Following the release of the “Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets” report early this month, investigating big tech by the Sub – Committee of the US Judiciary on Anti – Trust Commercial and Administrative Law, the US government through the Justice department has yesterday (Tuesday) dragged Google to court alleging the company has anti – competitive tendencies that have been known to stifle competitors.
The Justice Department in its complaint before the United States Federal Court filed with 11 other states (Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina and Texas) alleges that Google has suppressed competition in order to maintain a powerful position in the market place on online search and search advertising, something that is already evident by the amount of consumers it boasts.
Google has been accused of paying billions of dollars every year to companies like Apple, and Samsung and browsers like Mozilla and Opera to keep Google as their default engines which is being said to intentionally prohibit those companies from dealing with Google competition.
“Google effectively owns or controls search distribution channels accounting for roughly 80 percent of the general search queries in the United States” reads part of the Complaint filed.
We are yet to see how the case will go. Arguments to break big tech are being made against the sizes of these companies including Google, however, there are also sympathisers that believe there is no unfair practice.
