Google’s future as provider of the world’s most dominant search engine rests in the hands of a federal court judge who last month ruled the company has a monopoly on internet search.
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n a hearing Friday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Amit Mehta will start to strip Google of its monopoly power after previously finding Google’s distribution deals with companies that make Google the default search engine on devices, including Apple, violated federal antitrust law.
Federal government lawsuits against Silicon Valley’s top three technology titans and Seattle-based Amazon, which all amassed colossal market dominance and riches with little pushback from authorities, signal a shift toward bipartisan and public mistrust of the role the companies play in society and the U.S. economy.
UC Berkeley law school adjunct professor and professional mediator Christopher Hockett, an antitrust expert who has closely followed the Google search case, answered questions in an interview last month about the Google search lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department, and how it fits with the other court actions.
Q: What would search would look like if Google had competition?
A: Google has had a very high and very stable market share — since 2009 it’s been over 80% in general search service. The assumption behind Judge Mehta’s ruling is the world would be better.
Q: Why did this lawsuit come about after years of Google’s dominance in search?
A: This case was brought in the waning months of the Trump administration, in October 2020. It kind of underlines the bipartisan interest in prosecuting these claims against at least Google if not the whole Big Tech world.
On the left there’s hostility toward the tech companies because they’re led by tech moguls who have lots of money and seem to act with impunity, and at least according to that view they are presiding over monopolies that don’t have consumers’ interests at heart.
On the right the political narrative is that Big Tech players, especially social media players, are biased against conservative points of view and they’re censoring them. Although the services of most of these companies remain extremely popular, the companies and the people that run them are, with the public, …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
