Google Planned to ‘Go Big in Europe’ After EU Android Case
Google — under fire in court for allegedly resting on its laurels thanks to its 90% market dominance — only made an effort to beef up the quality of its search engine in the European Union after being hit by a record antitrust fine, according to internal documents revealed in the US Justice Department's monopolization case against the tech giant.
Alphabet Inc.'s Google planned to improve its European search results only after a record 2018 European antitrust fine, according to the documents, which revealed that Google executives discussed a plan dubbed “Go Big in Europe.” The plan aimed to improve results in France and Germany in 2019 and 2020 with changes such as adding post-game soccer video highlights, more local content and news, pronunciation practice for different languages and more information on local television options available for streaming.
The catalyst was a 2018 EU antitrust order that forced Google to offer a choice screen giving Android phone users five search engine options to choose from, according to US antitrust enforcers trying the case.
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“‘Go Big in Europe' is product investments above and beyond business as usual to make sure Google is top of mind for EU users,” one presentation from 2020 introduced as evidence by the DOJ showed.
Google intended to hire more than 80 new employees and spend more than $200 million on the initiative, according to additional documents shown in court last week. The plan was to roll out the updates subsequently in the UK, Spain, Italy, Poland, and the Netherlands.
“We didn't know what would happen” with the choice screen, testified Ben Gomes, who was head of Google's search team at the time. “This was trying to figure out what would
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