After nearly a year of trial, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta has determined that Google comprises an illegal monopoly over internet search.
This is a massive ruling, and the biggest antitrust action taken by the US government in 25 years. The ruling is going to cause some major shakeups in search, in SEO, and in boardrooms of some of the biggest companies in the country!
But that sort of thing happens all the time! Remember when AI was going to change the way everyone does everything forever? Do you actually need to pay attention to this one?
Any change that affects Google is going to affect your self storage SEO - we’ve broken down what the ruling says, what it doesn’t, and what the impact may be on your self storage business.
If you want to read more deeply about the topic, here’s the Associated Press article. The ruling itself is 277 pages long, but here’s the main takeaway:
“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”
The judge has not yet put any punishments, fines, or restrictions in place as a result of this finding, but those will come eventually. The next phase of the trial, which will be about setting remedies to the monopoly situation, will begin on September 6.
One of the main complaints that led to this ruling was that Google was using its power to buy a position as the default search engine on other platforms. The biggest example is Apple - while Apple phones and computers use Apple’s own browser by default (Safari), Google is the default search engine.
Apple holds around 20% of the total smartphone market share, which makes it the single biggest player in that specific market (though these numbers fluctuate).
The biggest search engine was paying the biggest smartphone company an estimated $20 billion to capture even more searchers. This practice cut out any other competitors (such as DuckDuckGo or Bing) because they didn’t have a chance to reach consumers before the search engine choice was made.
The fact that Google actually does a good job makes it harder for competitors to overturn that monopoly, too. Part of the reason the government intervened was that the lack of competition was hurting consumers because Google isn’t motivated to keep improving – and Google does indeed appear to be getting worse.
We have no real idea what sanctions or other remedies the judge might impose on Google - but we can look at what the government has done in the past to get a clue. The biggest, and most similar, antitrust case in recent history was the Microsoft case.
Microsoft was found to be a monopoly in much the same way that Google was. Microsoft made Internet Explorer the default browser on all Windows computers, smothering competition from other browsers.
Initially, the plan was to break Microsoft up into two separate companies - one in charge of the operating system and one in charge of the accompanying software. After appeal, the proposed punishment was reduced, and Microsoft only had to allow PC manufacturers to use different software as the default on their machines (along with a few other specific caveats and oversight stipulations).
A break-up of Google seems unlikely, because “Google” as an entity doesn’t cover the same range of products that Microsoft did. The ruling isn’t directly against Alphabet (Google’s parent company) either, so it’s unlikely they’d be forced to split up or sell.
Let’s think about the goal of the case.
The Goal: Give other search engines a better chance to take market share from Google, encouraging competition and improving options for consumers.
I don’t know what specific steps the government might take to achieve this. The low-hanging fruit would be to prevent Google from buying a place as the default search engine for every smartphone.
Google currently has absolutely astronomical market share in search - 94% vs 3% for the next closest competitor. That’s why we spend so much time worried about what Google’s bots like and don’t waste much time thinking about Bing.
That’s also the biggest probable change for self storage SEO.
Google may not lose much market share; like Kleenex, the company name is a synonym for online search. Even if Apple changes their default search engine to a competitor (instead of, for example, offering a choice of two search engines including Google), there’s a good chance people install Google anyways.
Google is ubiquitous. People have been using Google for decades, and will probably prefer the search engine they’re accustomed to unless a competitor can give them a good reason to swap.
But this is the biggest chance in a long time for Google’s competitors to make that pitch.
For most operators, this is something to keep an eye on, not something to worry about right now.
For web developers and SEO experts, it’s time to start thinking about Bing.
Generally, Bing and other search engines work similarly to Google, so the SEO for one tracks fairly closely with the other. If Google loses significant market share, those small differences might be worth optimizing for.
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