Greg's Corner

What the EU’s fine of Google could mean for the US

Google has become a victim of its own success. Its name is so synonymous with web search that its brand has become a verb. When someone has a question you don’t say “Why don’t you Bing that?”. Just on search alone, Google possesses close to 80% of the global search engine market share. Google also boasts the most popular webmail client on the internet with their GMail. It has four times as many users as its next closest competitor, Yahoo Mail. While Google has some minor competition to its popular services, for all intents and purposes it is a virtual monopoly. So when the European Union handed down a $2.7 billion fine for violating EU antitrust regulations, you might think it was just because Google is so much bigger than everyone else and that’s sort of true. What lies deeper than that is it appears Google wants to remain the size they are, at the expense of anyone who may get in their way, no matter how small that anyone might be.

Google is often chided for having the corporate motto of “Don’t be evil” as it has gobbled up competitive services and shut them down. Now, the EU says Google has committed another evil in trying to favor their own services over the services of other companies. Since its inception the EU has had a hardline stance against large corporations that engage in antitrust practices. They famously fined Microsoft for not offering a competing browser and media player with the Windows platform. At the heart of the matter is the belief Google gave top priority to Google Shopping in search results over competitors offering a similar price comparing service. Yet while promoting its own services Google would also allegedly remove the links of competing services claiming they violated Google’s SEO rules, the same SEO rules that are often vague and can change at a whim. Some might even say they change to however it suits Google and not the sites it indexes.

While the EU has a reputation of combating antitrust practices, the US does not have the same viewpoint that the EU does. In the US Google is in the catbird’s seat. The US hasn’t broken up a major monopoly since it broke up AT&T into the ‘Baby Bells’ back in the 1980s. Since then the Baby Bells have all since merged back into two separate companies in Verizon and AT&T. Cable companies and Internet service providers, which are often one and the same, often have regional monopolies with no real choice for consumers, yet nothing is ever done about that. While the Federal Trade Commission has prevented some mergers from taking place in order to avoid one company having too much of the market, it hasn’t done much in the way of promoting competition, while a company like Google has basically muscled their way into a monopoly.

We’re not saying Google doesn’t have a right to do business, it should just do business equitably. Think about it for a moment. If Google came up with a version of your business and promoted their version over your business, how long would it be before your business started feeling the pinch? With the vast resources at Google’s command, that could happen to any number of businesses and industries. Just like the banks in the 2008 financial crisis were deemed ‘too big to fail’, Google is too big to succeed without sacrificing a large number of worthy competitors.