Today’s ruling by a federal judge that Google is engaging in an illegal search engine monopoly reminds me of a quote from HBO’s The Wire.
It’s during that iconic scene from the show’s first season, when D’Angelo teaches Bodie and Wallace how to play chess. As he’s explaining what all the pieces do, how they move, and why, there’s a point when D’Angelo shares an important insight about one particular kind of piece: “See, the king stay the king.” In other words, he’s saying that everything but the pawns remains what they are in the long run — a metaphor, obviously, for The Wire’s larger message about life and poverty and growing up on the mean streets of Baltimore.
Because of how Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled today against the search giant — writing at one point in his decision that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly” — I feel that quote from The Wire also has some application to the situation that now confronts the king of internet search. And it’s not necessarily because of what the ruling means for Google itself; that’s something we actually don’t know yet, since the judge will decide later what he thinks the remedies for Google’s behavior should be.
I’m thinking, instead, about the recipients of Google’s search engine payola payments. Recipients like Apple, which earned a cool $20 billion from Google in 2022 in exchange for making Google Search the default on Apple devices (per reporting from The Verge). Those payments are at the heart of the judge’s ruling that Google has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act “by maintaining its monopoly in two product markets in the United States — general search services and general text advertising — through its exclusive distribution agreements.”
But let’s think this through, as far as what comes down the line from the ruling.
If Google’s payments are illegal, that means it’ll eventually have to stop giving those payments to device makers like Apple once the case is fully litigated. Meanwhile, a reasonable person would assume that most people will continue to either proactively choose Google or will simply let Google remain as their default search engine going forward.
The only difference between then and now?
Device makers like Apple will stop getting paid. Google’s search market share, meanwhile, will likely remain more or less what it is today.
Like the man said, the king stay the king.
