Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Google is having problems in its home country, the United States (US). The search engine giant is accused of violating Antitrust Laws with tactics used to dominate the internet and online advertising.
The US government will soon complete the evidentiary stage of the trial with Google.
In a trial that began on September 12 and is scheduled to end this week, the US Department of Justice is trying to prove that Google is a company that abuses its power for its own gain.
There are 5 important points you need to know about the Google case, which is said to be the biggest in history. Below is summarized CNBC IndonesiaTuesday (21/11/2023), from Reuters.
1. Google paid trillions
Witnesses from telecommunications giant Verizon, cellphone manufacturer Samsung, and Google itself, admitted that the company paid US$ 26 billion in 2021 to ensure its search engine became the default service on cellphones and browsers.
This is to keep Google’s market share dominant in the industry. In his testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted that it was important to make its services installed by default on cellphones, tablets and laptops.
“We certainly see the value,” he said.
2. Google and Microsoft are pitted against each other
Kevin Murphy, an expert testifying for Google and a lecturer at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, argued that Apple and other parties are pitting Google and Microsoft, which own the Bing search engine, against each other in the industry.
The large budget spent by Google to maintain its search engine position shows how tight the competition is between Google and Microsoft.
3. Google’s dominance strangles advertisers
Chief Media Officer for UM Worldwide, Joshua Lowcock, is a witness for the US government. He believes that the dominance of search engines has made these giants also dominate the digital advertising market.
Thanks to this monopoly, Google has arbitrarily raised online advertising prices in the last 10 years. Google’s Vice President and Advertising Manager, Jerry Dischler, admitted that the company earned more than US$ 100 billion in 2020 from advertising on the search engine.
4. Google denies monopoly
Google thinks the government is wrong to say it is breaking the law to maintain its huge market share. According to Google, its search engine is popular with people around the world because of its quality.
Because, if users are not satisfied with the default search engine, they still have the option to switch to another search engine.
Apple’s Senior VP of Services, Eddie Cue, praised Google’s search engine and said he had meetings with Microsoft and DuckDuckGo, which uses Bing search, but found it inadequate.
5. Default status is not important
Even though the company has paid billions of US dollars, Google’s lawyers argue that default search engine status does not actually guarantee user loyalty if they are dissatisfied.
Google’s chief lawyer, John Schmidtlein, said that Microsoft was the default service on several HP bundles from Verizon in 2008, BlackBerry and Nokia in 2011. However, the majority of Bing users still run to Google.
Google claims that it does not have a monopoly because it always strives to improve the quality of its services and protect user privacy. If it were a monopoly, Google wouldn’t care whether its users were satisfied or not.
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