Thriving Monopoly: Google’s grip on global knowledge

What a fortunate time to be Google. Not only is it escaping with only the mildest punishment for abusing its monopoly in the search market, but it is now poised to further entrench its dominance over global access to knowledge.

This is a perilous moment to give one company so much power over the information landscape. The Trump administration is already mounting an assault on free speech — distributing lists of banned words, detaining students for speech it dislikes, and targeting journalists and comedians for being insufficiently deferential. In such an environment, it is easy to imagine pressure on Google to shape search results in the administration’s favour, just as lawsuits and regulatory threats have been used against other media outlets. CBS, for instance, recently removed senior news executives after Trump sued the network over what he claimed was deceptive editing of an interview with Kamala Harris.

As the world’s dominant gatekeeper of information, Google can suppress or restrict access to content at will. It already does so abroad, blocking material critical of the Thai king and removing videos opposing Vietnam’s government. On Google Maps, it even renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” Trump’s preferred term.

It was this unchecked market power that led Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to rule last year that Google was an illegal monopolist. He hinted that strong remedies might be required — perhaps spinning off Chrome or Android, or ending the billions of dollars Google pays to ensure its search engine is the default on browsers and phones.

Yet earlier this month, Judge Mehta concluded such remedies were unnecessary. Accepting Google’s argument that artificial-intelligence competitors are emerging, he instead required only that Google share limited sets of search data with rivals for six years.

The judge correctly recognised that no competitor can challenge Google’s dominance without access to its massive trove of data. But his order is so restrictive that meaningful competition is unlikely. Google must provide only discrete batches of data, not the frequent, continuous access rivals say they need. Meanwhile, websites welcome Google’s web crawlers because they want to appear in its results, but block AI companies from doing the same — reinforcing Google’s lead.

Experts are sceptical. “The remedies here are unlikely to create the circumstances for competitive entry in search,” said Alissa Cooper, executive director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute. Even Judge Mehta admitted he may be wrong, writing that the court was being asked to “gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future,” hardly a judge’s strength.

Perhaps his narrow order will, by some chance, attract new competitors. But in today’s political climate, the gamble is especially risky. With an administration already eager to censor speech, leaving Google as the single choke point for global information is reckless.

What we need are competing search engines offering different experiences. Imagine one dedicated to shopping that scours the entire web rather than just sites favoured by Google. Or one that prioritises peer-reviewed research. Or another that allows users to build results only from a list of trusted news sources. Entrepreneurs could design many such innovations, but Judge Mehta’s decision makes them unlikely. At best, a few big players like OpenAI or Perplexity may gain partial access to Google’s data — nowhere near enough to challenge its dominance.

That leaves us stuck where we are now: with Google as the bottleneck through which most information must pass.

Despite its power, Google is not immune to government pressure. Regulators are separately pursuing the breakup of its advertising business. The administration has imposed steep visa fees for tech firms, and could scrutinise Google’s tax shelters, the environmental impact of its data centres, or its defence contracts. It could also pressure Google to bury results for disfavored topics or suppress political dissent. Imagine if it quietly erased references to a critic like Jimmy Kimmel, the comedian recently in the administration’s crosshairs.

The path forward lies in Congress. To build a vibrant search ecosystem, lawmakers must force Google to share data more widely and more frequently with rivals. Without legislative action — unlikely given current dysfunction — the responsibility falls to voters to elect representatives willing to break the chokehold that one corporation holds over the world’s access to information.

@The New York Times