You may (or may not) have heard that the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, but what does that mean, exactly?
Table of Contents
- What Is An Antitrust Lawsuit?
- “Just Google It”
- Content Strategists Will Need to Diversify
- Keyword Tools Will Need to Update
- Voice Search Will Continue to Grow
- Video Marketing
- Conclusion
What Is An Antitrust Lawsuit?
Essentially, it means the DOJ thinks Google has a monopoly on online searches and online advertising. It thinks Google is too big, and the assumption is that monopolies are bad for innovation. When one company is so big that no other company has a realistic chance of competing with that company, that lack of competition means other companies don’t have the chance to bring new and innovative ideas to the market. That leaves us (the internet users, but also the economy at large) with fewer options for finding what we want online, but it also denies us the possibility of better ways to find what we need online. Additionally, it lets the monopolizing company charge whatever they want, which can keep prices artificially high.
I won’t go too much into the legalities of the case (I’m not a lawyer, but I have spent years writing blog posts for lawyers who specialize in this kind of law, so I know more about this than I ever thought I would), but it’s worth pointing out all the ways Google has infiltrated our lives. Not only do we have Google’s search feature, but we have Gmail, Google Maps, Google Documents, Google Drive, Google Meet, Google Hangouts, etc. Admittedly, Zoom appears to have dominated the video conferencing market since this pandemic hit, and Google will probably use that (among other things) to argue their case that they are not a monopoly and that users do have options.
It’s true that there are other search engines. I’ve often mentioned on this blog that each social media site has their own search engine (not to mention Amazon), and there are other search engines for those who don’t want to use Google: there’s Bing, Duck Duck Go, Yahoo, and a few others, and while there are people who prefer to use those over Google, they are a definite minority of the population. Everyone else either prefers Google, or they don’t care enough to actively switch their default search engine from Google to something else.
Google pays a lot of money to companies like Apple and Microsoft to make sure Google is the default browser on pretty much every computer and mobile device, even going so far as to prohibit manufacturers from preinstalling a competitor on their devices. That does not mean users can’t install their favorite search engine once they buy and set up their device, but again, most people won’t bother, and the DOJ’s lawsuit against Microsoft back in 1998 already determined those practices violated antitrust laws.
“Just Google It”
Being a word person, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I think the words we use mean a lot, and it’s worth pointing out that Google has been so effective at taking over the world of online search that it’s become a verb. We no longer talk about conducting an online searching for something, we just say we’ll Google it.
Even in the world of content strategy, we recognize the existence of other search engines, and some of them might get a little attention, but for the most part, when we talk about SEO (search engine optimization), we mean Google. We speculate as to the details of Google’s algorithm, we use Google Analytics to keep track of the traffic on our website, and most marketers notice big fluctuations in their website traffic after Google rolls out a major update to their algorithm.
The antitrust lawsuit against Google begs the question, what would the world of SEO look like if we had to talk about more than just Google? Don’t get me wrong, Google isn’t going anywhere, but it might lose some significant chunks of its share of the market as a result of this lawsuit. And what would that mean for those of us who rely on Google to get in front of our target audience?
Content Strategists Will Need to Diversify
I think the first order of responsibility falls squarely on us. When we talk about SEO, when we research and implement our SEO strategies, we’ll need to expand beyond just Google. We’ll need to do more research into how other search engines identify valuable content and how they decide what content gets paired with which searches.
Just like social media strategists keep track of which audiences tend to spend the most time on which social media platforms, SEO strategists will need to determine which audiences are most likely to use certain search engines and devote extra time and resources to researching the preferred search engine of our target audience.
Keyword Tools Will Need to Update
Most keyword tools keep track of what keywords and search terms are getting plugged into Google’s search bar to come up with their numbers for their SEO competition scores and cost per click (CPC). If other search engines are given a bigger share of the market, keyword tools will need to keep track of the search terms getting plugged into every search engine, not just Google.
We might even see some keyword tools develop specialties, with certain keyword tools keeping track of search terms used in certain search engines.
Voice Search Will Continue to Grow
Voice search has been on the rise ever since Google first invented Siri, but now that we have Google Home and Amazon’s Echo, people are getting increasingly accustomed to searching for information by verbally asking their smart speaker for it instead of typing a few words into a search bar. This changes the way people ask for information, which means those of us providing it have to adapt to the way we present that information.
The smart speaker market is one of the few digital markets Google has not managed to dominate. So far, Amazon’s Echo has roughly 70% of the market share, while Google only has about 30%, but Google is climbing steadily in the ranks. I wouldn’t discount it just yet, but the antitrust lawsuit Google is currently fighting against the DOJ might bring it back down if the DOJ emerges victorious from the legal dispute. Even if the DOJ is not successful in prosecuting this case, Amazon might still manage to hold onto their majority in that market, and it’s worth noting that Amazon’s Echo uses Bing, not Google, to find the answers to the questions you ask.
Video Marketing
Like voice search, video has also been on the rise in the world of online marketing because people are more likely to engage with a video than they are to read through an article. So far, Google’s algorithm is unable to read audio or video files (although they are quickly getting there), so the role video plays in SEO depends mostly on captions/transcriptions and the description of the video that gets published alongside it.
While social media platforms have been prioritizing video (especially Facebook) because of the increased engagement they generate, most people post their videos to YouTube and then use social media to distribute those videos on their website, their newsletters, and the other social media platforms. Most of the social media platforms have a limit of about 5 or 10 minutes before people start to mentally check out and physically keep scrolling. Longer videos tend to do much better on YouTube, and when someone wants to learn how to do something, they’ll most likely go to straight to YouTube for a tutorial on it.
A lot of people forget that Google owns YouTube, and as video continues to take a more prominent position in the world of online marketing, I don’t see YouTube going anywhere. Google will probably invest even more heavily in YouTube, both to take advantage of the growing market there, and to make up for the reduction of their monopoly in other online spaces.
Conclusion
There’s no way of knowing yet how this antitrust lawsuit against Google will play out, or how Google will react if the ruling turns out not to be in their favor. But it’s always worth preparing for the possibility of a major upheaval in the world of SEO and how content strategists might be called on to adjust for those changes.
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