 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we are going to be talking about a news from yesterday where it was announced that the US Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Google. It's the very same Google which has almost become a synonym with search and this lawsuit is against Google's anti-competitive monopolistic practices in the areas of search and search advertising. And now this is not only the US Justice Department at the federal level. 11 states have also joined in this lawsuit. There is also news that another probe is going on regarding the advertising space online which may lead to a separate lawsuit as well. And to talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Pulkastar. Prabir, thank you so much for joining us. So we have been discussing this issue in NewsClick over the past many months especially and there were recent hearings when all the top tech firms were summoned before Congress. There's been a lot of talk about this. But this lawsuit is especially big because it's considered one of the biggest in decades, almost two decades now. So to start with maybe a very basic question, what is wrong in Google being such a powerful player in the search engine business? We all believe Google is efficient when it comes to that. There's no denying that. So what is the case here? Well, let's put it this way, that you may technologically be very good and therefore you may have a preeminent position. But by virtue of the fact that you become a monopoly, you can utilize it to essentially get more money from others. And in this case, the advertisers of course are the ones who are paying more because they believe Google gives them better returns for it. But more than that, that you also do not allow anybody to come into that space. So if you look at what Google started as when they talked about the search engine, it says the search engine is what gives you quickly what you want to know. It transits you to other spaces, other websites very quickly. Now that's not what seems to be happening. In fact, the figures are very, very startling. They effectively says that people more or less. In fact, the figures are more than 50% of the people do not go to any other site after searching in Google, which means Google retains those people. How do they retain them? The various ways Google finds it to retain the people. One is of course go to only Google properties. If you're looking for a mapping information, Google maps. But that's only one example. The N number of other Google sites, which are Google properties, which are there. If it's videos, it will be YouTube. So effectively Google retains those search results by promoting its own search properties, own properties, which may match with some of the requirement things. Search may not be the best. Doesn't follow the criteria of the ranking. Google properties do not follow Google's criteria for ranking. So it promotes those. That's only one part of it. The second part of it, and this has also become quite dangerous these days, is the fact that you are beginning to see that the information on the sites, which my query when I search Google might have raised, Google tends to fetch the answer from those sites in a way that people then don't go any further. People may still go, but most people are looking for specific information. It's there. And they said, okay, that's all I really need. So that harvesting of the site in this particular way means even Wikipedia's search results. People don't go to Wikipedia after that. So increasingly the practices that Google has followed over the last three, four, five years have seen increasingly the number of clicks resulting from the search actually falling. So this is one part of it. And if you look at the anti-monopoly case just launched against Microsoft, that was because the Windows was the primary platform, mainly because Microsoft Windows had become the de facto choice for most people buying laptops. And most laptop vendors had also bundled Microsoft Windows as a part of the product itself. So that was the agreement between Microsoft Windows and a lot of the laptop vendors at that stage. Then they started bundling other things with it, Microsoft Explorer, that was one of the things. So the search engine, et cetera, comes up when you have already a web browser. So the web browser monopoly was what was Microsoft intention, because they had a monopoly on the Windows operating system, which was, as I said, the de facto operating system for the personal computers. So that is what the antitrust case in this Microsoft was. And they have to allow for other browsers to be either bundled by the laptop vendors, not only Windows, not only Microsoft products, but also that this led to the close integration between the Microsoft products, which have competition with the Windows operating system, that had was what was really attacked. And that is where Microsoft had to let that go. So they said, no, no, we're not using a monopoly on our operating system to force the laptop vendors to buy all our other products and give all our other products. At that point, Explorer was actually free. So give all our other products. But this is open for anybody to use and operate, use other products as well. So this is where Microsoft founded. And this is also seems to be the one which is now has got Google in trouble because Google's promoting its own properties and also retaining the searches on this platform. These are two of the things that we are talking about. There could be many more things we could talk about. But these are the two things which have made increasingly over the last five to 10 years, which has seen increasingly clicks resulting from Google search decreasing. And you know, the other interesting part of all this, there is this whole bunch of people who talk about search engine optimization. So what they have done is they then ask Google what is the best way Google can surf our sites. So Google then says, you know, if you want your search engine, our search engine to really know your site, then you follow these rules. So we ourselves have slowly created or increased the domination over Google. By following the instructions Google gives us how the search engine will surf site better crawler site better. And therefore increasingly, we are spending money to make Google Google's job easier. So this is the other part of it that it has become a situation where that we can't do without Google. We are in the mercy of Google. So Google can tomorrow really see that somebody who they don't like doesn't come up in the search engine. And if it doesn't, then of course a huge number of hits from the site will go down. So these are some of the key issues which are there. And there is at the moment no other solution but to break up the monopolies. That's what the US Congress report has also said, break up the monopolies. UK has talked about regulating them. Australia has talked about how to pay for the news that they use. All these discussions are being talked about, but there's no question that Google and the others, and we shouldn't forget about Amazon, we shouldn't forget Apple, we shouldn't forget Facebook. Facebook of course is a different problem. Facebook also has this hate network issue. But also let's not forget the good old Microsoft. It's still a big player in this area. So they're all monopolies in different ways. And I think this is something which is increasingly becoming a new issue in the world again, that it is not a question of being anti-competitive. If the monopoly itself is a problem and as you know, the US Supreme Court, I think when they had broken up the oil monopolies and that time they had said the monopoly is the issue. It's not just being anti-competitive. That's a consequence of but the real issue is monopoly. Exactly. And one of the factors that's being talked about is also that is how Google and other companies have done it to Google is believed to have bought up at least 260 companies in various sectors that is really strengthened. It's dominance over the entire online ecosystem. And one thing you talked about in the past is how, for instance, in Europe, various authorities have imposed very heavy fines on Googles over the past few years. But this has really done nothing much to dent their model and affect their system. And in fact, I think Justice Department sources did say that in this specific lawsuit, nothing was off the table, which means there are rumors of whether, you know, even a breakup might be considered. So how would such something like this actually work out in terms of Google? Well, it is possible to consider YouTube as a completely different platform and should be separated from Google. So those are obvious solutions that can be offered. And the question is that for a long time, the US did not have the stomach for looking at monopolies. The political climate made looking at monopolies self-difficult. I think that is one issue which is now becoming insensitive. It's become sensitive, some of it for the wrong reasons. The American conservative sections believe that all these tech monopolies are against them, which is strictly clearly not true. But nevertheless, that is the perception or at least that's what keeps their base enthused. But you know, the fact is that from the left and the right, Elizabeth Warren and others have also raised the issue of how to control monopolies. I think that's becoming a big issue. You raised the issue about how Google has bought up a huge number of products. YouTube was of course one of them. Now the question is that these what is today as Google properties are really properties that Google has also bought up at different points of time or invested in or bought and killed. So there's a huge set of behavior that happens when you are expanding and you have the market cloud. Google also has not been very successful in anything else except advertisement. More than 80%, I think 82% of the revenue really comes from advertisements. So like Facebook, which of course has 98% of the revenue from advertisements. Google has 18% of its revenue from other sources, but they have really not had any blockbusters apart from advertising revenue. Any of the other things they have done maybe at some point they might strike some gold somewhere else. But at the moment, all the things they have done have been only to strengthen the Google's advertising model. Now search engine is one part from search. You can go to maps. You can go to YouTube. You still don't exit Google or you can go to Gmail. You still don't exit Google. So Facebook tries to keep you on Facebook. Google has a number of properties which through search you may reach. You may reach to a search, but really still you are in Google properties. So Google has really created an ecosystem which you don't then see that you are enmeshed in it. So though Google started by saying we're not a wall garden unlike Facebook, effectively it is acting increasingly like one. That you are in the Google universe, you don't have to go out of it. Except that for social networking, its platform which it tried, it failed. So that is one area where others have come up. And of course in the Twitter universe, relatively much smaller, which is outside this, but increasingly it is the online universes which are becoming de facto monopolies. And that is at the end of it brought up the issue of, of course, anti monopoly law which exists and also the consequences of the monopoly, which is now becoming apparent. You know the biggest problem that platform that newspapers, television, all of the news organizations have that none of them today have a viable business model. Apart from maybe a few absolutely top ranking ones where people are willing to pay, most of them are today reading cash. And now Google does not produce any content. Content is only searched through Google. On YouTube, no content is produced by Google. The major drivers of their business is based on content of others and that is unbiable in the long run if you take for instance the whole media business because without content there is no media. But Google or Facebook do not produce any content, but yet they are the kings of media today by virtue of the advertising monopoly they exercise. Right. Thank you so much for being, for talking to us. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching.