FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Bryan Comer from Tobias and Comer Law firm explained what the Google Monopoly case means - Midday Mobile - Thurday 8-08-24
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So starting the second hour here and I'm so glad that Brian Comer with the Bison Comer Law reached out and said hey you know that big decision earlier this week that called Google a monopoly. I'd love to come on and discuss that and I said please do because all of this goes over my head and there's been you know discussions about Google being the predominant search engine among other things for years but this week a federal judge ruled Google acted to illegally maintain a monopoly in online search. The case was the first of several antitrust lawsuits the US government has brought against not just Google but some of the other leading tech companies ruling marks a major victory for the government's efforts to reign in big tech and the Justice Department actually brought this lawsuit about four years ago. So that's how long this has taken to get Trump's Justice Department, Trump's Justice Department and they maintained that Google's an illegal search engine monopoly allegedly by paying web browsers and device manufacturers like Apple to be featured as their default search engine. I thought this was the most ironic thing. The judge is Judge Meta. So Judge Meta ruling that Google is a monopoly. Brian thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me. So this pretty big ruling. I mean this could have more than just a ripple effect down the line. This could completely change the internet the way we see it right now. Yeah it really can and you know it was funny I were talking about segues earlier and then going from the game monopoly. I mean so here you know the way that this is going to work. I mean it centers on Google's use of being the default browser or the default excuse me the default search engine for all these browsers and so that's where we really they really ran into problems was was the things that they were doing to unfairly gain that advantage and it all comes down to to getting the data from people that they can then use to monetize and so that's whether it be paper clicks or searches or then to package that up and then sell to others they're collecting it through this being the the search king yeah and the search king at what percentage you laid it out for me early how much in this ruling did they say Google controls the quote-unquote search market. Yeah so they're the default search engine for 90 percent of computers and 95 percent of devices and so that's apple, Samsung. I mean across all these lines whether it's a Mac whether it's a PC I mean and the numbers are pretty staggering basically Apple paid in 2022 Apple paid 20 billion dollars with a B or excuse me Google paid Apple 20 billion dollars so that they would be the default search engine on Apple devices like my Mac yeah iMac or iPad yeah that's a pretty simple way to dominate the market you see if you give me a second what I'll do is I'll write you a check and then next year I'll write another check and they'll all be the same incredible amount that's how they did it yeah basically and so this this actually the deal's been in place with Apple since 2002 wow they got in early they did I mean and you kind of really touch on a central point there you have these market participants like Apple like Google who have kind of come up about the same time society has with the internet and so it becomes ubiquitous to where okay Google is Google is you know it's the search engine what are you gonna do I'm gonna go Google that you know and and that's they but the key is and what this ruling centers on is a violation of the something called the Sherman Act which goes all the way back to the 1890s and I dug into it getting ready for today and it's really kind of fascinating I know everybody's looking forward a good history lesson about your 1890s politics but it was actually General Sherman's brother was a senator a Republican senator from Ohio and and it was all about free market and competition and that's the whole point of the Sherman Act essentially it according to the federal trade commission is a comprehensive charter of economic liberty aimed at preserving free and unfettered competition as the rule of trade hey ask one question real quick sure what was the original dispute because now it's Google and this and I'll back then what were they what were they uh unhappy about well so he was looking at unfair business practices that were really coming in the wake of the civil war uh and so you know various there wasn't a say one one no he spewed right yeah so so you can't have a law that's targeted to a specific entity like they couldn't write a law today that then bans Google from it is directed to Google right that was a bill of a tanger if my civics uh is right but but so that his whole thing was the free trade the free market capitalism and to make sure that ultimately we as the consumers are getting a fair shot and so really there's two main aspects to the Sherman Act you cannot have two or more market participants conspired together to unfairly prohibit trade so that's things like if apple and windows got together and said we're going to charge x dollars per thing that we're selling whatever it is and we're just going to artificially set the price that that could be that's that's a per se violation and on its face violation you can't conspire together and then the other thing is exactly what we have here where uh where a company gets so large and so powerful it's not common uh it's not subject to common competitive pressures in the market that other market participants would be and so like you told us that right in the check that's what the other search engines can't do right right and so maybe a microsoft can't write one that bid right right and so apple will say yeah sure we'll take your twenty billion dollars and then we'll set that as the default browser or as the default search engine but you know if brian comers uh search browser or whatever uh comes in i can't do that so now i'm i'm prohibited from even entering the market and so then the trickle-down effect that that has to consumers is is humong it just keeps growing and growing and growing absolutely talking with brian comer with device and comer law and i i guess the judge in this instance he had to kind of specifically to find which part of google is a monopoly because it is such a massive company you know they have their hands and everything but this is specifically regarding the search text engine and the way you put it general search text advertising i think that plays into this as well right if someone wants to advertise on google uh or if they just want to advertise and have their their uh business put in the front of people who are searching for certain businesses they have to play along with google or they're not going to get the same kind of hits that other people well that's right and anybody who has any uh at all uh interest in google searching you know where we as consumers trying to find the things that we want but then also we as business owners who want to then be relevant if you're not on page one of google and play by you know their rules and subject to the infamous algorithm uh then you're not going to be relevant and so then that's going to also force people away and also on in terms of like uh whether it be a car dealership or a law firm or a bakery or whomever if i want to go advertise on google they're going to set the price on the paper click or whatever and you just have to pay it now there and there's people out there and i you know think about this as well well there's other search engines out there why don't they just make better search engines or i mean time and time again i've tried to switch i've tried to go bing i've tried to go duck go and uh in the morning when we're trying to find something to find it fast i mean you still can't beat google i mean maybe they've become so great because they're a behemoth but uh can't these other companies just get better yeah well so that's the whole point of capitalism right so you want to encourage this market participation so that we end up with a better product and so them having the monopoly isn't illegal them charging what they want to charge isn't illegal it's using the unfair practices to get there and so uh if if you know like i said i wanted to go create my own web browser or search engine um to be able to even enter that platform where 95 percent of the market is completely under lock and key i can't i can't you know we think google is so great but maybe google is alabama playing in the cyo maybe maybe maybe they run everybody off the road because everybody else is ill equipped to compete or well and maybe google was challenged in some way google would actually be better than we know them to be today yeah but then and see and that's also the point is so you know by paying apple all this money now apple isn't entering into the marketplace on their product they're out yeah right exactly and so they're gonna they're gonna take the money and set them as the default well maybe they'll come they can make one that's even better or we were talking before we went on the air you know maybe there's different niches of browsers that can come out there such as one that might be catered to children like you know in a wholesome right proper yeah so where you know they're not looking up you know something i want to see exactly and and and that's just like one of the ideas that's come up from this but i mean the spin offs from this uh the the ripple effect from it could be huge and so what's going to happen now you know google says they're going going to appeal as most people do when they lose but so then that would go to the uh circuit court of appeals for the district of columbia which is just below the u.s supreme court but if they survive that then they'll enter into what's called the damages phase or the second phase of the trial rather where the judge then says okay what are we going to do how are we going to uh kind of unwind this anti-competitive behavior and i guess that could be as simple as saying hey you can no longer pay these other companies to make you the default search engine so not completely you know breaking them up like we've seen monopolies done before but just saying hey the unfair practice is cut it out could it be as simple as that it could be and and that's the thing that you know a lot of a lot of ink will be spilled uh discussing uh is exactly how is it that that's going to happen because now you take somebody like apple okay are they going to enter the market or are they going to say okay we'll now court microsoft and we'll use bing or we'll use some some startup that nobody's ever heard of that then becomes the next google but but that's the whole thing is you know they actually google was so efficient and so good at what they did part of the reason being that they're collecting all this data from people and using it and monetizing it and but they're doing it in such an efficient way that they get to be this behemoth well others can't even get their foot on foot in the door to that because they're just they're they're so big yeah and so this could stretch on for a long time good i mean you go appeal another trial it feels like every time we see a big decision whether it's a state fighting against something or do you say ah it's just going to make its way to the supreme court so could this eventually be something like that or will this probably just stick in uh judge meta's court until so well so the appellate process they uh they have the ability to appeal and since the uh court this came out of as a dis is a u.s. district court for the district of columbia so in dc the next step up is the intermediate the court of appeal the uh united states court of appeal for the dc circuit and it's whereas alabama we're in something called the eleventh circuit which is alabama florida in georgia uh this dc circuit only here's cases from that's where america garland was when he was on the court of appeals um and so then if after what happens there the u.s. supreme court could take it as one of its 80 something cases it takes or it could pass on it interesting and you talk about the ripple effect this may have i'm thinking about the butterfly effect and some of the decisions made in the past uh using the sherman act i think you said microsoft was hit by something like this what this world would look like if some of those decisions hadn't been made it's kind of fascinating to think about and it's the exact same this the sherman act is the same vehicle that they broke up standard oil with uh it's the same vehicle that the bells from telephones got busted up uh microsoft with internet explorer being uh required to be on uh these devices and so yeah i mean the butterfly effect uh for sure and then you know what companies are going to come up out of this and i think the whole point of this and the reason that you're getting uh positive responses from both sides of the aisle is as you properly pointed out the trump administration brought it the Biden administration continue to pursue it is it does benefit the consumer because when we do have this free market when we do have competition prices go down quality goes up you know it's funny i would i've been watching entire SEC games from years ago and all the sponsors are uh corporations that have been broken up i don't know if they're all graduates of the of the sherman act or not but it's like whatever happened to them yeah uh brian comer with the bias and cummer law fascinating stuff here really appreciate you kind of breaking this down for a couple of simpletons like dam myself yeah no offense not meaning to drag you in that boat no man but i mean just look at me so uh folks can uh check you out online got a great website to biascomerlaw.com that's what you recommend that's right yeah and uh i'll get to uh can find us there or if you ever have a case one of free consultation you can just call us two five one four three two five zero zero one is that easy uh good stuff there and uh gonna continue following this case yeah this is great you know they're not the only big tech monopoly in some different spheres so maybe down the line we'll see this with apple or something like that yeah there are pending cases uh in the same vein same kind of claims against apple against what's used to be facebook meta and uh amazon so stay tuned well we know how judge meta is going to roll on the meta one coming back more uh mid-day mobile on the way