Illegal Search Engine Business: It’s Coming to Google

In August a US federal judge said, “Google is a monopolist and has acted this way to maintain its monopoly.” Therefore many of Google’s search engine businesses are illegal. If it becomes legally binding, it would be a major success for the plaintiffs, namely the US government and the governments of almost all US states. Now they are giving a vision of how they want to approach Google. If they can convince the court, things will get uncomfortable for the data company. But perhaps he is not afraid of being completely destroyed.

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According to the partial ruling, Google has a monopoly on general search engines, but not on specific search engines; The group also has a monopoly in the submarket of text advertising on general search engines. That alone cannot be objected to, but according to the court, Google had illegally exploited these monopolies to hinder competition.

The plaintiffs are now outlining their potential proposal for an outline plan in a communication to the court. In this case, the court’s requirements must address four areas: Google’s measures to pre-install its search engine on devices and software, including any payments to third parties; Generating and displaying search results; economies of scale in advertising and its monetization; and the collection and use of large amounts of data.

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In each area, plaintiffs reserve the right to seek remedies that could range from restrictions on Google’s freedom of contract to non-discrimination requirements, obligations to cooperate and share data, and “structural” requirements. The latter means the spin-off of parts of the company. This particularly serious interference is mentioned only twice in the following, once as a punitive measure if Google does not comply with other court requirements.

No pre-installation of Google

Otherwise, the document submitted to the court on Tuesday only mentions “structural” measures regarding pre-installation or otherwise prominent placement of search engines in devices and software. Google should be prevented from using offerings like the Chrome browser, the Play App Store, or its Android operating system to give its search engine and related services an advantage over competitors. But even here the compulsion to sell shares of the company is not the first parameter. Perhaps the proposed “restrictions or bans” for pre-installation contracts or revenue shares from search engines are sufficient.

Plaintiffs probably want to restrict the selection window in which users can choose between Google and a necessarily limited number of other search engines. Because when it comes to decisions like this, the most well-known brand almost always wins. This fit with an obligation imposed by plaintiff US states: an advertising campaign financed by Google that shows users how to choose the best search engine for their needs.

Disclosure of data and algorithms

The foundation of a good search engine is data. That’s a lot. Recognizing this, plaintiffs are thinking loudly about forcing Google to disclose their data – either in full or through defined interfaces (APIs) for queries. Third parties may use the information to develop competing search engines and other services. This includes not only raw data, but also indexes and algorithms created by Google, including AI models, search results, and information used to rank search engines (ranking signals), “especially on mobile. Search results include” devices. Google may also be required to disclose the ads it displays to make it easier for competitors to build competitive advertising businesses.

Governments want to take data protection concerns into account, but do not want to see them used as an excuse. If Google believes it cannot meaningfully share certain data with third parties, then the data company itself should not be allowed to use this data or even store it. . The document also addresses other measures, without being specific, that “reduce the cost and complexity of indexing and storing data for competing general search engines”.

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