It is the biggest blow yet to Big Tech, and it could well change the way you, me, and everyone use the internet. A US Court, on Tuesday morning (India time), ruled that Google was a monopolist, in what could well pave the way for a domino effect.
According to Amit P. Mehta, judge at the District of Columbia court in the US, the search engine behemoth abused its monopoly over the search business, in a case filed by the US government’s Department of Justice. The case accused Google of illegally cementing its dominance, in part, by paying billions of dollars to other companies, particularly mobile phone heavyweights Apple and Samsung, to make Google their default search engine.
“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Mehta said in his ruling.
The ruling is the strongest in the long-going campaign, both by civil society as well as governments, to rein in Big Tech companies like Google, Meta (parent of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram) etc. While some severe penalties, some running above a billion, were imposed on Google earlier by European regulators, this is the strongest pushback yet, and reinforced this time by the justice system no less.
It could well spark off renewed interest in reigning in Big Tech, with cases pending against all the big names across the world.
ALSO READ: 'Monopolist' Google squashed search engine rivals, violated antitrust laws: US judge
"This judgement is of great significance and a warning shot for all of us to take cognisance of the developing monopolies amongst the most popular Internet utilities,” said Sanjay Padode, president, Vijayabhoomi University, and founder of JAGSoM.
“In my view that the competition is only going to get tougher for these companies,” he added.
In India too, companies like Google have been at the crosshairs of the Competition Commission of India, the official watchdog. On Monday, the Alliance of Digital India Foundation was reported to have filed a complaint with the CCI against Google over its alleged anti-competitive practices in the online advertising space.
While Google has said it will appeal the decision, the more important things to watch out for are two — one, whether this spurs off similar action and judgements against other Big Tech firms in the US, considering that many, like Apple, are already battling similar cases. Authorities in the US have long claimed that Google through its control of the search business and Apple through its iPhone ecosystem created what they termed as "walled gardens," locking in consumers from changing to alternative services.
Second, and perhaps the worst-case scenario for Google (and for others), is whether America’s stringent antitrust body will step in and break up the entity. In the past, companies that dominated the market too much have faced this ultimate action, with the most famous example that of telecom major Ma Bell, which was broken up by the government in 1984 into seven entities, like the still-surviving AT&T.
Whatever the outcome, it is quite possible that these actions could check the unbridled power of big tech companies, though not only will they fight it every inch of the way, they will find new tech-fuelled modes to get around them as well, continuing a ‘click’-and-dagger race that has always found governments playing catch up pretty belatedly.
“The world needs a systematic change and it needs to address this differently by developing universal regulations that prevent such monopolies reaching a destructive level,” said Padode. “A lot of the success of these utilities is based on their ability to detect human behaviour patterns and build business models that thrive on this personal information. Since every consumer plays an important role in making such utilities successful, in my view there should be a user tax imposed on such utilities that is distributed to the users of such utilities. In short, I must get paid for my behaviour and data which is the backbone for such utilities and this distribution of wealth could prevent the building of such monolith monopolies.”
