In case anyone anywhere was still in doubt, it’s pretty clear now that Google has too much power… and has been left unchecked for too long.
Posted at 5:00 am
The undisputed web search giant has decided in recent days to unilaterally block access to news for 4% of its users in Canada. We can easily speak of a million people here.
You might be there without knowing it, because Google didn’t send a memo to concerned netizens: the company simply smuggled away the window where major media articles usually appear.
You take your phone, type “Justin Trudeau Interference China” into the Google search engine and if you’re selected, the Spotlight window pops up, which shows articles from La Presse, Le Devoir, Journal de Montréal n just doesn’t more.
It’s Google’s way of “getting the wheels rolling” and intimidating the federal government as it prepares to pass a law the company doesn’t like… Facebook made the same threat last year but hasn’t acted on it.
What Google is suddenly acknowledging is not only that it was justified in doing away with its old motto (Don’t be evil), but that it has far too much power today: It acts like it simply because it can do what it wants.
And by doing so, it proves that it doesn’t have enough countervailing power: collectively, we can’t do anything about it, nobody can stop it.
And this despite the fact that almost all web queries made by Canadians are made via Google1.
Bill C-18, which has drawn the ire of the Silicon Valley giant, affects online news funding. It aims to force some players to sit down and negotiate fair deals with media companies in the form of a fee for using content they don’t pay a penny for.
But fundamentally, the problem that the federal government is indirectly attacking with C-18 is the very problem that Google is emphasizing with its bullying methods: its monopoly.
A many-tentacled monopoly that allows him to do whatever he wants, regardless of the consequences. A monopoly that affects companies, but also users who have little recourse in the event of a problem. A monopoly we have collectively tolerated for too long, despite anti-monopoly laws designed to ensure healthy competition.
This is about the impact of this dominance on newspaper publishers. But it could also be its influence on the digital advertising market, whose value chain it controls from A to Z, making it practically inevitable.
Because it is Google’s monopoly that is attacking the Trudeau government without saying so, reminding the company that it is not alone in the world.
Google’s decision to ban news access for some of its users is a bit like Bell Canada banning long-distance access for 4% of its subscribers…when Bell was almost alone in offering long-distance in the country!
Because there was a time when Bell was king and master of the long-distance communications market until the CRTC broke its monopoly in 1992. Just as the American authorities broke Microsoft’s monopoly a few years later to prevent computer manufacturers from forcing their software into Windows.
But oddly enough, since the 1990s, it’s been as if the antitrust laws didn’t exist. We let the giants buy their competitors without blinking (Facebook swallowing WhatsApp and Instagram, for example). We steadfastly allow them to become monopolies (Google and search engines, Apple and App Store, Amazon and e-commerce, etc.).
For this reason, today, late in life, we must say that we must act through the back door by attacking them with lawsuits, fines, and government action.
Like the US Department of Justice recently, we are suing Google’s “monopoly” in the online advertising market.
We attack the fact that mergers and acquisitions are slipping under the regulatory radar, as US authorities have done.
Billions of dollars in fines are being imposed, as the European Union did by reminding that “under antitrust rules, it is illegal to deny competitors a chance to innovate and compete on a level playing field”.
And for the same reason, we’re forcing the giants to sit down with local media outlets to set a price on the news they scrape the web for free to increase traffic in their ecosystem and feed the beast even more. , as required by the C-18. A welcome initiative by the Trudeau government.
So when Google blocks access to news contrary to a government measure, it proves the relevance of the latter. And of all the efforts aimed at framing them, even reframing them.
In short, Google has harmed itself. Or, to use Jacques Parizeau’s expression, she peeled herself.