has called out the big irony in the recent
antitrust court ruling
against the company. The ruling, announced on August 5, found the tech giant guilty of abusing its dominant position in online search and advertising market. Kent Walker, president of global affairs at Google said that the company acknowledges the court’s recognition of its superior
search engine
but disagrees with the ruling that it abused its position.
In a statement Google said, what can also be termed as the ‘Big Irony’ is that while the decision recognises that Google offers the best search engine, but it doesn’t want it to be easily available to everyone. The court ruling said that Google offers “the industry’s highest quality search engine”.
Here’s Google’s statement in full:
“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available. We appreciate the Court’s finding that Google is ‘the industry’s highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the trust of hundreds of millions of daily users,’ that Google ‘has long been the best search engine, particularly on mobile devices,’ ‘has continued to innovate in search’ and that ‘Apple and Mozilla occasionally assess Google’s search quality relative to its rivals and find Google’s to be superior.’ Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal. As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”
What exactly the US judge said in his ruling
The 10-week trial also saw Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO
Satya Nadella
and Apple executive Eddy Cue take to the witness box. After their testimonies, Judge Mehta said that Google built and defended its illegal search monopoly. In the ruling, seen as a major win for the
US Department of Justice
(DoJ), Judge Amit Mehta said that “Google is a monopolist.”
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reached the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the
Sherman Act
.”
“Sure, users can access Google’s rivals by switching the default search access point or by downloading a rival search app or browser. But the market reality is that users rarely do so.”
“The default is extremely valuable real estate. Because many users simply stick to searching with the default, Google receives billions of queries every day through those access points.”
“Google, of course, recognizes that losing defaults would dramatically impact its bottom line. For instance, Google has projected that losing the Safari default would result in a significant drop in queries and billions of dollars in lost revenues.”
“The distribution agreements have caused a third key anticompetitive effect: They have reduced the incentive to invest and innovate in search.”
“There is no genuine ‘competition for the contract.’ Google has no true competitor.”
“Google has not achieved market dominance by happenstance. It has hired thousands of highly skilled engineers, innovated consistently, and made shrewd business decisions. The result is the industry’s highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the trust of hundreds of millions of daily users.”