Google is at risk around the world because of the monopoly

Google is considered one of the largest technology companies ever. The company operates globally, as its products and services are located in most countries of the world, and although this matter benefits the company and increases its profits, it makes it subject to the governments of those countries as well.

Google suffers from monopoly cases globally, especially in European countries. The company was hit with fines of $2.7 billion in 2017, and this number doubled to $5 billion in 2018.

In general, foreign governments are starting to treat Google differently. Where it is no longer satisfied with fines and compensation. Instead, it began trying to change the way Google and other companies surrounded by monopoly charges operated.

Indeed, last February the Australian government introduced a new law allowing news publishers to negotiate with companies such as Google and Facebook for the purpose of getting paid for the news they quote and display to their users.

Also, last August, South Korea introduced a new law. This law allowed application developers to add payment methods other than those offered by Google and Apple within the Play Store and the App Store, respectively.

Google and monopoly cases

These new laws give us a picture of the new approach that countries have begun to adopt. It is no longer limited to fines. Especially since a company like Google hasn't had much trouble with fines. Because it makes huge profits. It reached $61.9 billion in the second quarter of 2021 alone.

As already mentioned, Google has gone through a lot in South Korea and Australia. However, it was not seriously affected. However, the company may start to really struggle with Turkey.

This is because the company controls the local search in a way that many see as harmful. For example, when you search for “Chinese restaurant,” Google will show you results for it first. Such as the results of the maps or their own recommendations. The user needs to keep scrolling down until they see the natural search results.

Yelp was directly hurt by those results. Since its location offers access to stores, restaurants, and even doctors and bars. Yelp has started to take legal action in Turkey.

The American giant confirmed, as usual, that its search results provide the greatest possible benefit to the user. But it seems that judges in Turkey were not convinced of this, and stated that the company had violated Article 6 of the Turkish Competition Law.

The company was subjected to a fine of up to 36 million US dollars inside Turkey. However, this fine was not enough, in fact, the company achieves this amount in just two hours. But the greatest danger was when the court passed a preliminary decision demanding that the company find a solution to prevent the problem, and not distinguish itself from competitors in the search results.

So far, no law has been applied or harmed the American company directly, but perhaps what happened in Turkey is forcing the company to gradually change the way it operates before it faces a huge problem.