Google vs DOJ antitrust case ruling recently ended up as Google not having to sell Chrome. Even though I’m no fan of Google and what they have been doing to publishers (stealing clicks) but still I think its great that Google gets to keep Chrome.
Over last few years I’ve noticed a strong sentiment in marketing space and people hating on Google! And many were wishing for this case to end as Google having to sell Chrome. But of course that did not happen.
But where we go from here?
- Is Google should be let to continue stealing traffic from web?
- Is there should be any liability for Google when they make conflicting statements! Like recently their lawyers in court saying “The open web is in rapid decline” while Google executives multiple times have said things along the lines “web is thriving”.
- Moreover Google have challenged third party studies around usage of AI Overviews and out going traffic to the web from Google. But no data from Google was presented to say on what basis they are saying that methodology used for these studies isn’t right.
- And Google saying clicks to websites have been stable year over year and despite there being presence of AI Overviews in search results but even for this Google didn’t share exact data or any sort of numbers?
I’ve just listed somethings here only! But there is a lot more too!
And I think its more of behaviour issue rather than it being about legal action. That’s why I’m of opinion that Google will only change if it faces competition and losing search market share rather than it being some court taking an action against them.
Similar to what happened with accelerated development of Gemini because Google was facing next level competition from ChatGPT and there was high fear of losing users. I think if companies like OpenAI/Perplexity develop their own usual search engine that just lists URLs rather than it being AI answer engine that these are right now.
Then only Google will correct its behaviour!
Moreover usage of Bing is growing too.
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