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In light of the financial surface acquired by Google, the fine that has just inflicted on the European Union, for record as it is, has all of a drop of water in a sea of dollars. What does € 4.3 billion represent compared to a market capitalization that exceeds € 700 billion and a cash flow that is close to € 100 billion? If Google were to pay tomorrow morning to this painful whose eventual payment, postponed indefinitely, now depends on the badessment of the European Court of Justice appeals, it would cost him little more than two weeks of figure or about one-eighth of its annual profits. Not bad, one would be tempted to think at first glance, especially as the rate of progress in regulation, it is often very out of sync with the speed of technological change incessant.
It remains that Beyond this amount alone, the Brussels decision could logically begin to erode the very lucrative business model put in place by the Internet giant and slow down somewhat its dizzying growth. But only under certain conditions. Without waiting for the outcome of the current litigation, the multinational of Mountain View, in California's Silicon Valley, will have to bring by mid-October the "corrections" demanded by the competition services of the Danish Commissioner Margrethe Vestager. The risk, this time, to be imposed penalties can represent up to 5% of the daily average and global turnover of its parent company, Alphabet. An even bigger threat. So far the deal in smartphones was clear: in exchange for billions of dollars in annual investment spending by Google to develop and maintain its Android operating system, the thousands of smartphone manufacturers in the world that install it for free in their models – more than 24,000 to date – were forced to favor privileged access to key applications such as its Chrome browser, search tool, or Google Play app store. Thanks to Google, these almost exclusively Asian industrial behemoths have been able to launch ever cheaper smartphones and win hundreds of millions of customers (it sold 1.25 billion mobiles equipped with Android in 2017 according to the institute of IDC market research). With the result that 80% of them strum today with a mobile "powered by Google". Hence the screams of the search engine, which pretends not to understand why we want to put a spoke in the wheels of an ecosystem that, as said Al Verney, spokesperson for the group, "Has created more choices for everyone, not less." In the future, mobile bestsellers like Samsung, HTC and Huawei will no longer be able to benefit from subsidies distributed by Google in exchange for pre-installing Google Search on their home screens. A simple highlight that, according to projections by the badyst S & P Global Market Intelligence, is expected to generate up to 60 billion mobile advertising revenue for Google in 2018. As a reminder, with his friend Facebook, the company reigns duopoly in the French advertising market, of which the two giants are by far the biggest beneficiaries. The brands of smartphones could even go so far as to rebel and make Google pay this place of choice on their interfaces, although they were developed from free Android code. Brussels also expects its decision that it encourages smartphone manufacturers to develop alternative versions home to Android, relying on the free or open source code provided by Google.
Remains that this discount of The rules that the Commission hopes to force will only be meager support if credible alternatives from competitors who have already reached a critical size do not emerge very quickly. And it is clear that there are few today to be able to embark on this titanic battle which, in the eyes of the most pessimistic, seems lost in advance. In other words, if the fine imposed by Brussels in theory creates the conditions to encourage more competition and innovation in a market that is now very padlocked, it will not be enough, in the absence of other well-received, hard and fast incentives. more structural, to change the situation differently than at the margin. Where we always come back to the question of a Europe capable of promoting in the digital technology offers likely to compete with the gigantism American, as it has done in the air with Airbus. If an economic rebalancing by law is needed, this is not enough.
Christophe Alix
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