Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mark Twain quoting Benjamin Disraeli that there are three kinds
of lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's a great line, and.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
As president of the Bad Analogy Club, I'm going to
use that line to describe something else that really isn't
about statistics at all, because I take my job as
president of the Bad Analogy Club extremely seriously. At the
end of his statement yesterday, Attorney General Colorado Attorney General
Phil Wiser his statement about the result so far in
(00:28):
a federal lawsuit about Google. Wiser, who was one of
the leaders of the states joining the federal government in
the lawsuit against Google, said in August twenty twenty four,
a DC federal District judge ruled in a landmark decision
that Google has abused its monopoly power and harmed consumers
in online search and search text ads. And in a sense,
(00:49):
what he's trying to do, he's referencing the older case,
which is superseded by the newer case, but he's trying
to make it look like he's.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Winning based on.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
The decision yesterday by a federal judge Amit Meta, who
did in fact the rule that Google kind of sort
of did something wrong. But if you want to look
at who's actually winning based on that particular ruling. I
would note that Google stock is up eight and a
half percent today, which is getting somewhat close to two
(01:21):
hundred billion with a b dollars of additional value. So
that doesn't really sound like the government one. So joining
us to help us understand this very complex story, Corbyn
Barthold Corbyn is Internet policy counsel at tech Freedom. He's
been on the show two or three or four times
in the past. TechFreedom dot org is the website. Corbyn,
(01:42):
thanks so much for joining us. Appreciating great to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Scoreboard as they say, yeah, as far as the stock
price goes.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, so at the very highest level.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
If you were to if we were to rate this
ruling as from let's say zero to ten, with zero
this is this is going to be ridiculous, but from Google,
from Google's perspective, like zero being a ruling that was
so terrible it was going to put them out of
business and ten being the best ruling Google ever could
(02:15):
have imagined in a case like this, what's this eight?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, maybe eight and a half.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, okay, So tell us first, what was an issue.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
The DOJ sued Google in twenty twenty. Its lawsuit alleged
that Google had abused its monopoly power in the search
market by having exclusive deals with browsers. So that's like
Safari or Mozilla and with its own Android operating system, whereby,
(02:49):
in the browser case, for instance, they would pay money
to Apple to make sure that Apple kept Google as
the exclusive search engine in a when you opened up
Safari browser, you mentioned the States. I can't help, but
note the States brought an even more aggressive case talking
about abuse disadvantaging things like Yelp, and that went down
(03:11):
in flames way back.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
So the States lost in a way that you know,
the governor is not acknowledging at any rate.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
The dj prevailed on this exclusive argument that the deals
furthered the monopoly in a way that was not competing
on the merits. That liability ruling happened, happened several months ago,
and then we have this remedy ruling which kind of
amounts to oops.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Never mind, and is it correct to say that we
believe that Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year
to make Google the default search engine in Safari, but
we don't actually know how much the number is because
those numbers are kind of are subsumed within other larger
(04:01):
categories within their earnings reports.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, that's roughly correct. We know it's a very large
amount of money. It's something to the tune of twenty
billion dollars or something like that. And today it's no
longer even before this liability ruling, it's no longer to
be exclusive, but it is to be the default, the
one that when you open up your iPhone, that's what
Safari will have you use unless you choose otherwise.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So, and I haven't really looked at this, and I
have my iPhone here, I haven't really looked into it.
But is it the case right now that I that
if I want to search for something by let's say,
typing a search term in at the top, that I
can that Google is the only choice right now? I mean,
I could obviously go to another a web page of
(04:46):
another search engine and type something in there.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
But if the.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Browser itself is going to kind of function as your
search engine, is Google.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
My only choice in Safari today?
Speaker 3 (04:55):
No, it is your automatic choice. So you can just
type search terms into the bar at the top of Safari.
It's going to use Google Search. You can go into
the settings in Safari and with a handful of clicks
in about thirty seconds, changer to fault to some others.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Okay, that's what I my vague recollection was because I
think I remember seeing so uh. If that's the case,
then what's this about, Like, how is the.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Remedy different from the existing situation.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
My snide comment ever since this lawsuit came down is, wow,
you know, the government seems to think that people's fingers
are broken. I know perfectly well how to type you know,
www dot bing dot com. If that's what I want
to use. People don't use the competing search engines because
Google is the best search engine. And actually Judge Meta
(05:48):
even acknowledged that. In his liability ruling. It came down
to whether Google was going too far in kind and
trying to lock down that dominant position, and Judge Meta.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Decided that they did. But there's this.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Disconnect between the liability ruling and the remedy ruling because
in the liability ruling, Judge Meta said, well, you know,
why is Google paying all this money to Apple? And
not unreasonably? He said, you know, one reason might be
because Google is trying to keep Apple off the Sorry
on the sidelines. You know, Apple has gobs of money
and a lot of talent. Maybe they would make a
(06:24):
competing search engine if Google didn't pay them all this money.
But then we get to the remedy ruling, and the
government wanted the judge to order Google to not be
able to pay any money to anyone anymore. And Judge
Meta did not accept that remedy. He said, no, I'm
just going to make it so Google cannot pay to
be exclusive, but they can still pay to be default.
(06:47):
But that doesn't solve this potential Apple problem. Apple now
is sitting happy. Apple's going to be very happy with
this ruling. They now continue to have no incentive to
try to make a search engine.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
And it kind of reveals that that was really speculative.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
From the very beginning and kind of actually undermines the
liability ruling a bit.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And I will note that Apple stock is up three
percent today as well, so adding about one hundred billion
dollars to the market cap of Apple, which is already
worth you know, three and a half trillion trillion dollars.
So there are a couple of things that I saw
in the ruling that I didn't understand, and I would
like you to explain to me, but keep it at
a basic level because I'm not very bright, all right.
(07:28):
So one of the things that I saw was that
the judges ruling requires Google to share some kind of
search results. So what do they have to share, who
do they have to share it with, and what is
that sharing solving?
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah, so in the backup half a step, Google came
in at the remedy stage and said what I was
previously explaining, you know, just make it so that we
can't be exclusive still, let us pay money. And Judge
meta accepted that. So that's Google's proposed remedy and they're
in the DJ asked for all of these other remedies.
(08:06):
We can dive into others if you want. But one
of them was, okay, make Google share all of its
data and all of its secret sauce. Make it so
that any competitor can an effect reconstruct a Google level
search engine using data that Google has collected over the
years and processes that Google has perfected. And the judge
(08:29):
took that requested remedy and narrowed it down immensely. He said,
I don't want it to be the case that competitors
can just re engineer Google search engine and piggyback off
of Google. If we do that, no one's going to
have any incentive to innovate. If Google continues to innovate,
they're just going to have to give it away to competitors.
And why would competitors innovate when they can just get
(08:51):
Google for a marginal cost. So he narrowed it down
in a way that's pretty complicated.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
So I'll only give the very basics. He said, Okay,
so Google crawls the Web.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
It has a map of the Internet. That's a big
part of its product is creating a search and search
index of the Internet. And the judge says, okay, Google
has to sell that at marginal cost to qualified competitors,
which is a term of art, basically meaning a company
that can prove it can genuinely make a search engine
and do it securely and respecting people's privacy. But the DOJ,
(09:27):
for instance, said, well, we want that search and index
to be sold on a periodic basis, and the judge said, nope.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
One time.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
If you're going to set up a competitor to Google,
one time you can get their search engine index to
get a map of the Internet, and then you're done.
You've got to figure it out from there. And then
there are all kinds of other things like this, where
the judge says, okay, you can have a certain amount
of user data, you know, the click and query, like
what a user's click on when they see a search result,
(09:56):
but not the secret sauce.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
I'm not going to.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Let you really dive in into all the stuff Google
has done to perfect its algorithm and to mix and
match the data and do what it does to get
that really relevant search result. Algorithmically, you're not going to
get the knowledge bar so people may know if you
search somebody famous, Barack Obama or whatever, you don't.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Just get search results.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
You get this box on the right that gives you
facts about that person.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And Google doesn't have to cough up the database by
which it creates that.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
There's all kinds of other little things like this, but
the headline news.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Is Google has to give up some data.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
But not enough to make it easy for competitors to
just make a new Google search engine out of the box.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
We're talking with Corbyn Barthold from Tech Freedom TechFreedom dot org.
So I'm not a lawyer, but I like to sort
of play one on the radio, and it seemed tell me,
if I'm thinking about this right, it seems to me
that this narrow part that we're talking about here, the
data sharing part.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
I can iagine both sides wanting to appeal this.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Because the government they're off on their political mission.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
And this, by the way, was an action that was
brought by.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
A democratic administration and then the Trump administration again, so
both Republicans and Democrats have seemed to want to go
after Google for one reason or another. And of course,
of course the government is not spending their own money.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
They don't care how much money they waste on this.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
And so if I were the government and they were
going for the brass ring and they got like a
little plastic ring from a cracker jack box, like if
I were the government, I might want to appeal it,
And if I were Google, I might want to appeal
it too, because why should a private company have to
give competitors anything. They're not a monopoly, They've never been
a monopoly. Yeah, they're dominant, but and I'm not a
(11:44):
fan of Google. Actually I don't hate them, I don't
love them.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I know they have a good product, just as a
I don't know as a libertarian or something. I like
to try to use a product that is by somebody
that doesn't have ninety seven percent of the market or
ninety two percent of the market. Why should they have
to give anything that anyone? So, do you think that
both parties may want to appeal this or or do
you think that Google will be satisfied enough that if
it were up to them, they would just leave it
(12:09):
like this?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Sure a lot in there. Well, first of all, the
Trump administration brought this lawsuit.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
It was Bill Barr's baby, and then the Biden administration
continued it.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Oh, you're right, it's bipartisan. What I have your Google.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I don't think it's unfair to accuse them of monopoly
power as a search engine. But in America you're allowed
to become a monopolist if you do it by having
the best product. What you cannot do is abuse your
monopoly power and try to lock yourself in in ways
that are not by having the best product. And to
answer your question, I think there's going to be appeals
from both sides. I think tons of this is going
(12:45):
to be appealed. I think Judge meta smart judge. He's
done a very careful job. But there's so many moving
pieces here that there's just lots of angles of attack.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I think Google's first thing they're going to attack the
liability ruling.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
They're going to say, look, we paid money for sort
of shelf space on Safari and in our Android system, which,
by the way, we built, and we started paying that
money before anybody thought we were a monopoly. We then
gained market share by being the best. We then continued
to be the best, and what you're trying to do
is basically force us to provide a less good product.
(13:20):
So it's interesting that this might go up on appeal
and get reversed back on the liability ruling from many
months ago, rendering all this remedy stuff moot. But then
on the remedy, Yeah, I think both sides will appeal.
I think the DFG is going to be very unhappy
with this. Going back to our eight percent stock rising,
it's very clear that the DOJ shot for the moon
(13:40):
and ended up with almost nothing. So there I think
almost guaranteed to appeal.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
I've heard some whispers.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
That Google might be so happy with this that they
maybe won't appeal the remedy. I don't think that's right.
I think they will appeal. As you said, the data
sharing stuff. It potentially creates security and privacy concerns, especially
the click and query data, so you're search activity. You know,
they're going to try to anonymize it and mix it
all together. But it's still it's not a good idea
(14:07):
necessarily to be sharing that data.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Around with a lot of competitors.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
And I'm not sure Google's necessarily afraid of somebody creating
a search competitor, but they should be terrified of an
AI firm getting this data and being able to better
ground their models and wiping out Google in the next
frontier of competition. And if that's going to happen, I
think Google wants to lose fair and square. They don't
(14:34):
want to lose because the government already put the you know,
made them tie one of their hands behind their back
in that next stage of competition.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Okay, So this gets to the last thing I want
to ask you about, which may be the most important
thing I want to ask you about, and that is
the judge noted in his ruling that where he ended
up on this was significantly influenced by which I take
to mean h significantly lower penalties on Google based on
(15:04):
the rapid rise of AI during the time that the
judge was considering the penalty phase. Could you please elaborate
on how you believe AI the existence and rapid rise
of AI changed, how the judge changed, how the judge
ruled in this penalty phase.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Absolutely, And I find this a little frustrating as a
libertarian ish believer in free markets. When this lawsuit first
came down, you know it's going to take We've been
here five years, this may be going on for another
two years on appeal and markets move. And when this
lawsuit was brought in twenty twenty, I was very much
(15:44):
of the attitude of okay, Google's dominant today, they have
ninety percent of the search market. But markets change, you know,
for anybody wants the technical phrase, you know, schumpitarian creative destruction.
Even if somebody doesn't come in and create a search competitor,
somebody comes up up with a new mouse trap that
competes in an altogether different way and disrupts the market.
(16:04):
This happens time and time and time again, especially in
the tech industry. So even if in twenty twenty I
couldn't explain to you how the market would be disrupted.
I would have said with great confidence that the market
will be disrupted in some way, and so it has
come to pass. AI llms give answers for a lot
(16:25):
of queries that are not really like search, they're orthogonal
to search, but also a lot of queries that are
exactly what you would have used Google Search to do.
When I use Chat, GPT or Claude or Gemini, a
lot of my questions are things I.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Would have in the past asked Google Search to tell
me about, and now I'm going to AI.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Those are searches that are being taken directly out of
Google's market share and into AI, and Google clearly knows this.
They now put AI generated summer ease of searches, so
when you search on Google Search, you don't just get
the old links that you always used to get. You
now get the summaries made by AI at the top
(17:09):
of the search that are very similar to what you
would get on chat ebt. And I'll also that creates
a further risk to Google's dominance. It's an effect cannibalizing
its prior product with the AI things that's putting up there.
So Judge Meta was absolutely right that AI is really
disrupting this market. It's very unclear how things will look
(17:29):
in another five years. Google is sweating, which is what
we want. We want competition, We want our firms on
their toes and needing to adapt or die. And I
think that is going to have a much more powerful
impact on the market than anything Judge Meta could have done.
I am chagrined that he recognized this only you know,
(17:52):
sort of belatedly now at the remedy stage, but it's
good that he did.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Corbyn Barthold is let me get the title right, Internet
Polacy counsel at tech Freedom. The website is TechFreedom dot org.
Great to talk with another libertarian Ish person. Thanks so
much for your time. You would definitely clarified a lot
for me and hopefully for my listeners as well as
great Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Gorbyin glad to be here Ross anytime. All right, thank
you so much.
Mark Twain quoting Benjamin Disraeli that there are three kinds
of lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's a great line, and.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
As president of the Bad Analogy Club, I'm going to
use that line to describe something else that really isn't
about statistics at all, because I take my job as
president of the Bad Analogy Club extremely seriously. At the
end of his statement yesterday, Attorney General Colorado Attorney General
Phil Wiser his statement about the result so far in
(00:28):
a federal lawsuit about Google. Wiser, who was one of
the leaders of the states joining the federal government in
the lawsuit against Google, said in August twenty twenty four,
a DC federal District judge ruled in a landmark decision
that Google has abused its monopoly power and harmed consumers
in online search and search text ads. And in a sense,
(00:49):
what he's trying to do, he's referencing the older case,
which is superseded by the newer case, but he's trying
to make it look like he's.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Winning based on.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
The decision yesterday by a federal judge Amit Meta, who
did in fact the rule that Google kind of sort
of did something wrong. But if you want to look
at who's actually winning based on that particular ruling. I
would note that Google stock is up eight and a
half percent today, which is getting somewhat close to two
(01:21):
hundred billion with a b dollars of additional value. So
that doesn't really sound like the government one. So joining
us to help us understand this very complex story, Corbyn
Barthold Corbyn is Internet policy counsel at tech Freedom. He's
been on the show two or three or four times
in the past. TechFreedom dot org is the website. Corbyn,
(01:42):
thanks so much for joining us. Appreciating great to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Scoreboard as they say, yeah, as far as the stock
price goes.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, so at the very highest level.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
If you were to if we were to rate this
ruling as from let's say zero to ten, with zero
this is this is going to be ridiculous, but from Google,
from Google's perspective, like zero being a ruling that was
so terrible it was going to put them out of
business and ten being the best ruling Google ever could
(02:15):
have imagined in a case like this, what's this eight?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, maybe eight and a half.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, okay, So tell us first, what was an issue.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
The DOJ sued Google in twenty twenty. Its lawsuit alleged
that Google had abused its monopoly power in the search
market by having exclusive deals with browsers. So that's like
Safari or Mozilla and with its own Android operating system, whereby,
(02:49):
in the browser case, for instance, they would pay money
to Apple to make sure that Apple kept Google as
the exclusive search engine in a when you opened up
Safari browser, you mentioned the States. I can't help, but
note the States brought an even more aggressive case talking
about abuse disadvantaging things like Yelp, and that went down
(03:11):
in flames way back.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
So the States lost in a way that you know,
the governor is not acknowledging at any rate.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
The dj prevailed on this exclusive argument that the deals
furthered the monopoly in a way that was not competing
on the merits. That liability ruling happened, happened several months ago,
and then we have this remedy ruling which kind of
amounts to oops.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Never mind, and is it correct to say that we
believe that Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year
to make Google the default search engine in Safari, but
we don't actually know how much the number is because
those numbers are kind of are subsumed within other larger
(04:01):
categories within their earnings reports.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, that's roughly correct. We know it's a very large
amount of money. It's something to the tune of twenty
billion dollars or something like that. And today it's no
longer even before this liability ruling, it's no longer to
be exclusive, but it is to be the default, the
one that when you open up your iPhone, that's what
Safari will have you use unless you choose otherwise.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So, and I haven't really looked at this, and I
have my iPhone here, I haven't really looked into it.
But is it the case right now that I that
if I want to search for something by let's say,
typing a search term in at the top, that I
can that Google is the only choice right now? I mean,
I could obviously go to another a web page of
(04:46):
another search engine and type something in there.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
But if the.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Browser itself is going to kind of function as your
search engine, is Google.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
My only choice in Safari today?
Speaker 3 (04:55):
No, it is your automatic choice. So you can just
type search terms into the bar at the top of Safari.
It's going to use Google Search. You can go into
the settings in Safari and with a handful of clicks
in about thirty seconds, changer to fault to some others.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Okay, that's what I my vague recollection was because I
think I remember seeing so uh. If that's the case,
then what's this about, Like, how is the.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Remedy different from the existing situation.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
My snide comment ever since this lawsuit came down is, wow,
you know, the government seems to think that people's fingers
are broken. I know perfectly well how to type you know,
www dot bing dot com. If that's what I want
to use. People don't use the competing search engines because
Google is the best search engine. And actually Judge Meta
(05:48):
even acknowledged that. In his liability ruling. It came down
to whether Google was going too far in kind and
trying to lock down that dominant position, and Judge Meta.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Decided that they did. But there's this.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Disconnect between the liability ruling and the remedy ruling because
in the liability ruling, Judge Meta said, well, you know,
why is Google paying all this money to Apple? And
not unreasonably? He said, you know, one reason might be
because Google is trying to keep Apple off the Sorry
on the sidelines. You know, Apple has gobs of money
and a lot of talent. Maybe they would make a
(06:24):
competing search engine if Google didn't pay them all this money.
But then we get to the remedy ruling, and the
government wanted the judge to order Google to not be
able to pay any money to anyone anymore. And Judge
Meta did not accept that remedy. He said, no, I'm
just going to make it so Google cannot pay to
be exclusive, but they can still pay to be default.
(06:47):
But that doesn't solve this potential Apple problem. Apple now
is sitting happy. Apple's going to be very happy with
this ruling. They now continue to have no incentive to
try to make a search engine.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
And it kind of reveals that that was really speculative.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
From the very beginning and kind of actually undermines the
liability ruling a bit.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And I will note that Apple stock is up three
percent today as well, so adding about one hundred billion
dollars to the market cap of Apple, which is already
worth you know, three and a half trillion trillion dollars.
So there are a couple of things that I saw
in the ruling that I didn't understand, and I would
like you to explain to me, but keep it at
a basic level because I'm not very bright, all right.
(07:28):
So one of the things that I saw was that
the judges ruling requires Google to share some kind of
search results. So what do they have to share, who
do they have to share it with, and what is
that sharing solving?
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah, so in the backup half a step, Google came
in at the remedy stage and said what I was
previously explaining, you know, just make it so that we
can't be exclusive still, let us pay money. And Judge
meta accepted that. So that's Google's proposed remedy and they're
in the DJ asked for all of these other remedies.
(08:06):
We can dive into others if you want. But one
of them was, okay, make Google share all of its
data and all of its secret sauce. Make it so
that any competitor can an effect reconstruct a Google level
search engine using data that Google has collected over the
years and processes that Google has perfected. And the judge
(08:29):
took that requested remedy and narrowed it down immensely. He said,
I don't want it to be the case that competitors
can just re engineer Google search engine and piggyback off
of Google. If we do that, no one's going to
have any incentive to innovate. If Google continues to innovate,
they're just going to have to give it away to competitors.
And why would competitors innovate when they can just get
(08:51):
Google for a marginal cost. So he narrowed it down
in a way that's pretty complicated.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
So I'll only give the very basics. He said, Okay,
so Google crawls the Web.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
It has a map of the Internet. That's a big
part of its product is creating a search and search
index of the Internet. And the judge says, okay, Google
has to sell that at marginal cost to qualified competitors,
which is a term of art, basically meaning a company
that can prove it can genuinely make a search engine
and do it securely and respecting people's privacy. But the DOJ,
(09:27):
for instance, said, well, we want that search and index
to be sold on a periodic basis, and the judge said, nope.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
One time.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
If you're going to set up a competitor to Google,
one time you can get their search engine index to
get a map of the Internet, and then you're done.
You've got to figure it out from there. And then
there are all kinds of other things like this, where
the judge says, okay, you can have a certain amount
of user data, you know, the click and query, like
what a user's click on when they see a search result,
(09:56):
but not the secret sauce.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
I'm not going to.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Let you really dive in into all the stuff Google
has done to perfect its algorithm and to mix and
match the data and do what it does to get
that really relevant search result. Algorithmically, you're not going to
get the knowledge bar so people may know if you
search somebody famous, Barack Obama or whatever, you don't.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Just get search results.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
You get this box on the right that gives you
facts about that person.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And Google doesn't have to cough up the database by
which it creates that.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
There's all kinds of other little things like this, but
the headline news.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Is Google has to give up some data.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
But not enough to make it easy for competitors to
just make a new Google search engine out of the box.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
We're talking with Corbyn Barthold from Tech Freedom TechFreedom dot org.
So I'm not a lawyer, but I like to sort
of play one on the radio, and it seemed tell me,
if I'm thinking about this right, it seems to me
that this narrow part that we're talking about here, the
data sharing part.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
I can iagine both sides wanting to appeal this.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Because the government they're off on their political mission.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
And this, by the way, was an action that was
brought by.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
A democratic administration and then the Trump administration again, so
both Republicans and Democrats have seemed to want to go
after Google for one reason or another. And of course,
of course the government is not spending their own money.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
They don't care how much money they waste on this.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
And so if I were the government and they were
going for the brass ring and they got like a
little plastic ring from a cracker jack box, like if
I were the government, I might want to appeal it,
And if I were Google, I might want to appeal
it too, because why should a private company have to
give competitors anything. They're not a monopoly, They've never been
a monopoly. Yeah, they're dominant, but and I'm not a
(11:44):
fan of Google. Actually I don't hate them, I don't
love them.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I know they have a good product, just as a
I don't know as a libertarian or something. I like
to try to use a product that is by somebody
that doesn't have ninety seven percent of the market or
ninety two percent of the market. Why should they have
to give anything that anyone? So, do you think that
both parties may want to appeal this or or do
you think that Google will be satisfied enough that if
it were up to them, they would just leave it
(12:09):
like this?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Sure a lot in there. Well, first of all, the
Trump administration brought this lawsuit.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
It was Bill Barr's baby, and then the Biden administration
continued it.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Oh, you're right, it's bipartisan. What I have your Google.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I don't think it's unfair to accuse them of monopoly
power as a search engine. But in America you're allowed
to become a monopolist if you do it by having
the best product. What you cannot do is abuse your
monopoly power and try to lock yourself in in ways
that are not by having the best product. And to
answer your question, I think there's going to be appeals
from both sides. I think tons of this is going
(12:45):
to be appealed. I think Judge meta smart judge. He's
done a very careful job. But there's so many moving
pieces here that there's just lots of angles of attack.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I think Google's first thing they're going to attack the
liability ruling.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
They're going to say, look, we paid money for sort
of shelf space on Safari and in our Android system, which,
by the way, we built, and we started paying that
money before anybody thought we were a monopoly. We then
gained market share by being the best. We then continued
to be the best, and what you're trying to do
is basically force us to provide a less good product.
(13:20):
So it's interesting that this might go up on appeal
and get reversed back on the liability ruling from many
months ago, rendering all this remedy stuff moot. But then
on the remedy, Yeah, I think both sides will appeal.
I think the DFG is going to be very unhappy
with this. Going back to our eight percent stock rising,
it's very clear that the DOJ shot for the moon
(13:40):
and ended up with almost nothing. So there I think
almost guaranteed to appeal.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
I've heard some whispers.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
That Google might be so happy with this that they
maybe won't appeal the remedy. I don't think that's right.
I think they will appeal. As you said, the data
sharing stuff. It potentially creates security and privacy concerns, especially
the click and query data, so you're search activity. You know,
they're going to try to anonymize it and mix it
all together. But it's still it's not a good idea
(14:07):
necessarily to be sharing that data.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Around with a lot of competitors.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
And I'm not sure Google's necessarily afraid of somebody creating
a search competitor, but they should be terrified of an
AI firm getting this data and being able to better
ground their models and wiping out Google in the next
frontier of competition. And if that's going to happen, I
think Google wants to lose fair and square. They don't
(14:34):
want to lose because the government already put the you know,
made them tie one of their hands behind their back
in that next stage of competition.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Okay, So this gets to the last thing I want
to ask you about, which may be the most important
thing I want to ask you about, and that is
the judge noted in his ruling that where he ended
up on this was significantly influenced by which I take
to mean h significantly lower penalties on Google based on
(15:04):
the rapid rise of AI during the time that the
judge was considering the penalty phase. Could you please elaborate
on how you believe AI the existence and rapid rise
of AI changed, how the judge changed, how the judge
ruled in this penalty phase.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Absolutely, And I find this a little frustrating as a
libertarian ish believer in free markets. When this lawsuit first
came down, you know it's going to take We've been
here five years, this may be going on for another
two years on appeal and markets move. And when this
lawsuit was brought in twenty twenty, I was very much
(15:44):
of the attitude of okay, Google's dominant today, they have
ninety percent of the search market. But markets change, you know,
for anybody wants the technical phrase, you know, schumpitarian creative destruction.
Even if somebody doesn't come in and create a search competitor,
somebody comes up up with a new mouse trap that
competes in an altogether different way and disrupts the market.
(16:04):
This happens time and time and time again, especially in
the tech industry. So even if in twenty twenty I
couldn't explain to you how the market would be disrupted.
I would have said with great confidence that the market
will be disrupted in some way, and so it has
come to pass. AI llms give answers for a lot
(16:25):
of queries that are not really like search, they're orthogonal
to search, but also a lot of queries that are
exactly what you would have used Google Search to do.
When I use Chat, GPT or Claude or Gemini, a
lot of my questions are things I.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Would have in the past asked Google Search to tell
me about, and now I'm going to AI.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Those are searches that are being taken directly out of
Google's market share and into AI, and Google clearly knows this.
They now put AI generated summer ease of searches, so
when you search on Google Search, you don't just get
the old links that you always used to get. You
now get the summaries made by AI at the top
(17:09):
of the search that are very similar to what you
would get on chat ebt. And I'll also that creates
a further risk to Google's dominance. It's an effect cannibalizing
its prior product with the AI things that's putting up there.
So Judge Meta was absolutely right that AI is really
disrupting this market. It's very unclear how things will look
(17:29):
in another five years. Google is sweating, which is what
we want. We want competition, We want our firms on
their toes and needing to adapt or die. And I
think that is going to have a much more powerful
impact on the market than anything Judge Meta could have done.
I am chagrined that he recognized this only you know,
(17:52):
sort of belatedly now at the remedy stage, but it's
good that he did.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Corbyn Barthold is let me get the title right, Internet
Polacy counsel at tech Freedom. The website is TechFreedom dot org.
Great to talk with another libertarian Ish person. Thanks so
much for your time. You would definitely clarified a lot
for me and hopefully for my listeners as well as
great Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Gorbyin glad to be here Ross anytime. All right, thank
you so much.
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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