Web Browser Creator Accuses Google of Antitrust Violation

Jon Von Tetzchner, the creator of the Opera web browser, has accused Google of being a “bully” and violating antitrust law in relation to his new browser, Vivaldi.

WIRED reports that following a blog post was published by Von Tetzchner titled “My friends at Google: it is time to return to not being evil,” which was critical of Google’s search and advertising monopoly, Von Tetzchners latest web browser project Vivaldi was blocked from accessing Google’s AdWords program. Von Tetzchner claims that he began noticing problems with Google’s AdWords in May, shortly after he spoke at the Oslo Freedom Forum where he criticized the attitudes of large tech companies towards personal data. At this conference, he called for a ban on Facebook and Google’s location tracking of their users.

Just two days later, Vivaldi’s AdWords campaigns were suddenly suspended. “Was this just a coincidence?” Von Tetzchner wrote in his blog, “or was it deliberate, a way of sending us a message?” He concluded that the “Timing spoke volumes.” Von Tetzchner contacted Google to resolve the issue and received what he referred to as “a clarification masqueraded in the form of vague terms and conditions.”

Google provided a list of demands that Vivaldi must comply with in order to have a chance at having their AdWords restored. The demands included a link to an EULA “within the frame of every download button,” an element that Google doesn’t even include within the download page for their own Chrome web browser. Google also demanded that Vivaldi add a link detailing how exactly to uninstall Vivaldi located directly underneath the Vivaldi download button. Von Tetzchner argued against some of these demands and was told that a EULA was not a “hard requirement,” and would not lead directly to a suspension, but that AdWords account bans were dealt with on a “case by case” manner.

Google explained to Von Tetzchner that the sudden demands were because they “rely on the advertisers to take responsibility when advertising with us, hence reading up on and following our policy guidelines.” But Von Tetzchner was unable to find any direct guidelines relating to uninstallation in Google AdWord’s help documentation. Von Tetzchner fought the demands from Google for three months before giving in, writing that “in exchange for being reinstated in Google’s ad network, their in-house specialists dictated how we should arrange content on our own website and how we should communicate information to our users.”

Von Tetzchner claimed that his issue was not as much with the demands but in the way that the demands were made, in a hypocritical, aggressive and sudden manner without any previous warning. Von Tetzchner stated, “I am saddened by this makeover of a geeky, positive company into the bully they are in 2017.” This isn’t the first time Google has been accused of violating antitrust regulations, the company was recently fined $2.7 billion by the European Union in a recent ruling relating to Google’s Shopping product. Google was accused of altering search results to direct customers towards their own websites when shopping online.