How Google’s Antitrust Case Could Impact Your Searching Practices

Should government regulators succeed in the largest antitrust trial in the United States in 25 years, it is highly probable that significant alterations will occur, ultimately weakening the stronghold of a search engine that currently shapes the online experience for billions of individuals.

As the 10-week trial into Google’s business practices nears its midpoint, it’s still too early to say whether U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta will side with the Justice Department in trying to handcuff one of the world’s most dominant tech companies.

If Mehta rules that Google has had an illegal search monopoly, the punishment could open up new online avenues for consumers and businesses to find information, entertainment and commerce.

“A judge could force Google to open the floodgates so more startups and third-party competitors can put more competitive pressure on Google, creating higher-quality online services,” said Luther Lowe, Yelp’s vice president of public affairs. The online business review site has been one of Google’s harshest critics, despite spending more than a decade fighting a strategy that favors its own services in search results.

Google’s search engine earned its huge market share by providing people with almost instantly useful information on the billions of websites that have been indexed since Larry Page and Sergey Brin, former graduate students at Stanford University, developed the technology in the late 1990s.

In addition to its technological prowess, Google also pays billions of dollars each year to ensure that its search engine is the default choice for answering queries on the world’s most popular smartphones and web browsers.

These agreements don’t prevent users from switching to another search engine in their settings, but it’s a tedious process that few people bother to navigate. That reality is why Google is willing to pay so much for privileged status, according to the Justice Department.

Google’s payments for prominent search rankings — including an estimated $15 billion to $20 billion a year to Apple alone — are at the forefront of the Justice Department’s case, so it’s likely the judge would deny them if he rules against Google.

If that happens, experts believe the most likely solution in the US would be to require smartphones and web browsers to display a palette of different search engines during the installation process. It’s already being done in Europe, and all signs point to most people still choosing Google.

This could be because they believe Google really is the best search engine – as Google claims in its defense – or they simply trust the brand over competing options like Microsoft’s Bing or the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella claimed that Google has an almost hypnotic hold on users when he testified earlier this month during the trial.

“You get up in the morning, brush your teeth and search Google,” Nadella said. He then added that the only way to break the habit is to change the default choice.

As long as the decision doesn’t exclude Google’s competitors from paying for the automatic search engine for smartphones and web browsers, Microsoft could buy Bing’s default position — a chance Nadella said he would take.

“There are default settings — the only thing that matters when search behavior changes,” Nadella testified.

Florian Schaub, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, believes the fairest outcome of the lawsuit would be a blanket ban on all default contracts between the two companies.

“The current environment is shaped by the architecture designed by the big corporations that dominate the space,” Schaub said. “The government can add neutrality to this and give consumers real choices. If people still choose to use Google, at least that’s a consumer choice, which would be better than people sticking with the default settings because they’re conditioned to it.”

In a statement during the trial, Apple executive Eddy Cue said the company has adopted Google as the preferred search engine for the iPhone and other products because it provides the best experience for its customers. That stance has fueled speculation that if Apple is blocked from using Google as the default search engine on the iPhone, it might flex its muscles as the world’s richest company to develop its own search technology.

However, a blanket ban on default search deals, which have been hugely profitable for Apple and other companies such as wireless provider Verizon, could have unintended consequences, such as raising the prices of other popular products.

“If Google stops paying big bucks to Apple and other companies, they might raise the prices of their devices,” said David Olson, an assistant professor at Boston College Law School who follows the antitrust litigation. “I don’t think they’ll be huge, but we could see some price increases because Google has largely subsidized the cost of devices like the iPhone.”

Another side effect of banning default search agreements is that Google could still have a dominant advantage in search if people continue to actively choose it, and the company would have billions of dollars more to spend in other areas it actually owned. didn’t have to at all.

“Google must think they’re getting a lot out of those default contracts, but maybe they’re not really that valuable,” Olson said. “Maybe their cost-benefit analysis is off and they get more money and just as much dominance. That would be ironic.”

Although the lawsuit focuses on Google’s search engine, the government’s victory could have broader ramifications for the entire tech industry if Mehta were to rule that all default settings are anticompetitive and ban all default settings in settings.

“If one of the results of the experiment is that there needs to be more neutral choices, that wouldn’t just affect Google on Android phones, it could affect Apple and the iPhone,” Schaub said. “Does that mean Google phones have to offer (Apple’s virtual assistant) Siri as an alternative to Google Assistant? Or should Apple devices offer Google Assistant?

Such a decision would open a crack in the digital wall Apple has built around the iPhone to give its own software and certain pet products like Siri exclusive access to the device’s more than one billion users, setting the stage for another potential legal battle. .