Google, Far Beyond Irony

It is almost caustic to watch Microsoft, which was harassed by Brussels for 10 years for abusing its dominant market position, now turn around and attack Google for exactly the same reasons. Of course, it’s even more so because it’s the same person — Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel — once a tireless defender of the firm’s quasi-monopoly, who now pursues the same practices of its rival.

But besides this ironic situation, we find the software giant between a rock and a hard place. In less than 10 years, a much swifter Google has surpassed it. Google now dominates every area, from today’s Internet research and marketing to the telephone software of tomorrow and maybe even in computer-controlled mining.

Prosecutions are usually the desperate legal actions of a losing party. But outside of Microsoft’s case, it’s healthy for Brussels to open its long-awaited formal investigation against Google. It’s especially good to do so without mentioning the heart of the rival’s criticisms.

Google explains prettily that its “competition is literally just one click away,” and Internet users have always been very loyal to its services, because of its high-quality service and reliability. But Internet users are also lazy, and there is the ever-present suspicion of cyber-walls that prevent that one click from getting away. However, Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, has been at least on an equal footing with Google for the past several months, according to many experts, yet its market share still remains at 13 percent in the U.S., compared to Google’s 67 percent. In Europe, the latter number is reported to be 95 percent.

Google’s unrivaled reputation has given it full power to award life or death sentences to websites which cannot manage to index themselves correctly. Yet the company closely guards the secret formulas of the ranking. Ditto for the web-based advertising market in the United States, of which Google holds 75 percent. The company has been accused of whittling away at pieces of the pie meant for their rivals, a pie weighing several billion dollars.

Let’s note all of the content indexed day after day by Google; the books, the images in Google Street View, compared to the entire Internet. Whatever Microsoft’s motivations may be, it’s good that it has alerted the heads of competitors to possible abuses committed by a company omnipresent in our daily lives. It doesn’t matter if Brussels, let alone Washington, decides to take action against Google, even if in reaction to Microsoft. The latter spent millions on legal action, and it was never as remarkable after the field opened to competition. Today, Google is much more powerful.