Google has been accused of driving out competition in a complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). In the complaint announced on Tuesday by Attorney General William Barr, the DOJ accuses Google that it employed anti-competitive practices over the past decade to stifle competition in three areas: search results, advertising, and mobile phones.
The DOJ accuses Google of having “illegally maintained” its monopoly in two ways. First, it claims that Google misused its market dominance to favor its own products over upstart competitors; secondly, it says that Google used its dominance in search results to drive traffic away from rival services in other product areas like advertising and mobile phones.”
In addition to filing its complaint against Google with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the DOJ also filed a proposed settlement agreement for public comment,” according to an official statement from the agency.”Although I haven’t read through this myself yet,” continued Barr during his remarks at The Heritage Foundation today (as reported by Fox News), “the case appears strong based on what we’ve seen so far.”
The Justice Department is accusing Google of illegally manipulating its search results to favor its own services over its rivals.
The Justice Department is accusing Google of illegally manipulating its search results to favor its own services over its rivals.
The long-running investigation by the DOJ, which has been probing Google since 2010, focuses on three areas:
- Google’s efforts to promote its products over competitors in the realm of smartphone operating systems and apps;
- Google’s alleged practice of favoring its own shopping service in search results; and
- The company’s use of “vertical” agreements that require third parties to use other Google services exclusively.
The complaint, announced by the DOJ on Tuesday, comes after a seven-year investigation into the company’s practices.
The complaint, announced by the DOJ on Tuesday, comes after a seven-year investigation into Google’s practices. It accuses the company of using its Android operating system to “prevent and undermine” competing apps and services. The document alleges that Google gives preferential treatment to its own apps when it comes to helping users find them on mobile devices, for example by displaying them more prominently in search results and app stores than those from other vendors.
It also claims that Google prevents manufacturers from distributing phones with rival versions of Android or Google apps preinstalled unless they accept other conditions—for example paying a licensing fee or providing sensitive data about their users’ habits.
The complaint says that Google has employed anti-competitive practices in three areas over the past decade.
The complaint says that Google has employed anti-competitive practices in three areas over the past decade:
- Using its dominance in the search market to favor its own products over “upstart competitors”;
- Illegally maintaining its monopoly in two ways. First, it has been accused of using exclusive agreements with manufacturers to lock out competing smartphone makers and prevent them from putting rival services on devices they sell; second, it allegedly blocked advertisers’ use of third-party ad platforms by requiring them to buy exclusively through Google’s platform.
The DOJ says Google has stifled competition in three ways by misusing its dominance in the search market.
The complaint argues that Google has abused its dominance in the search market. It says that the company has misused its dominance in the search market to favor its own products over “upstart competitors.”
It notes two ways that Google has illegally maintained its monopoly:
- “by requiring smartphone makers to pre-install Google Search and Chrome if they want to include other Google apps on their devices”
- “by paying Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine for Safari, a web browser available on iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads”
First, the government says Google “illegally maintained” its monopoly in two ways.
Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of what the government says Google did wrong. First, the government says Google “illegally maintained” its monopoly in two ways:
- It gave Android away for free and ensured that it was on every phone in order to create a wide range of products for users to access Google search and other services through.
- It used AdWords to give itself an unfair advantage over competitors by displaying ads from its own services at the top of search results.
Second, it says that Google used its market dominance to favor its own products over “upstart competitors.”
The DOJ also accuses Google of using its market dominance to favor its own products over “upstart competitors.” Google has a monopoly on search, and the government says that was used to give preference to its own properties.
The government says Google:
- Made it difficult for advertisers who wanted to buy ads on Yahoo’s sites or other competing platforms (AdSense) by not giving them enough information about how much traffic they were getting
- Demanded that Facebook agree not to display any third-party content unless they agreed it would always be ranked behind Google’s results
- Stopped allowing advertisers to import their data from Yahoo if they had previously been advertising with them through AdWords
Conclusion
Google has been accused of driving out competitors with anti-competitive practices. This is just the latest in a long line of lawsuits against the search giant, which have been ongoing since 2010.