Back in the early 1990s, an oil-change service business ran a clever ad campaign which said “We’re not trying to change your oil, we’re trying to change your oil.” Get it?
The ad springs to mind as the Department of Justice (DOJ) attacks Google and its alleged monopoly on search. Implicit in the DOJ’s case is that Google’s dominance is rooted in it paying companies like Apple to make its search engine a default on Apple devices. The view is backwards.
It implies that Google has to some degree bought its ubiquity, that what has become a noun, verb and adjective is the stuff of payoffs over popularity. Quite the opposite, actually. Evidence supporting the previous claim can be found in the $20 billion Google is said to pay Apple annually in return for making its search engine a default on Apple products.
There’s quite simply no way Google’s executive team or its shareholders would sign off on such a large sum to support usage of a product that wasn’t already a market leader, or that at least had the potential to be just that. To suggest otherwise is to believe money isn’t just dumb, but ferociously so.
Stating what should be obvious, Google can afford top quality “shelf space” precisely because Google is already the search engine of choice for the great multitude. Does anyone seriously think Apple would compromise its elite stature for a $20 billion check? If Google weren’t Google, there’s no chance Apple would compromise a brand worth trillions for a sum of money that’s a small fraction of its total present and future earnings.
Notable about all this is that Google was formerly on the other side of the “shelf space” scenario described above. Seriously, how easily the DOJ’s ankle-biters forget how Microsoft once got itself into trouble with the same DOJ for having had the temerity to include its Internet Explorer in its software bundle. For shame!?
Actually, Microsoft included Internet Explorer simply because the latter was what seemingly everyone used. Rather than recognize overwhelming consumer preference, the DOJ attacked Microsoft in the way that it’s attacking Google at present. Only for reality to set in.
Seemingly always and everywhere missed by the DOJ is that the present in commerce is invariably the past. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was dominant in the web browser space until it wasn’t. Open source browser Firefox came along, as did – you guessed it – Google Chrome. What was seen as having monopoly control over the pathway to internet usage rather quickly did not.
In which case, please stop and imagine the impact on Microsoft’s share price if the deep-pocketed corporation had spent enormous sums on default status for an Internet Explorer that had fallen so very much out of favor. Not only would shareholders have not countenanced such mindless spending on what had lost the market, there’s no way a company like Apple would have risked its own forward-looking brand on what in so many ways embodied the past.
Shelf space is precious for buyer and provider of same. Which is a reminder that Google can once again pay for default status because it’s already the choice when it comes to internet search. Or, for fun, Google isn’t trying to change your internet search engine, it’s trying to change your internet search engine.
