services and the experience of its users, and this decision was blamed - in part - on the Obama administration's good relationship with the company.
The author argues that the government has continually underestimated the size that Google would become if left to grow unchecked, but Google is not the same company it was 10 years ago, and is not seen in the same way, and it appears that it will finally fall under the weight of the antitrust account. While the extent of the damage inflicted on them remains in the future.
Google owns about 65% of the web browser market (Shutterstock)
How does Google harm competition?
For Luther Lowe, senior vice president of public policy at Yelp and a longtime critic of Google, this moment is the culmination of more than a decade of work trying to convince lawmakers and enforcers that Google has illegally entrenched its power, profiting from Hurting companies like his.
His company found itself competing with Google when Google rolled out its own version of user-generated reviews on business performance, placing its reviews at the top of its search engine results, above Yelp.
According to the author, Lowe stresses that he is not the only person arguing that Google's dominance makes it impossible for anyone else to compete, and while Google says it has competitors in all its markets, it also enjoys the majority of market share, and it is estimated that it has about 90% of the market share. The global market for search engines.
In web browsers, “Google Chrome” owns about 65%, and in mobile operating systems, its “Android” owns about 70% worldwide.
Being large and successful or even a monopoly is not illegal in America, but when that company begins to use its dominance to harm competition and consumers, antitrust violations must be looked at.
This is what lawsuits address and what the proposed antitrust bills are trying to ban.
How can Google harm consumers?
The writer believes that although there are many free Google products, the lack of competition will therefore not increase their prices, and it is possible that every subscriber regularly uses at least one of the many Google services, and may also like it, but Google has become the most popular search engine because its creators discovered A way to get better and faster results than competitors.
According to the author, as Google's dominance grew, the company also changed its results page from a simple list of links designed to get users away from its platform as quickly as possible, to a page designed to keep them on its platform for as long as possible, which is why the results changed. Search from a list of links with some ads at the top to a website full of Google specials.
The writer stated that Google says that these additional features make its search results better, but if Google's offerings are not as good as the rest of the results, then Google is mostly using its power to push the user towards a poor product, and the best results may not be suitable for him.
The user may also spend more money on apps when using the Google Play Store, since the apps are obligated to use Google's in-app payment system and pay a large amount for them, and these increased costs may apply to digital ads as well.
“If the advertiser is paying a higher competitive price, that means that he is paying a monopoly price to get these ads, and the consumer will eventually bear the cost that will be included in the price of the product,” says Scott Morton, a professor of economics at Yale University in the US.
The Open Application Markets Act will force the Google Play App Store to follow certain rules (Reuters)
How can Google be relatively unaffected by this?
Google has never faced more threat to its business model and structure than it does today.
But lawsuits, especially large antitrust lawsuits, take years to resolve, and it is never certain that they will take a governmental format.
The Department of Justice case was filed in fall 2020, and a ruling is not expected until fall 2023.
With that in mind, one might ask, could all these attorneys general and the Department of Justice be wrong about Google?
Adam Kovacevich, who was Google's director of communications and public policy during the FTC investigation, believes the search lawsuits have no better chance of success now than the FTC had in 2013 when it chose not to pursue a case against Google.
Bipartisan antitrust bills introduced last summer could be a faster path to making change at the core of the Silicon Valley world, although it wouldn't have as much of an impact on Google's business model as the negative outcome of a lawsuit.
But Yen, of the Swiss company Proton, and Lowe of Yelp, say they think it's a long way for the bills to be able to make the competition arena more fair. ".