The ubiquitous, augmentative and nutritious worth of this new fish was dwarfed by its insidious ability to annihilate, or severely diminish, both competitive and unaffiliated species.
Big Tech corporations like Google started out in much the same way. Originally conceived as a free internet search engine for the masses, Google quickly set up a programmatic advertising platform that promised a more targeted and effective promotional channel for corporations, and a more rewarding experience for consumers. But growth and profit considerations forced Google to maximise scale by integrating vertically into every aspect of the business, by forging exclusive deals to manipulate choice and preference, and by using predatory algorithms to influence the cognitive and behavioural processes that guide free markets.
This, in a nutshell, was the conclusion drawn by Columbia district court judge Ajay Mehta in an August 5 ruling that found Google guilty of monopolising the market for online search and search text advertising.
As a result, the US Justice Department has been asked to ready more draconian proposals to ‘restore competition’. Word on the street has it that these proposals could include:
A breakup of Google’s integrated platform, which could see a complete divestment of the Android OS and/or the Chrome browser.
Policy measures that will force Google to share data with its rivals to enable a level playing field in the future (including not forcing equipment manufacturers from signing exclusive agreements to gain access to Gmail and Google Play).
Ex ante regulation to ensure that Google doesn’t enjoy any unfair advantage in future AI product development (no forcing websites to share content for use in Google’s AI offers to be included in search results).
Google’s comeuppance has been a long time coming, though US authorities have been loath to acknowledge or punish the transgressions of its homegrown digital behemoth. Not so elsewhere.In 2017, the European Commission fined Google ¤2.42 bn for ‘abusing dominance as a search engine by giving illegal advantage to its own comparison-shopping service’. It was found that Google implemented fundamental strategic changes to prioritise its comparison-shopping service since 2008. Instead of competing on the basis of a neutral merit-based system that maximised consumer advantage, Google used its dominance in general internet search to amplify the placement of their own comparison services, while including criteria in search algorithms that demoted the placement ranking of that of their rivals.
In 2020, CCI, in its ‘Market Study on eCommerce in India’, found that while Google lists competing products and sellers to give consumers the ability to search and compare alternative offerings, it also forged exclusive agreements between brands and platforms. Exclusivity related to either a product being made solely available on a single platform, or a brand being exclusively available in a certain product category.
This was, therefore, no longer about self-promotion or rival demotion. It was about eliminating competition altogether. As a result, India’s Standing Committee Report of the Committee on Digital Competition Law 2024 identified 10 anti-competitive practices, of which one was ‘exclusive ties and arrangements with business users or sellers, thus preventing them from dealing with other enterprises’.
These and sundry other findings have resulted in hefty fines for Google in these and other jurisdictions — over $9 bn in the last 7 years. What remains true, however, is that once an organisation exceeds a certain threshold of wealth and power, its excesses can no longer be curtailed or discouraged by implementing fines, as it exercises an undue influence on legal process, utilising its resources to delay justice, allowing the damage to continue unabated.
US authorities, including Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission, must now decide how far they will go to enforce both the letter and spirit of antitrust law. There are two routes available:
To break up Google so that different subparts have competing interests and financial .
To tighten regulatory processes that will try to micromanage fair-market outcomes. This option, however, will not align with the free-market position championed by the US (unlike the EU) as its policy paradigm.
Anything less, therefore, than a dismemberment akin to that of AT&T will be an exercise in futility, a deferment that will need to be revisited, inevitably, in the future. In the interim, irrespective of what US lawmakers decide, GoI could — if it’s serious about reining in digital monopolies — force Google to create a separate legal entity entirely located within Indian territory, which will be held accountable under Indian law if the company wishes to serve the Indian market.
Ultimately, the problem with carp is that they brook no delay. Procrastination, despite the weight of evidence, only accelerates their ascendancy. And when only carp remain, there really will be nothing left to carp about.