Google monopoly ruling: where the tech giant goes from here

Egaranugrah / Shutterstock by Renaud Foucart, Lancaster University A US judge has found that Google is a monopoly and has used this dominance to reinforce its market position. This ruling, which is subject to appeal, brings the US regulator close to the European Commission in its approach to tech giants such as Google, Meta, and Amazon. Regulators now agree that the nature of these companies’ business means that the market ends up becoming a monopoly dominated by one massive company. It has thus become the job of the state to protect consumers from tech giants consolidating their dominance. As a company, 80% of Alphabet’s (Google’s owner) revenue, comes from advertising, a total of US$146 billion (£114 billion) in 2021. Almost everything the company does must be understood through this lens. The main source of Google’s advertising income derives from its 90% market share of the market for general search engines, one of the oldest and most important services on the internet. To provide users with answers ranging from the best recipe for an apple pie to a recommendation for a new vacuum cleaner, Google first gathers information about every page available on the Internet. Then, it uses its database of...