Breaking up Google would offer a chance to remodel the web | TechCrunch

Google has been found to operate an illegal monopoly in Europe .

The real issue here is about the business model underpinning service delivery.

Google likes to paint its company “mission” as “organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful,” its marketing puts it.

Google is making your information “useful” so it can feed the advertising business.

Google has been able to ensure its search engine (or, from an ads perspective, its user intention data funnel) remains the default on Apple ’s rival mobile platform because it pays the iPhone maker billions for the placement every year .

This is a core grievance of the U.S. antitrust ruling finding Google operates an illegal monopoly.

Because Google pays Apple so much, Apple has little incentive to develop its own search engine.

Google ’s dominance of web infrastructure is so trenchant that even Google can’t just make a change which might allow web users to get slightly more privacy.

But in flicking such levers the knock-on impact on other businesses that are dependent on its adtech infrastructure risks being a competition harm in itself.