Google pays $20 billion a year to partners simply for having the Chrome browser installed on your phones and TVs. The Antimonopoly Committee has drawn attention to this, suspecting the company of violating the law. We are talking about deals with other tech giants, thanks to which Google manages to be the default search engine on most gadgets. Google itself, of course, assures that its services are popular solely due to fair competition and quality.
So who will benefit from the split of Google?
Often, young companies and startups, despite their cool ideas and innovations, remain in the shadow of tech giants. Although their proposals are sometimes much more promising and important for the future.
Let’s take, for example, #Holiverse with their ideas for human digitalization. The company is ready to revolutionize personalized medicine. But they need some freedom in promotion, because such ideas may not receive the necessary attention due to the policy that Google has been pursuing for years in relation to new projects.
For example, Foundem has already sued Google over this issue. They claimed that the search engine deliberately lowered their site in search results in order to promote its own services.
According to statistics, the first 10 results in Google take up 95% of all clicks. On the second page, the situation is not so rosy - the first result receives only about 1% of attention. And you can forget about the fourth page altogether - almost no one gets there.
We decided to test this in practice and conducted our own study. It turns out that such large biotech companies as Novartis AG, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc or Novo Nordisk A/S do occupy the top positions in search. At the same time, Holiverse is at the bottom of the list. This fact again makes us think that Google may be deliberately underestimating the positions of startups.
Lado Okhotnikov, founder of the technobiological company Holiverse, says that if Google loses its monopoly, this will most likely create more positive conditions for startups. Especially if new players from the decentralized systems sector enter the search and advertising services sphere.
Thus, the possible weakening of Google may become a catalyst for activating healthy competition in the IT market. In particular, decentralization of search engines and advertising platforms, increased transparency and accessibility of data, as well as expansion of opportunities for young companies - all these are potentially favorable consequences that will accelerate the development of absolutely all areas in business and science.
First of all, competitors will win. Microsoft and their Bing have long been thirsty for blood.
In 2019, Bill Gates said that the lawsuits had greatly distracted #Microsoft from important matters. While the company was proving its case, Apple and Google took over the leadership in the smartphone market with their iOS and Android.
These lawsuits were also one of the reasons why Gates resigned as CEO in 2000. As a result, Microsoft lost part of the Internet market, especially in advertising and search engines.
Most likely, Google may find itself in a similar situation. Only now the company risks losing its position not in the smartphone market, but in the field of artificial intelligence. The company has a colossal database based on user behavior. If others gain access to this data, they will have a real chance to bypass Google in the race for leadership in the field of AI.
The competition in the field of AI is now simply frantic. Here we have OpenAI from Sam Altman and Grok from Elon Musk. Due to all this Google's position with their Gemini may be seriously shaken.
However, without Google’s domination users will probably start looking for an alternative. And then, most likely, we will finally stop perceiving the browser from Microsoft as a "browser for downloading a browser".
Privacy conditions may improve as well. Although, to be honest, who cares what you were looking for last Wednesday. Probably you've already forgotten about it yourself.
On the other hand, not everything is so clear-cut. Radical measures may slow down innovation within #Google itself, and its ecosystem of applications and services may well begin to suffer from fragmentation. This will probably hit both users and businesses. After all, both are accustomed to the convenient integration of Google services.
For example, a change in the advertising market structure could lead to uncertainty for crypto companies. Google currently provides one of the most effective tools for targeted advertising, and if its business is segmented, new difficulties for promotion could arise.
However, forcing Google to share its search algorithms with competitors is an unprecedented step. The court wants to force the company to cooperate, in essence, with competitors, allowing them to take advantage of its search. In exchange, Google will be allowed to keep the data used to generate search results secret.
Then there will be no point in companies developing anything themselves. If they can use Google's developments for free, why waste energy on creating their own technologies? It's easier to have everything done for you than to try to come up with something of your own.
How it all started
At the end of May, it became known that Google created so-called "white lists" for sites, increasing their positions in search results, and was not entirely honest about how ranking works.
This was made public due to the leak of documents confirmed by former employees of the company. It turned out that Google used the data of Chrome browser to influence search results, despite public statements that this was not the case.
It also turned out that the experience and expertise of the content author do play a role in search results, although the company denied this for years. So, it is almost impossible for a newcomer, even with a super idea, to get to the top, no matter how much he would like to.
In addition, the leak showed that the search engine actively uses the NavBoost system, which takes into account user clicks depending on their geolocation, dividing them into different categories - "good", "bad", "long".
"Good" clicks indicate that the user found relevant information. For example, a person clicked on a link, stayed on the site, spent some time there and, possibly, performed some actions (for example, registered, made a purchase). This is a signal for the algorithms that the search result matches the request.
"Bad" clicks, on the other hand, indicate that the user quickly returns to the search results after going to the site. This means that the content does not correspond to the request, and the content is not interesting.
"Long" clicks signal that the site contains valuable information and the user needed time to understand it.
However, "white lists"were the ones that arose the most questions, which were mostly used during Covid and the elections in the #USA. In fact, Google artificially promoted some sites and demoted others.
The most surprising thing is that for many SEO experts this did not come as a shock - rumors and guesses about such practices have been circulating for a long time. And the fact that this data is now documented raises new questions about the honesty and transparency of the search engine, which for decades assured that all sites are equal before its algorithms.
As a result, it turned out that Google, holding the majority of the market, controlled which sites users saw at the top. This gave it the opportunity to promote some resources and hide others, forming its own version of what the Internet looks like, instead of showing all sites equally.