Text | Digital Force Field, Author | She Zongming
In the eyes of people who always want to make a big news, this is undoubtedly another "blockbuster!" "Just now!" "Shocked!" and other words - "United States government wants to break up Google".
The news did not come from The Onion Daily, but from Bloomberg. The news has a nose and an eye:
After nearly four years of litigation, on August 5, a federal court in United States ruled that Google was involved in its search engine monopoly, the first time the United States government has won an antitrust lawsuit against a big tech company.
The latest development is that the United States Department of Justice is considering splitting Google.
The butterfly flapped its wings on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, and a hurricane was set off here: when some domestic media followed up, they even saved "exposing fear or spreading suspicions", and directly arranged a bunch of exclamation points, announcing the crack of Google in advance.
It seems that the United States government is murderous about Google, and wants to chase and fight like Lao Luo did with "Iron Teacher".
The question is, is it really possible for the Google empire to be "dismembered"? Will the United States tech community be hit by a major earthquake as a result?
Facts aside, there is, but a little respect for the facts shows that there is none.
After all, there is a difference between anti-monopoly and anti-monopoly, some local anti-monopoly is "anti-decision", and some local anti-monopoly is "squib" - because people don't want to oppose it, they have to go through procedures + procedures + procedures......
In my opinion, the probability of Google being split is lower than that of Hu Ge being demolished. is also facing the risk of being "split", and its fate is much safer than TikTok.
01
Saying that Google has no monopoly, Yahoo and Microsoft Bing estimate that 100 will not agree, and Lycos and AltaVista may have to cheat the corpse.
For more than 20 years, Google's search engine has continued to dominate the world's main entrance to the Internet, shouting, "This road is for me, this tree is for me" — even though this scenario fails somewhere at 116 degrees east longitude.
In the era of the PC Internet, Google dominates the search engine market; In the era of mobile Internet, Google has controlled many mobile terminals with the Android system.
Today, Google has nearly 90% of the global general search market share, and nearly 95% of the search market share on mobile devices such as mobile phones. With Android, AI, search engines, browsers Chrome, You Tube, Gmail, Google Maps ad sales platform AdWords and other businesses, Google's dominance in the advertising market is almost unshakable.
According to the data, Google Search, Chrome and Android have more than 4 billion, 3.3 billion and 2.8 billion estimated users worldwide, respectively, making them the largest part of the "family bucket" user base of Google's products.
Google's parent company, AIphabet, has a product matrix with billions of users.
Google wants to snap its fingers like Thanos: Who can stop me on Earthlings?
Before OpenAI could speak, the United States Department of Justice was unhappy: so arrogant? Look at me to rule you by the rule of law.
It must be seen that over the years, Google has been willing to spend money in order to make the Google search engine the default option for major smartphones and mainstream web browsers, and in 2021, the "traffic acquisition cost" (TAC) alone spent 26 billion US dollars, which is equivalent to paying rents to Apple, Samsung, browser developer Mozilla, United States wireless operators AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.
Of that amount, $20 billion went to Apple, or 36 percent of Apple's total Safari revenue, in exchange for Google's default search engine position in Safari on iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
Originally, Lang had a concubine intention, and Apple earned "Wangpu rent", so that Microsoft cried and begged Apple to buy Bing, and Apple didn't look at it much; Google has earned advertising fees, and who dares not to obey the dragon knife of PPC?
Google and Apple formed an alliance of interests, and other big companies dared to be angry, and the United States Department of Justice said: I am against it.
In 2020, the United States Department of Justice and the attorneys general of 52 states and jurisdictions jointly sued Google, arguing that Google's exclusive agreement with Apple and other partners was illegal, unconscionable, and unreasonable, not only suspected of monopoly, but also excluded market competition.
The lawsuit lasted for 4 years, and the United States Department of Justice grabbed Google's tail and really won the lawsuit in the name of the "people". United States Attorney General Merrick · Garland said: "This victory over Google is a historic victory for the people of United States. No company, no matter how big or influential, is above the law. ”
After agreeing to the lawsuit, the United States Department of Justice continued to pursue Google with the attitude that "the revolution has not yet succeeded, and comrades still need to work hard": spinning off Android and Chrome browsers, and selling the AdWords advertising platform.
So, will this really upend Google's decades-long dominance in the global search market?
I can only say that I think too much.
02
You know, in terms of "disappointing", United States Internet antitrust has never disappointed.
It often presents a situation where the foreplay is long, and the main play is ...... I'm sorry, but foreplay is the main play.
The last time the United States government was thinking about splitting up tech giants was in 1998 with Microsoft.
But then ...... Not much then. Two years later, the two sides reconciled.
The last successful split was 40 years ago when AT&T was founded.
It has not been unsheathed for 40 years, and you will believe that its anti-monopoly "knife" can still be used to cut the flesh of the giants?
Compared to Microsoft's bundling of operating systems and browsers more than 20 years ago, Google's approach is far less qualitative than it was more than 20 years ago. Some legal experts say that the core of Google's illegal activities is only to damage the competition in the relevant market, rather than seeking a cross-market advantage.
How likely is it that Google will be spun off after paying a $1.8 billion settlement, abandoning exclusive deals that harm competition, using uniform contract terms, and releasing parts of the source code for Windows?
Also, in the United States, antitrust litigation has always been a constant battle. Microsoft was caught in an antitrust case, and it took six years from filing a lawsuit to approving a settlement.
Professor George · Hay, a former chief economist in the antitrust division of the United States Department of Justice, predicted that Google's appeal process could last up to five years and would give Google enough time to resist court injunctions on default setting agreements.
The "Split Google" incident has also received a lot of attention from the United States media.
United States tech giants will not "stand up straight", arguing is a routine operation, and arguing for reason is also a routine operation.
Even if the court does order Google to split its business, Google could delay the implementation of the "split" or change the punishment by appealing, negotiating with the United States Department of Justice, etc.
Past jurisprudence has also shown that United States courts are lenient with the government's remedies after a case has been decided, giving Google a lot of room to maneuver and maneuver.
After all, after a long time, variables will come.
United States investment bank Wedbush also believes that the United States Department of Justice's antitrust actions may take "several quarters or even years" to reach a final result, and it does not expect any impact on Google's business in the near future.
This view is also shared by analyst Dan Ives. In his view, the unbundling of the business model of big tech companies is highly unlikely to happen in the future, although business model adjustments and greater scrutiny of mergers and acquisitions will be the first and core issues.
That's the difference between regulation and regulation –
In some places, the rain will soon come down as soon as the wind blows from the regulatory authorities.
In some places, before the regulatory gavel is dropped, various processes have to be followed, and there are repeated games that will be affected by factors such as lobbying and appeals.
03
In this, the macro factors that cannot be ignored are the Sino-US science and technology war.
The United States government's antitrust wind first blew to Silicon Valley in 2019. Not only Google, but also Apple, Meta, Amazon and other companies have been "targeted" one after another. For example, Amazon was accused of illegally monopolizing online retail last September, and Meta's two acquisitions of Whatsapp and Instagram more than 10 years ago are also facing scrutiny.
But five years have passed, and only Google has been knocked by the antitrust hammer.
Considering that the Big Seven are the representatives of the United States's "new quality productivity", and now that the Sino-US technology game has entered a stage of fierce war, will the United States government really use anti-monopoly as an excuse to weaken its competitiveness on the international stage? Or will the United States hammer its own technological competitiveness?
Before treating Google, Apple, Meta, and Amazon as "monopolists", first regard them as "United States' core competitiveness", which may be an unavoidable consideration for Internet antitrust in United States.
After all, hammering Google, the dominoes that have been toppled may be a decline in the competitiveness of the United States technology industry.
Internet scholars Pan and Lin asserted that although after "knocking" the "lid" of giant enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises will gush out and innovation will follow, but considering the current competitive pressure between countries, the United States may not take the initiative to weaken the strength of enterprises in the form of spin-offs, so there is mostly a bluff component.
人家不会错把谷歌当TikTok。
Under the talisman of "the beauty of the initial text", Google's crisis of being broken up is not as severe as TikTok's.
In fact, even the United States Department of Justice is considering other relatively modest options, including requiring Google to share data with competitors, such as DuckDuckGo and Microsoft's Bing, and seeking to impose restrictions on Google's AI products to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage.
In this way, it is difficult to shake the throne of Google's search field.
Notably, Google showed a look of displeasure after losing the lawsuit: "The ruling acknowledges that Google offers the best search engine, but the conclusion is that we shouldn't get it easily." ”
Apple's previous request to Microsoft's Bing was rejected outright, insisting on Google as the default search engine for Apple's products, also because Apple believed that it had chosen the best search engine - a strong alliance with Google, in line with Apple's consistent pursuit of ultimate product design and silky user experience.
Even if Google is forced to let go of the exclusivity agreement, how likely are other phones and browsers not to use Google?
04
"United States wants to split Google", most likely a storm in a tea cup.
Thinking that the United States government is going to hammer Google, most of them are thinking too much.
And Google's hegemony in the search industry cannot be broken by the anti-monopoly of "thunder but not rain".
But that doesn't mean Google can sit firmly on the Diaoyutai platform.
Just a few days ago, when Eric Schmidt, the former head of Google, gave a speech at Stanford University, he let himself go all the way, and told the students in the audience in a serious way that the meeting was confidential and that what he said should not be passed on.
Unbeknownst to him, the speech was being broadcast live.
And there is a lot of interesting information in this speech, such as "waving the flag" for NVIDIA, saying that its AI supremacy is unshakable, such as saying that Tesla and TSMC are bullish in being able to "roll up employees".
He also talked about Google –
Why is Google losing so much in the field of AI now? Because Google feels that getting employees home early and balancing work is more important than winning the competition. If your employees only come to the company one day a week, how can you beat OpenAI or Anthropic?
When Microsoft cooperated with OpenAI, I also felt unbelievable, how could Microsoft outsource the most important AI business to such a small company, but I looked away again, and then looked at Apple's gentle swallowing on AI, large companies are really bureaucratic, and they are struggling to start a business.
Realizing that his "big mouth" was in trouble, Schmidt quickly apologized publicly to his former employer.
But what he said is true: as a pioneer in the field of AI, Google rode the dust with AlphaGo a few years ago, but was later taken by OpenAI and lost the opportunity to seize the opportunity in generative AI.
There is also autonomous driving, Waymo, a subsidiary of Google's parent company, was originally at the forefront, but He Xiaopeng has predicted that Tesla's FSD's autonomous driving ability will definitely surpass Waymo in 2025.
In the past two years, Google's development trajectory has often been regarded as "frustrated" by AI and "proud" by advertising.
A Google employee pointed out, "Google has four core cultural issues. They are all a natural consequence of having a money printing machine called 'Advertisement', which grows relentlessly every year, covering up all other evils. The four problems are: 1, there is no mission; 2. There is no urgency; 3. The illusion of exceptionalism; 4. Poor management. ”
Let's put it aside, we media can produce a bunch of articles in batches, and the title is "Google has no dreams".
Google is still the dominant player in traditional search, but who would have predicted that?
At a time when AI search is on the rise, the biggest danger facing Google may not come from antitrust.
Economist Paul · Krugman said: High-tech competition is bound to be a winner-takes-all game, and "all-take-all" is only a temporary monopoly, and once other good things come, it will disappear.
Zhang Weiying's other sentence echoes this: it is the new entrepreneurs, not the anti-monopoly department, that really defeat the "monopolist".