In August 2024, Google was in front of a federal judge charged by a Department of Justice (DOJ) and 17 other states, stating that Google broke antitrust laws. The court ruled that Google is an illegal monopoly and has multiple counts of breaking antitrust laws. Their focus was their $31 billion ad business. This has allowed Google to thrive by matching website publishers with advertisers and the possibility of selling their user’s personal data. At this historic court appearance, the federal government could finally rein in big tech companies, starting at the top of the food chain.
Their decision found that Google has been an active beneficiary of monopolization in two specific markets, apparently paying competitors such as Apple and Mozilla billions of dollars to become second-tier search engines. By paying the competitors to become default search engines, merging was an anticompetitive precaution, using the size of their business to have businesses use Google products and manipulating key business in each part of the ad-tech stack. Google also drove up prices for marketers, which began to restrain revenue for websites. These tactics have allowed Google to keep a hold of its search engine dominance and helped marketers pay Apple billions to market their products on their search engine.
In recent years, Google has acquired up to half their possible threats to their advertising business, such as DoubleClick or AdMeld, before they became too much of a threat. The DOJ stated that the acquisitions of companies under Google’s control allows Google to self-deal. The U.S. Army even filed a complaint against Google, saying that it had paid $100 million since 2019 and had been hurt due to Google’s practices.
By doing this, they suppressed competition, became an illegal monopoly and violated the Sherman Act.
The Sherman Act, created in 1890 and amended in 1914, was designed to promote economic and competitive fairness among companies. It helps regulate contracts or conspiracies that could suppress interstate commerce or trade. It also prohibits monopolizations or attempts to gain market control under one company and agreements amongst competitors to fix wages, allocate consumers or rig bids.
After weeks of trying to figure out how to manage Google’s monopoly, it has been recently announced that Google’s world must now open its doors to independent developers to bring their own Android operating systems for three years, amongst other changes. Google must also distribute third-party app stores on Android and give them full access to all the same apps that the Google Play store has. They must allow developers to begin charging users through their own private system, which now has access to Google Play Billing. Finally, Google must halt their attempts to seduce app makers into prioritizing the Google Play Store over other stores. Google declared that they would take this verdict before an appeals court. Still, they must wait until their other case, which charges them for monopolizing the advertising tech sector verdict, has been decided.
These recent developments in the federal courts have forced a few tech giants to take measures so they do not face possible arraignment. The New York Times reported that CEO of Epic recently announced that he will reduce the fees developers need to pay them to distribute their apps on iOS and Android and that app makers must pay 15% to 30% of profits made via Apple’s or Google’s systems.
Over the past year, Tech Giants have faced backlash over the past year against their control over several industries. They have been hit hardest in Europe, but it seems America will no longer turn a blind eye to their misconduct.
