‘Google Is a Monopolist’ in Search Says U.S. Judge ⇥ arstechnica.com

Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica:

Google just lost a massive antitrust trial over its sprawling search business, as US district judge Amit Mehta released his ruling, showing that he sided with the US Department of Justice in the case that could disrupt how billions of people search the web.

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta wrote in his opinion. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”

Google will surely contest this finding when its implications are known; Mehta has not announced what actions the government will take against Google.

The opinion is full of details about the precise nature of how Google search and its ads work together, Google’s relationship with Apple and other third parties, and how its business has changed over time. For example, the judge notes Google adjusted ad pricing to maintain a specific growth target, and increased it incrementally to mask it in the typical fluctuations of ad costs. He also cites a finding that “thirteen months of user data acquired by Google is equivalent to over 17 years of data on Bing” in informing the quality of search results. Meanwhile, Google pays Apple a redacted amount through its revenue sharing agreement for default placement in Safari, and it pays for searches performed through Chrome on Apple devices as well. There is a lot more in here, and I fully intend on re-reading the opinion with a bunch of questions I have in mind.

Google really does have great search results a lot of the time, even though it has stumbled in recent years. DuckDuckGo is my default but I find myself often turning to Google for local results, very old results, and news. (DuckDuckGo is powered by Bing, which prioritizes MSN-syndicated versions of articles that I do not want.) Google has not fallen into the same trap as Bing by wholly cluttering the results page. Microsoft still has no taste.

But two things can be true: Google can be the best search engine for most people, most of the time, because it is very good; and, also, Google can have abused its market-leading position to avoid competition and maintain its advertising revenue. Those are not inconsistent with each other. In fact, per the judge’s citation of how long it would take for Bing to amass the same information about user activity as Google does in a year, it is fully possible its quality and its dominance are related, something the judge nods toward. In fact, Google’s position is now so entrenched “it would not lose search revenue if were to significantly reduce the quality of its search product”.

Notably, Mehta did not sanction Google for failing to preserve evidence in the case, writing:

On the request for sanctions, the court declines to impose them. Not because Google’s failure to preserve chat messages might not warrant them. But because the sanctions Plaintiffs request do not move the needle on the court’s assessment of Google’s liability. […]

In cases where the judge found evidence of monopolistic and abusive behaviour, the lack of supporting text messages and other communications would not have made a difference; this is also true, the judge says, for his finding of a lack of anticompetitive behaviour in SA360.