Meet at the bar. After the official procedure initiated by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and several states against Google for anti-competitive practices in January, a lawsuit against the Mountain View giant remained hypothetical. He is no longer. From September 12, and for several weeks, the Google empire will be scrutinized. At least, in part. If the file has alleviated some grievances along the way, it will be a question in particular of understanding by what means its search engine reaches more than 90% of market share in the United States. Enough, therefore, to afford an unprecedented dive into the heart of its business. Because this very clear domination in the search can be observed not only across the Atlantic, but wherever the company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin has deployed.
Last year, Google earned $162 billion in revenue worldwide from advertising services associated with this division. By way of comparison, this is double that of a group like LVMH over the same period. “His brand name has become so ubiquitous that dictionaries recognize it as a verb,” summarizes Amit Mehta, the District of Columbia court judge handling the case, in an official document unveiled on August 4th. However, the competition is not lacking. “Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo, to name a few, continues the magistrate. But their market penetration is nothing compared to that of Google.” Bing, its main competitor, barely manages to convince 6% of users in the United States, and 3% worldwide, neck and neck with Yahoo.
Microsoft, again, has not always found itself in the position of victim. Many similarities exist between this mega-trial to come against Google and the procedure brought against the company created by Bill Gates, which dates back to October 1998. At that time, American justice attacked the domination of its Internet Explorer browser, installed free of charge in the Windows operating system. The martyr was then called Netscape and its Navigator software. The DoJ’s angles of attack, almost 25 years apart, have some commonalities. “At the heart of the current procedure are Google’s agreements with operators, smartphone manufacturers, browsers, in order to install its default search engine”, explains Julien Guinot-Deléry, lawyer specializing in competition law. at Gide Loyrette Nouel. Illegal contracts between the firm currently headed by Sundar Pichai and other giants like Apple, Samsung, or Verizon, are suspected by the government. At the time of Microsoft, another partnership – with the supplier AOL this time – had found itself at the center of the discussions. Technical details differ between the two stories, but the interest is always the same: to produce a powerful and almost invisible incentive in favor of its product. Another element pushes the parallelism between the two files a little further. If Microsoft largely dominated the world of the PC thanks to Windows, Google is today the key player in the era of the smartphone, where its Android operating system equips more than seven out of ten devices across the planet.
“It’s not the 1990s”
“Symbolically, we are once again attacking a historic product, which happens to be a major gateway to the Internet, namely the Google search engine”, also underlines Eve Renaud-Chouraqui, director of the Competition Division. and economic regulation at HAAS Avocats. In addition, as for Microsoft, whose investigations began at the start of the 1990s, the time between the first investigations and a summons to court was particularly long. The American authorities have been trying for more than ten years to lift the veil on these practices. “These files are extremely complex and technical to mount”, pleads Julien Guinot-Deléry. The recent political support of the Biden administration in the antitrust fight, against Google but also the Gafam in general, has been decisive in getting to this point.
Google’s defense should finally have an air of deja vu. “It’s not the 1990s”, has already hammered the company, implying that competition has increased considerably since then. The generative artificial intelligence embedded in Bing, or even the search integrated into applications like TikTok are arguments in its favor. But then, why are the market shares hardly changing? “The story we’ve always heard is that its search engine offers the most relevance, the best results,” says Eve Renaud-Chouraqui. “People choose to use Google because it’s helpful,” said Kent Walker, the beleaguered company’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer.
The sequel is not written. Microsoft had advanced confidently to the bar, told in a fascinating report the researcher at the CNRS, Hervé Dumez, in review Social, shortly after the events. But the tenacity and bite of the prosecution, represented by lawyer David Boies, in the face of unconvincing witnesses on the defense side had helped to turn the tide. Even its legendary founder, turned philanthropist, had not shown himself in his best light. “Bill Gates’ emails, seized during the investigation, shed a dark light on the character: Gates sees his firm as permanently threatened and he seems ready to do anything to break his potential competitors”, further noted Hervé Dumez.
Towards a colossal fine?
Thunderbolt: November 5, 1999, Judge Jackson says that Microsoft has “a monopoly position.” A few months later, on April 28, 2000, the Department of Justice asked the judge to divide Microsoft into two separate companies. Does Google risk the same fate today? “Based on this procedure alone, it seems unlikely, explains Julien Guinot-Deléry. This hypothesis exists, however, in the more specific market of programmatic advertising, which Europe is attackingand of which Google owns the main players.” “We see no alternative,” said Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner, as recently as June. The United States had also regretted, in January, the “control of many aspects of the digital advertising market” by Google, “including the technology used by website publishers to sell advertising space and the largest exchange where ads are sold .” Another trial could take place.
About the case which will open in September, “a pecuniary sanction, beyond the reputational aspect, which would have a real financial impact for Google”, is the most likely outcome in the event of defeat, estimates Eve Renaud-Chouraqui. The amount would therefore be in the billions of dollars. “On the other hand, the company could be forced to make commitments in order to change its practices.” Of course, a Google victory is entirely possible. And, ultimately, Microsoft did pretty well on paper, since the rollup was overturned on appeal at the turn of the 2000s. However, the true impact of this type of case often only emerges years later. late. In an interview given four years ago, Bill Gates attributed Windows’ failed move to mobile – giving way to Android – to this “distraction” that he said was the antitrust lawsuits. If the excuse can make you smile, Google, with strong competition in the booming AI field, could still be worried about it.