By Contributor Cookfox Architects John Tamny
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 09: The exterior of the new headquarters of Google is seen at 550 … More Washington Street in Hudson Square on January 09, 2024 in New York City. Designed by COOKFOX Architects, the 1.3-million-square-foot project involved the restoration and expansion of the St. John鈥檚 Terminal building along the Hudson River waterfront. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Google possesses no monopoly in search. Evidence supporting the previous claim can be found in the antitrust attack on Google by independent publishers within the European Union.
Over the weekend it was reported that 鈥淕oogle鈥檚 controversial AI-generated summaries 鈥 which have been blamed for crushing the traffic of U.S. news sites 鈥 have drawn an antitrust complaint in the European Union from a group of independent publishers.鈥 Their very case wrecks their case. See Google鈥檚 AI-generated summaries.
In contemplating what Google鈥檚 AI generation produces for visitors to the search site, it鈥檚 easy to see where Google鈥檚 attackers slip up. All one needs to do is contemplate the fruits of Google searches before November 30, 2022. The date mentioned is important and relevant to the accusations.
That鈥檚 because it was on November 30, 2022 that OpenAI officially launched ChatGPT to the public. And in incredibly rapid fashion even within a technology space known for its viral qualities, internet search was changed forever.
Crucially, the change in search existed as a threat to Google鈥檚 popularity. And for obvious reasons. Though internet searches on Google formerly directed users to internet locales away from it, including that of publishers, ChatGPT鈥檚 rollout provided users of the internet with an all-new way to find voluminous information (including summaries) without endless clicking.
MORE FOR YOU
Which means Google had to adapt. Put another way, a failure of Google to adapt to the soaring popularity of ChatGPT, along with all manner of others (think Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek, and surely many more on the way) to ChatGPT鈥檚 successful alteration of user wants was existential for Google, as it is for any business that rests on its laurels.
Thought of in terms of the attack on Google discussed within this opinion piece, what has independent publishers (among others) within the EU up in arms is evidence not of Google鈥檚 monopoly power, but of a growing sector within the global economy (search) defined by enormous competition.
Which, when you think about it, describes all sectors in which there are highly valued corporations. Specifically, it鈥檚 the lofty valuation of corporations naively assumed to possess monopoly powers that implies feverish competition. Looked at through the prism of Google, its global popularity is all the evidence we need that it鈥檚 not a monopoly now, and most certainly won鈥檛 be one in the future.
Corporations quite simply cannot achieve on the level that Google has without facing challenges to their primacy. Google has seen this not just from established giants (think Microsoft and Bing), but from former unknowns eager to achieve Google鈥檚 much-coveted status as noun, verb, and adjective. Which explains the unexpected arrival of ChatGPT onto the search scene yet again.
Of course, the incredibly fast adoption of ChatGPT from November 30, 2022 onward is the undoing of the latest harassment of Google from the proverbial Commanding Heights. The nature of a Google search today doesn鈥檛 signal its monopolization of search, rather it signals an evolution of search born of intense, innovative and and well-funded competition.
Google isn鈥檛 a monopoly per the latest EU complaint, rather it鈥檚 a competitor in an increasingly crowded space. The previous truth can be found in the very complaint brought by independent publishers.
Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions