The Latest EU Antitrust Attack On Google Shows It’s Not A Monopoly

Google possesses no monopoly in search. Evidence supporting the previous claim can be found in the antitrust attack on Google by independent publishers within the European Union.

Over the weekend it was reported that “Google’s controversial AI-generated summaries — which have been blamed for crushing the traffic of U.S. news sites — have drawn an antitrust complaint in the European Union from a group of independent publishers.” Their very case wrecks their case. See Google’s AI-generated summaries.

In contemplating what Google’s AI generation produces for visitors to the search site, it’s easy to see where Google’s attackers slip up. All one needs to do is contemplate the fruits of Google searches before November 30, 2022. The date mentioned is important and relevant to the accusations.

That’s because it was on November 30, 2022 that OpenAI officially launched ChatGPT to the public. And in incredibly rapid fashion even within a technology space known for its viral qualities, internet search was changed forever.

Crucially, the change in search existed as a threat to Google’s popularity. And for obvious reasons. Though internet searches on Google formerly directed users to internet locales away from it, including that of publishers, ChatGPT’s rollout provided users of the internet with an all-new way to find voluminous information (including summaries) without endless clicking.

Which means Google had to adapt. Put another way, a failure of Google to adapt to the soaring popularity of ChatGPT, along with all manner of others (think Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek, and surely many more on the way) to ChatGPT’s successful alteration of user wants was existential for Google, as it is for any business that rests on its laurels.

Thought of in terms of the attack on Google discussed within this opinion piece, what has independent publishers (among others) within the EU up in arms is evidence not of Google’s monopoly power, but of a growing sector within the global economy (search) defined by enormous competition.

Which, when you think about it, describes all sectors in which there are highly valued corporations. Specifically, it’s the lofty valuation of corporations naively assumed to possess monopoly powers that implies feverish competition. Looked at through the prism of Google, its global popularity is all the evidence we need that it’s not a monopoly now, and most certainly won’t be one in the future.

Corporations quite simply cannot achieve on the level that Google has without facing challenges to their primacy. Google has seen this not just from established giants (think Microsoft and Bing), but from former unknowns eager to achieve Google’s much-coveted status as noun, verb, and adjective. Which explains the unexpected arrival of ChatGPT onto the search scene yet again.

Of course, the incredibly fast adoption of ChatGPT from November 30, 2022 onward is the undoing of the latest harassment of Google from the proverbial Commanding Heights. The nature of a Google search today doesn’t signal its monopolization of search, rather it signals an evolution of search born of intense, innovative and and well-funded competition.

Google isn’t a monopoly per the latest EU complaint, rather it’s a competitor in an increasingly crowded space. The previous truth can be found in the very complaint brought by independent publishers.