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谷歌觸犯美國「反壟斷法」 ----- David McCabe
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國營事業以及獨裁制度下的官二代、富二代企業主等等，也是一種「壟斷」形式。
‘Google Is a Monopolist,’ Judge Rules in Landmark Antitrust Case
The ruling on Google’s search dominance was the first antitrust decision of the modern internet era in a case against a technology giant.
David McCabe, Reporting from Washington, 08/05/24
Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search, a federal judge ruled on Monday, a landmark decision that strikes at the power of tech giants in the modern internet era and that may fundamentally alter the way they do business.
Judge Amit P. Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in a 277-page ruling that Google had abused a monopoly over the search business. The Justice Department and states had sued Google, accusing it of illegally cementing its dominance, in part, by paying other companies, like Apple and Samsung, billions of dollars a year to have Google automatically handle search queries on their smartphones and web browsers.
“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Mehta said in his ruling.
The ruling is a harsh verdict on the rise of giant technology companies that have used their roots in the internet to influence the way we shop, consume information and search online — and indicates a potential limit of Big Tech’s power. It is likely to influence other government antitrust lawsuits against Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The last significant antitrust ruling against a tech company targeted Microsoft more than two decades ago.
“This is the most important antitrust case of the century, and it’s the first of a big slate of cases to come down against Big Tech,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt University’s law school who studies antitrust. “It’s a huge turning point.”
The decision is a major blow to Google, which was built on its search engine and has become so closely associated with online search that its name has become a verb. The ruling could have major ramifications for Google’s success, especially as the company spends heavily to compete in the race over artificial intelligence. Google faces another federal antitrust case over ad technology that is scheduled to go to trial next month.
Monday’s ruling did not include remedies for Google’s behavior. Judge Mehta will now decide that, potentially forcing the company to change the way it runs or to sell off part of its business.
What the Judge Said in His Ruling
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”
Source: U.S. et al. v. Google
Judge Mehta’s ruling capped a yearslong case — U.S. et al. v. Google — that resulted in a 10-week trial last year. The Justice Department and states sued in 2020 over Google’s dominance in online search, which generates billions in profits annually. The Justice Department said Google’s search engine conducted nearly 90 percent of web searches, a number the company disputed.
The company spends billions of dollars annually to be the automatic search engine on browsers like Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox. Google paid Apple about $18 billion for being the default in 2021, The New York Times has reported.
“This landmark decision holds Google accountable,” Jonathan Kanter, the top Justice Department antitrust official, said in a statement. “It paves the path for innovation for generations to come and protects access to information for all Americans.”
Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, said the company would appeal the ruling.
“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” he said. “As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”
During the trial, Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, testified that he was concerned that his competitor’s dominance had created a “Google web” and that its relationship with Apple was “oligopolistic.” If Google continued undeterred, it was likely to become dominant in the race to develop artificial intelligence, he said.
Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, countered in his testimony that Google created a better service for consumers.
Users choose to search on Google because they find it useful, and the company has continued to invest to make it better, the company’s lawyers said.
“Google is winning because it’s better,” John Schmidtlein, Google’s lead courtroom lawyer, said during closing arguments, which were held months later in May.
The government argued that by paying billions of dollars to be the automatic search engine on consumer devices, Google had denied its competitors the opportunity to build the scale required to compete with its search engine. Instead, Google collected more data about consumers that it used to make its search engine better and more dominant.
Judge Mehta sided with the government, saying Google had a monopoly over general online search services. The company’s agreements to be the automatic search engine on devices and web browsers hurt competition, making it harder for rivals to challenge Google’s dominance.
For more than a decade, those agreements “have given Google access to scale that its rivals cannot match,” Judge Mehta wrote.
The government also accused Google of protecting a monopoly over the ads that run inside search results. Government lawyers said Google had raised the price of ads beyond the rates that should exist in a free market, which they argued was a sign of the company’s power. Search ads provide billions of dollars in annual revenue for Google.
Judge Mehta ruled that Google’s monopoly allowed it to inflate the prices for some search ads. That, in turn, gave the company more money to pay for its search engine to get prime placement, he said.
“Unconstrained price increases have fueled Google’s dramatic revenue growth and allowed it to maintain high and remarkably stable operating profits,” he said in the ruling.
Judge Mehta ruled in Google’s favor on some lesser claims. Google offers advertisers many tools, including one that they use to manage advertising on different search engines. State attorneys general argued during the trial that Google had illegally excluded Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, from aspects of those tools. But Judge Mehta ruled against their claim.
Legal scholars expect this decision to influence government antitrust lawsuits against the other tech giants. All of those investigations, conducted by the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, began during the Trump administration and have ramped up under President Biden.
The Justice Department has sued Apple, arguing that the company made it difficult for consumers to ditch the iPhone, and brought the other case against Google. The F.T.C. has separately sued Meta, claiming the company stamped out nascent competitors, and Amazon, accusing it of squeezing sellers on its online marketplace.
With those cases, the government is testing hundred-year-old laws originally used to rein in utility and other monopolistic companies like Standard Oil.
A victory for the government provides credibility for its broader attempt to use antitrust laws to take aim at corporate America, said William Kovacic, a former chairman of the F.T.C.
“It creates momentum that supports their other cases,” he said in an interview in June.
Google has also faced antitrust scrutiny in Europe, where officials charged the company last year with undermining rivals in online advertising.
The last major U.S. court ruling on a tech antitrust case — in the Justice Department’s 1990s lawsuit against Microsoft — cast its own shadow over the Google arguments. Judge Mehta repeatedly pressed lawyers to explain how the specifics of the case against Google could fit into the legal precedents.
The Microsoft antitrust case alleged that the tech giant combined practices like bullying industry partners and leveraging the popularity of its digital platform, from which users typically didn’t switch, to stifle competition.
A District Court judge initially ruled against Microsoft on most counts of possible antitrust violations and ordered a breakup of the company, but an appeals court reversed some of those decisions. President George W. Bush’s administration settled with the company in 2001.
Steve Lohr contributed reporting from New York.
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美國司法部可能要求拆解谷歌 - Alexis Keenan
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DOJ’s Google breakup remedy puts tech world on notice
Alexis Keenan · Senior Legal Reporter, 10/10/24
The US Justice Department said in a new court filing that it may recommend a break up of Google (GOOG, GOOGL) as an antidote to unhealthy competition in the search engine market, showing just how far Washington is willing to go to rein in Big Tech.
DOJ lawyers used a 32-page document to outline a framework of options for D.C. District Court Judge Amit Mehta to consider, including "behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search."
Google, in a blog post, said that "DOJ’s radical and sweeping proposals risk hurting consumers, businesses, and developers."
The stock of Google's parent, Alphabet, fell more than 1% Wednesday.
NasdaqGS - Nasdaq Real Time Price•USD
The proposal is the first step from the Justice Department to break up a tech empire since it tried to do so more than two decades ago with Microsoft (MSFT).
That case — which the DOJ referenced in its Tuesday court filing — resulted in a 2002 settlement that opened the door to broader competition in the internet browser software market.
The move by DOJ also sends a signal to other tech giants currently facing antitrust cases from DOJ and other Washington regulators as part of a wide-ranging effort by the Biden administration to rein in what it views as anticompetitive behavior across a number of industries.
The administration has already alleged anticompetitive conduct against tech giants Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) and claimed that Microsoft's acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard would create a gaming market monopoly.
MICROSOFT’S & GOOGLE’S DECADES-LONG COMPETITION TO DOMINATE BIG TECH (請至原網頁查看附表)
The case against Google targeting its dominance in search resulted in a landmark decision in August, when D.C. District Court Judge Amit Mehta sided with DOJ and concluded Google illegally monopolized the online search engine market and the market for search text advertising.
Mehta concluded that Google’s agreements with browser providers and devices powered by Google’s Android operating system stifled rivals from entering and growing within the markets.
It will now be up to Mehta to decide what should happen now in a separate "remedies" phase of the trial that will likely start in 2025.
The DOJ is expected to provide a more detailed document by Nov. 20 outlining these remedies. But the 32-page document filed late Tuesday offers several points of focus beyond forcing Google to sell parts of its business.
One has to do with contracts that secure Google’s search engine as a default on internet browsers and internet-connected devices that use Google’s Android operating system.
Google pays as much as $26 billion per year to maintain its position on mobile devices such as Apple (AAPL) and Samsung smartphones.
Justice Department lawyers said that to prevent further harm, they may seek to limit or terminate Google’s use of those contracts that use Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search, as well as "other revenue-sharing arrangements related to search and search-related products, potentially with or without the use of a choice screen."
The DOJ could also ask the judge to force Google to share the data that it uses to refine its search algorithms with rival browsers and search providers and limit the company's dominance over search text ads.
DOJ suggested the judge should also consider blocking Google from illegally monopolizing related markets, in addition to the search and search text advertising markets.
It may ask the judge to force Google to give websites more ability to "opt out" of "any Google-owned artificial-intelligence product."
Google pushed back on the DOJ's suggestions.
“We believe that today’s blueprint goes well beyond the legal scope of the Court’s decision about Search distribution contracts,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post.
Google has promised to appeal. And Judge Mehta could hold off on any orders to alter Google's behavior while it challenges his ruling in D.C.’s Circuit Court of Appeals.
The judge would lose the right to impose remedies if Google is found not to have broken the law on appeal.
And even if Google fails and is ordered to change its behavior, Judge Mehta could later adjust his orders to better ensure competition is restored.
"This is going to take time," former FTC commissioner Mozelle Thompson told Yahoo Finance Wednesday.
"Breakups are hard to do,” he added. "It's an unusual remedy, and it doesn't occur very often."
Google faces antitrust challenges on other fronts. It is currently defending itself in a separate lawsuit from the DOJ alleging a monopoly in the technology used to buy and sell online ads.
And earlier this week another federal judge ordered Google to open up its app store as part of the resolution of a suit brought by Epic Games, Inc.
The DOJ cited that ruling in its Tuesday court filing that outlined a Google breakup as one possible remedy, noting that the judge in the Epic Games case said remedies should "bridge the moat" to combat network effects.
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分析谷歌「反壟斷法」案判決 - Jessica Guynn
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How Google's huge defeat in antitrust case could change how you search the internet
Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY, 08/06/24
In the most significant legal ruling against a major technology giant in more than two decades, a federal judge says Google illegally monopolized online search and advertising by paying companies like Apple and Samsung billions of dollars a year to install Google as the default search engine on smartphones and web browsers.
By monopolizing search queries on smartphones and browsers, Google abused its dominance in the search market, throttling competition and harming consumers, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta said in his 286-page decision. Google owes much of its more than $300 billion in annual revenue to search ads.
“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta wrote.
The massive win for the Justice Department could fundamentally reshape how Google does business. It also could change how we use the internet and search for information.
The Justice Department filed antitrust charges during the final weeks of the Trump administration, making good on Donald Trump’s pledge to challenge the runaway power of Big Tech. That mission continued during the Biden administration, which has been aggressive in pursuing antitrust cases.
“This victory against Google is an historic win for the American people,” Attorney General Garland said in a statement. “No company – no matter how large or influential – is above the law.”
The case is the most significant victory for the Justice Department in a monopoly case in decades, said Notre Dame Law School professor Roger Alford, who served in the Justice Department’s antitrust division. “Not since Microsoft lost in the 1990s have we seen a case of this magnitude.”
Google said it would appeal the decision. “This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” Kent Walker, president of global affairs, said in a statement.
Shares in Google parent company Alphabet slipped following the judge's ruling. They closed down nearly 5% Monday, part of a broader tech stock selloff.
If upheld, the decision will be a “major boost” for other antitrust cases pending against Google as well as other major tech players like Amazon, Apple and Meta, said Loyola University Chicago School of Law professor Spencer Weber Waller.
Monday’s ruling did not include remedies. Remedies will be decided separately, likely after an appeal. One remedy could see Google losing its ability to strike device deals that have helped make its search engine so ubiquitous.
Devising the right remedy is critical to restoring competition to the marketplace, Waller said.
“There are no fines or monetary penalties in these types of cases, but the court will have to decide whether Google should be broken up in some way. More likely, it will order Google to eliminate the exclusive contracts and licensing restrictions that have reinforced its monopoly position for years,” he said.
Google has argued that its distribution deals are common in the business world. It pays for its search engine to be on phones the way a food manufacturer pays to promote its products at eye level in a grocery store aisle.
The way Google sees it, if you don’t like Google, you can switch the default search engine on your device. But people don’t switch, Google says, because they prefer Google.
If Google was not the default search engine on so many devices, would consumers still use it for 90% of web searches?
During the 10-week trial, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that Google’s unchallenged dominance created a “Google web.”
“You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth and you search on Google,” Nadella said at one point in his testimony. “Everybody talks about the open web, but there is really the Google web.”
Nadella has expressed concern that Microsoft’s disadvantage would increase as artificial intelligence becomes a major component of search.
In a research note Monday, Baird Equity Research senior analyst Colin Sebastian pointed to a range of tactics Google's arch competitor Microsoft has used to grow market share of its Bing search engine over the years, from paying users to use its search engine to embedding it in Office.
“People clearly prefer Google to Bing,” Sebastian said.
Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich said Monday's ruling hands Microsoft an unearned boost.
“The biggest winner from today's ruling isn't consumers or little tech, it’s Microsoft,” Kovacevich said in a statement. “Microsoft has underinvested in search for decades, but today’s ruling opens the door to a court mandate of default deals for Bing. That’s a slap in the face to consumers who chose Google because they think it’s the best.”
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