It was a long time ago, that the phrase “I will search and get back to you” changed to “I will Google it and get back to you.” There must be reasons for the word ‘search’ becoming synonymous to ‘Google’. Sometimes, a little too many reasons!

The United States’ Department of Justice, along with the states of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Texas filed an anti-trust law suit against Google at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on October 20, 2020. They have alleged in their complaint that Google has been using its dominant position in the market, and its financial strength to strike deals with various technology players such as Apple, Microsoft, etc. to become the default search engine in the user devices that these companies sell. This has affected the growth and propagation of smaller players engaged in the business of search engines. According to the Department of Justice, Google has entered into a series of exclusionary agreements that together result in Google being the sole default search engine in almost all devices, in the US and worldwide.

Not only this, these agreements also prohibit pre-installation of any other search engines. According to the complaint, these agreements are such that the pre-installed search engine of Google becomes “undeletable”. It alleges that Google is using its advertisement profits, and immense popularity to buy preferential treatment from its associate players in the market.

The complaint points out that Google’s exclusionary agreements have resulted in reduction of competition in the search-engine market, as the doors for all other search engines have been closed.

It has turned into a vicious cycle. Google charges advertisers to advertise on its search engine; advertisers pay exorbitant amounts to feature on Google’s pages; Google uses this money to monopolise and remain the only viable search engine in the market, thereby encouraging advertisers to pay extensively to feature on it, due to its unimaginable customer reach!

The aim of the jurisprudence of competition laws, is to protect smaller players from being bought out by the dominant players. It remains to be seen, how Google responds to this complaint.