Once again, the game is about access to user data, not software or operating systems. But the EU and data protection authorities are missing in action by Andrea Monti – Initially published in Italian on Italian Tech – La Repubblica
Breaking up a monopoly into several companies or depriving it of the tools that allow it to dominate the market are two approaches that characterise the American antitrust philosophy. An example of the former is the sensational — for the time — ‘break-up’ of Standard Oil, which was divided into 43 different companies in 1911. About a century later, in 2001, to avoid being split in two — one company would have had to develop operating systems and another applications — Microsoft agreed to allow computer manufacturers to install software developed by third parties.
The Department of Justice’s strategy against Alphabet
Fast forward to today, the dispute between the US Department of Justice on one side and Alphabet (Google) on the other essentially follows the same approach and focuses on the tool — Chrome — used to allegedly build a monopoly. However, such a choice only partially, and not definitively, solves the problem.
Forcing Alphabet to sell Chrome and Android and refrain from contractual and corporate transactions aimed at regaining indirect control of the market, as demanded by the US Department of Justice’s indictment, are not decisive measures to break Mountain View’s monopoly in the search engine and text-based advertising markets, because Alphabet’s strength over its competitors lies in its ecosystem for collecting user data.
Chrome shares its code with other software such as Brave, Avast Secure Browser and Microsoft Edge, all based on the open source Chromium project. The project, funded by Google, allows the development of software for connecting to websites that are independent of Chrome but share its core functionality. For example, Chromium does not have some features of Chrome, such as support for certain multimedia codecs and, most importantly, specific integration with the Google ecosystem, particularly with regard to user tracking systems.
So, unlike Internet Explorer during the ‘browser wars’, the problem is not that websites had to be developed taking into account the differences in the way Microsoft’s browser interpreted HTML code, leading users to prefer it over others (those old enough will remember the acrobatics required to get tables to display correctly on different programs). In other words, Chrome as such is not a barrier to access to services offered by anyone.
The problem is not Chrome, but the entire Google ecosystem
However, if the real issue is the entire Alphabet ecosystem and not a single component, it does not make much sense to allow someone else to buy Chrome, because nothing would prevent Alphabet from creating a new browser with specific features that could continue to collect user data better than its competitors.
In other words, it is this integration that allows Alphabet to collect information more efficiently than its competitors, not the software itself. Consequently, if a measure is to be taken, it should be the one that Richard Stallman proposed at the time of the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft: make public and publicly usable the technical specifications of how the browser interacts with Google’s systems and how user data is managed.
The same applies to Android. The operating system is, at its core, freely accessible, as demonstrated by the fact that when the Trump administration imposed the ban on Huawei, the restrictions concerned Google’s additional services and not the ability to use the Android Open Source Project code. For some time, the Chinese manufacturer’s smartphones continued to use Android, until 2024, when an autonomous ecosystem was created, also characterised by an open source version. As far as the controversy is concerned (or should be concerned), the difference between the ‘Googled’ version is — once again — in what and how the data flow generated by users is managed.
No protection for user rights
And it is precisely the users of these products and services who are conspicuously absent from the process.
The DoJ’s accusation of monopolistic practices, in fact, highlights the greater difficulties faced by Google’s competitors in accessing user data and calls for competitors to be given access to this data. From the wording of the DoJ’s allegations, it must be inferred that even when we use a browser other than Chrome, the requests we make and the list of results end up being available to those who control Chrome’s competing software, albeit to a much lesser extent. It must also be inferred that Alphabet’s competitors’ complaint is that they do not have access to the same pool of information built and controlled by the monopolist.
However, the DoJ does not place the rights of individuals at the centre of its concerns, which are treated as if they were inanimate objects whose ownership can be decided.
On the one hand, this is understandable because the subject of the dispute is freedom of access to the market. On the other hand, it is also true that the case concerns, first and foremost, the transformation of personal data into an object of appropriation and, therefore, the commodification of rights.
The culpable absence of the EU and data protection authorities
It would therefore have been right, or at least appropriate, to ask users what they think about playing the classic role of the goldfish in the equally classic glass bowl or — better still — to witness decisive intervention by the EU and the European data protection authorities.
The latter, backed by the extraterritorial powers provided for in the personal data protection regulation, could ask to know exactly what happens in the depths of the operating systems that run computers and smart devices, instead of dabbling with the contents of endless, unreadable and therefore useless ‘data processing notices’.
However, it is highly unlikely that we will see such intervention.
If, up to now, when the geopolitical situation was not so problematic, little or nothing has been done, it is unthinkable today to attack Big Tech on the strategic aspects of its technologies in the name of ‘citizens’ rights’ or to continue down the path that leads to considering data as an economic asset on which to pay taxes, given the risk of retaliation by the US if a sector strategic to its interests were to be touched.