Opinion Google's market power: I am the Web

"Hear the news, sent by the illustrious ruler of the web, Google, through the voice of the faithful herald:

Let it be proclaimed everywhere: In the month of June in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-four, the Emperor has commanded his subjects to transition from Manifest V2 to V3: Those still using V2 artifacts in their magical chrome window, be warned. Members of the Blacksmith's Guild are encouraged to reforge their chrome artifacts to Manifest V3. Outdated artifacts are to be banned from the Chrome Web Store."

An opinion by Jo Bager

Jo Bager has been working for c't for almost twenty years and has also been working for heise online since its launch. He writes about search engines, social networks and web services of all kinds and is always fascinated by how the IT industry is constantly reinventing itself.

Sometimes, as an IT journalist, you feel like the messenger of a medieval ruler who dictates how things should be done on the web: Google. The company can impose its will as it sees fit, thanks to its market power through the Chrome browser, the Android operating system and, above all, the search engine.

When it comes to technical standards, Google sits on all kinds of technical committees for open standards and signals its willingness to compromise and talk. In the end, however, the emperor implements the changes that benefit him and his advertising business the most. The new interfaces for browser extensions called Manifest V3 slow down ad blockers. And the recently announced insistence on cookies helps the advertising giant with invasive forms of advertising such as targeting.

We have almost become accustomed to Google using its market power to push through its own interests. For example, every website operator must adhere to Google's guidelines for design and content. Otherwise they risk being relegated to irrelevance, i.e. poor rankings on the search results pages.

Now, for the first time, a US district court has recognized Google's supremacy and wants to curtail it. It has declared the company to be a monopolist in the field of internet searches, abusing its market power in an illegal manner. Will it do any good? Hardly, because experience shows that in the platform economy, the emperors grow back faster than they can be curtailed: "Hear the message sent by the illustrious ruler of the web, OpenAI, through the voice of the faithful herald: ...

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(jo)