April 17--Daniel Ek is the 31-year-old founder and chief executive of Spotify, a global music streaming service worth $8 billion. Ek is Swedish, living proof that Europe can produce superstar tech entrepreneurs capable of besting American competitors.
If only European regulators would believe that.
Instead, they lack confidence in the power of innovation and competition, which translates into a deeply entrenched fear of U.S. tech giants. And that helps explain why the European Union's antitrust office is going after Google.
The crux of the complaint, formally announced Wednesday, is that Google in Europe abuses its dominance of the search-engine market by rigging shopping search results to benefit its own advertisers.
Search for a pair of shoes, for example, and the prominently displayed Google shopping service results show up first, ahead of other results, even those generally shown to be more popular among consumers. Depending on the search topic, a computer user may have to scroll pretty far down the computer screen to get past Google-connected links to view the organic results of the search giant's algorithm.
The EU's competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said regulators aren't asking Google to mess with the algorithm or change its screen design, but they demand a change in behavior: "I'm concerned that Google has artificially boosted its presence in the comparison shopping market."
Google's dominance in search is real, but it's not total, nor is it unassailable, which is why the regulators should tread more carefully.
In the United States, where regulators haven't moved on this issue, Google's search engine controls about two-thirds of the market. In Europe it's much bigger -- about 90 percent. That helps explain European concerns. But we wonder why the Europeans look at that number and see only evil by Google? Why not wonder what's wrong with Europe's culture of innovation? If other search engines in the U.S. have managed to grab one-third of the market, couldn't an agile European rival do at least as well?
Maybe that sounds like an unlikely scenario, but consider how fast the tech world moves. When Google was founded, just 17 years ago, the top cellphone company globally was Nokia, a European company, followed by Schaumburg-based Motorola. Nokia sold its handset business to Microsoft last year; Motorola was split into two companies and the cellphone business is now owned by China's Lenovo (which bought it from Google).
Everything changed in the cellphone business in 2007 when Google entered the smartphone market with its Android system, the same year Apple unveiled the iPhone. They're the big players today, with Android well ahead, but for how long? You can answer that question feeling oppressed by the tech tyrants, or intrigued by what may come next.
That's basically Google's defense: The digital experience keeps changing, with new ideas and new competitors abounding. Ever heard of DuckDuckGo? We hadn't, until Google name-checked it Wednesday as a competing search engine. Maybe it's worth a try.
But even if Google never loses its commanding position, people don't rely exclusively on the search engine for shopping. Often consumers go directly to an app or website to make a purchase: Kayak.com for flights, perhaps, or Amazon for music. Another option for European consumers, by the way, is to simply scroll past the Google ads to look at the organic search results. There's no requirement to click on a Google ad.
Google's row with Europe will play out over time. The two sides tried three times to reach a settlement. If Google loses its case the company could face heavy fines or other demands that it change some practices. Meanwhile, the regulators continue to investigate different aspects of Google. They are especially concerned about the company's dealings with Android cellphone manufacturers, and the question of whether those companies are coerced into placing Google products in prominent positions on mobile devices.
Hmm. That sounds a bit like the great "bundling" controversy of the late 20th century. More than a decade ago, U.S. and European regulators separately went after Microsoft over its fearsome market share in ... desktop computing. Part of the concern was how Microsoft bundled its other products in Windows.
But that was a long time ago, before smartphones and tablets. It's another reminder how times change, if you'll just let them.
