Cyriel Ruers was a guest on 'De Ochtendspits' on BNR Nieuwsradio to talk about the US court ruling in which it ruled that Google illegally built a monopoly on online search engines by spending billions of dollars to become the world's default search engine. Cyriel addressed, among other things, the behaviour that Google is being accused of in the ruling, which has already been labelled a "landmark decision" and even "the most important antitrust case of the century":
"The idea is that Google becomes the default setting for search engines on smartphones and browsers such as Safari or Firefox and has paid billions for that, over 26 million dollars by 2021. This has two consequences: first, it allowed Google to prevent competing search engines from becoming the default and thus could also become a good competitor over time." In addition, such a position made Google a huge amount of money. "That's because you are basically assured of searches and thus indirectly of advertising revenue. That is how you maintain that strong position of power."
The broadcast also discussed a possible break-up of Google. Cyriel indicated that this is a possibility, but that less far-reaching measures may also be sufficient to remedy the identified infringement. He also discussed the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which is already being used in Europe to curb the dominance of big tech and enable fair competition and 'contestability'.
You can listen back to the broadcast here.
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