Google’s illegal search monopoly: Industry reactions, implications

Google was ruled to be an illegal monopoly yesterday, the culmination of a 10-week trial that began last year.

Here are the key reactions from search advertisers:

Google’s Appeal and the Future Legal Battle

Julie Bacchini, president and founder, Neptune Moon, underscores that while the court ruling declaring Google a monopoly is significant, the real impact will emerge during the remedy phase and Google’s inevitable appeal.

• “Google will appeal (and they said they will in their comically bad statement about the ruling) and that will be a slow process. But it is the remedy phase that will ultimately decide what this ruling will actually mean in practical terms.”
• “Also, this case was as much about setting the table for the Google advertising case that goes to trial in September. This case got A LOT on the record that will likely be used in the upcoming trial.”
• “Monopolistic behaviours have gone essentially unchecked in a lot of industries since the Reagan administration and maybe that hasn’t been such a good idea. These cases are starting to try to act on that. The App store cases run along the same lines.
• “If the Sherman antitrust act had been enforced over even the last 25 years, the business landscape would look very different. It wasn’t and we have what we have.”
• “To be fair too, Google is like any other publicly traded company today – their primary goal is to make sure the meet analysts expectations every quarter. That’s it. And I think we often forget that. Their decisions all come back to that core. And what that makes them do can make it feel like they are a big, kinda evil corporation.”
• “There are a lot of openings for appeal issues, I agree. But I really think the testimony they got and internal Google documents are going to be a tough hill for Google to climb in the Ads case. So I can’t help but wonder if this case was more about making that one stick?”

Oscar Ford, CEO and PPC specialist finds the ruling’s development fascinating and anticipates a prolonged legal battle due to Google’s appeal.:

• “Google are appealing the ruling, so this will roll on for a while longer. I’m not sure what the outcome is, but to break up an existing monopoly the only option surely is to split it into separate companies?”
• “Google’s response to the ruling is amusing but they have a point – they have made the best search engine and nothing else has come close for decades.”

Chris Ridley, Head of Paid media predicts a resolution similar to that of Google shopping in 2017:

• “What I do see happening is an echo of what we saw happen to Google Shopping in 2017. A similar EU ruling regarding Google’s Shopping that led to Google opening up their Shopping space to third-party Comparison Shopping Services (CSS), which were granted a 20% discount on cost-per-clicks (CPCs) to ensure they could fairly compete.”
• “This could lead the way to Google introducing Comparison Text Advertising Services to the Google text ad market to dismantle Google’s monopoly on the text advertising market, which may also benefit from a similar discount on CPCs as a gesture of Google encouraging competition on their SERPs.”

Market Dynamics and Google’s Competitors

Chris Lloyd, B2B SaaS Marketing consultant, points out that Google’s market share has been declining due to its inability to innovate:

• “I think we are already seeing their decline, and it’s not due to regulatory rulings. Google has been losing market share for a couple of years now. Quite simply they can’t build and innovate and will continue to be outplayed by Perplexity, OpenAI, Meta, Apple.”

Sam Tomlinson, Executive Vice President and Digital strategist, criticizes the legal reasoning in the 286-page ruling, particularly the market definition, which he believes won’t hold up on appeal.

• “The market definition was categorically insane to me – something I don’t think gets upheld on appeal”
• “It isn’t like the winner today is always the winner tomorrow. Google even admitted that (and the court agreed) in this ruling, where they highlighted that Google has innovated massively, at great expense, despite having a ‘monopoly'”
• “Every other company, hedge fund, investment bank and PE fund does the exact same thing — which is why this feels ridiculous. It isn’t good or bad, it’s just profit-driven, because profit is an existential imperative for any business”

Navah Hopkins, Brand evangelist and PPC influencer at Optmyzr, is disappointed that the US failed to establish search advertising as a distinct market:

• “I am disappointed in the US for not being able to make the case that search advertising is a market (I understand there’s another case in September, but the ruling makes it clear that information just wasn’t presented).”
• “The fact that this case started in 2020 and that’s when PMax began to really take hold speaks to the diversification that was clearly top of mind for Google. As the ruling stated “search text ads are a monopoly” but search advertising was not. PMax gives Google the cover it needs to still have some search without running a foul of the search text ads monopoly rules.”
• “That Microsoft was brought up as a serious competitor felt disingenuous. Though it is interesting to see how CPCs trended after each other (i.e. the market drove up costs not Google itself…which I’m skeptical about)”

Ethical and Practical Concerns

Sarah Stemen, Paid search specialist reflects on her disillusionment with Google and doubts any significant penalties will arise:

• “I need to stop gaslighting myself into thinking Google is great because they built my career. This is a capitalist driven company that lost sight of any values and it sucks.”
• “I think we all remember Microsoft and I would like to think that’s the outcome but I don’t actually think any penalty of any significant difference will happen especially under our current administration and court system.”

Reid Thomas, Marketing strategist, observes that the US ruling aligns closely with the EU’s mandate & questions a meaningful mandate:

• “Our point of views are all very US focused – isn’t this ruling very aligned with the EU ruling from a few years ago that mandated search engine choice?”
• “My question is – ‘What is a meaningful penalty?’. You can’t break Google up like the bells.”
• “I also think it’s quite disingenuous to target the distribution agreements with the ‘If Google is so great, why are they paying?’ and the answer is: because this is a competitive market, and others could pay, too.”

The diverse opinions highlight the complexity of the issue and the far-reaching implications of the ruling for the tech industry, digital advertising and antitrust law.

As the legal process continues and potential remedies are considered, many in the industry are watching closely to see how this decision might reshape the future of search and digital advertising.