Today is a big mean solar day in Silicon Valley because of a hearing happening in Washington , D.C.
Congress open its long - awaited antimonopoly investigation of American tech giants on Tuesday with the first of several hearings . This one focused on the impact of companies like Google and Facebook on the U.S. press .
How did it go ? Most of the time was postulate up by people from the news media describing the crumble state of the industry , specially the harms to local news electric receptacle . There was only one congresswoman of tech there and , at the risk of the understatement of the hundred , he was intent on playing hardcore defense team .
Photo: Sean Gallup (Getty)
When it was his turn to talk , Democratic Congressman David Cicilline from Rhode Island asked Matthew Schruers , frailty president of the tech swop group Computer and Communications Industry Association and the technical school industry ’s military personnel in the room , if they could agree on some service line facts .
No , they could not .
Cicilline face Schruers with the numbers that tell the tale of Google ’s ascendence in hunting . Schruers , intent on earning his payroll check , insisted up , down , and sidewise that search is a competitive market .
As his first model of a rival , Schruers offered Apple ’s Siri . The matter is , Siri searches the entanglement with Google by nonremittal .
Here ’s the strange exchange in full :
Cicilline : “ Mr. Schruers , I desire to start up with you . Google captures 88 percentage of the U.S. online hunting marketplace , 94 percent of all search on smartphones , 78 percent of the search ad tech food market , and 59 percent of the third - political party display ad company market . I take it you agree that these at least on their face do n’t appear to be competitive grocery ? ”
Schruers : “ Which precise market are we talking about ? ”
Cicilline : “ Let ’s start with search on smart headphone . Ninety - four percent of the grocery controlled by one program . You would concur that ’s not competitive under any definition ? ”
Schruers : “ Well , I think I would say 94 percent of a relevant marketplace would be something suitable of considering but … ”
Cicilline : “ You guess mobile hunting ad market is not a relevant market ? ”
Schruers : “ I think the relevant market in that guinea pig would be what economists tell apart us compete with that . I know that searching on the headphone in internet browser , I can also search on my earphone by involve Siri or look with a digital assistant , a smart verbalizer in my room . There are a lot of position a user can go to get answers that extent beyond the web internet browser search experience . These are progressively pageless tool that do n’t require a search locomotive . So I think economist might not harmonize that desktop hunt is a discrete marketplace … ”
Cicilline : “ I actually do n’t be intimate any economist that does n’t agree that that is not a competitive market place . I guess I ’m asking you , do you agree that ’s not a competitive market when it ’s operating 94 percent of the market part . ”
Schruers : “ I think 94 pct of a relevant grocery is something that ’s deserving consideration . The question is whether that ’s a food market . ”
Is fluid , the mankind ’s most popular computing weapons platform by far , a relevant market ?
“ Relevant marketplace ” is a loaded effectual full term . In little , it ’s the market in question as defined for antimonopoly purpose . For example , is societal medium loosely the market in question or is societal picture the marketplace ? The answer could mean a with child hatful for YouTube in the antitrust conflict to make out .
Mobile search , however , is a different brute entirely : It accounts for nearlythree - fourthsof all search revenue and , as Cicilline illustrates above , Google is singularly dominant . Siri is not a rival because it uses Google by nonremittal ; Echo is scarcely a competition because it habituate Microsoft ’s Bing for search , and Bing has somewhere from 2 tomore than 30 percentmarket share , depend on whose telephone number you believe . Either agency , Bing is no Google .
And then there was the closet .
The first witness to speak was David Chavern , president of the News Media Alliance , a radical representing over 2,000 media organizations . The NMA came out with an heart - pick up study this weeksayingthat Google made $ 4.7 billion from the news industry in 2018 .
That kind of bit gets headlines , specifically in a newspaper like the New York Times ( a member of the NMA ) , but the methodology beneath it is questionable . The magnanimous identification number seem to be based on anoff - hand comment by Marissa Mayer , then a Google VP , in 2008 saying that Google News was then deserving $ 100 million to Google . The $ 4.7 billion number is calculated , almost totally , because Google is now worth more and , therefore , you’re able to accurately account how much money it ’s make from the news manufacture … Huh ?
Here ’s thereportto read for yourself .
Anyway , having already earned a big New York Times headline , Chavern afford the hearing with this figure that just raises more doubt than answer . perchance the real number is higher , maybe it ’s downcast , but the $ 4.7 billion is ultimately a big surmise get dressed up as a actual grievance . It was a bad way to start .
Even further aside from Silicon Valley , U.S. Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim was in Tel Aviv on Tuesday where he return a speech that in no unsettled terms lay the antitrust crosshairs on American tech giants by citing the country ’s long chronicle of gargantuan industry breakups and lay out arguments the Justice Department could wield against big tech .
“ The current landscape painting paint a picture there are only one or two significant players in important digital infinite , including cyberspace hunting , societal net , Mobile River and desktop operating systems and electronic book sales , ” Delrahim said .
Delrahim ’s emphatic speech , which you’re able to readhere , hail just one daytime after Senator Elizabeth Warren call on him to ill-use down from his position as antitrust chief due to what she argues is aconflict of involvement . A little over a decade ago , Delrahim was a paid lobbyist first for Apple and then Google in Washington , D.C.
“ Your retiring workplace as a lobbyist for two of the large and most scrutinized technical school companies in the public produce the visual aspect of conflict of interest , ” Warren wrote in a letter of the alphabet to Delrahim . “ As the capitulum of the antitrust class at the DOJ , you should not be monitor investigations into former clients who paid you tens of thousands of dollars to buttonhole the federal government . ”
you may read Warren ’s letterhereand you may watch the full congressional hearing here :
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