Big Technology
Where the Case Against Google Could Fall Apart
In his early days at Google, Sundar Pichai learned Google’s distribution deals were its lifeblood
In 2004, a young Sundar Pichai joined Google as a product manager. Starting out, he took on the unsexy yet essential task of growing Google Toolbar. And as we look at the Department of Justice’s new antitrust case against Google, and where it could fall apart, the story is worth revisiting.
When Pichai joined Google, it was simply a website. To use it, you typed its URL into a browser — almost always Microsoft’s Internet Explorer — leaving Google’s fate in the hands of an intermediary.
Microsoft had tremendous power over Google via the browser. People used Internet Explorer to visit websites. But, one day, they might also type keywords into the address bar, giving Microsoft an opportunity to answer these queries with a search engine of its own, one it would eventually develop.
Google Toolbar, released in December 2000, was Google’s insurance. The Toolbar put a Google search box below Internet Explorer’s address bar, giving people a way to use Google right in the browser. “The powerful feature set enables users to save time while searching for information,” said then-Google CEO Larry Page in the announcement. Most importantly, Toolbar could keep Google prominent in the browser no matter what Microsoft did in the address bar.
When he took over Toolbar, Pichai found a stagnant product, with nowhere near the installs Google needed to insulate itself against an inevitable Microsoft challenge. So he began signing distribution deals.
Pichai paid companies with heavily downloaded applications — like Adobe’s Flash and Acrobat Reader — to include Toolbar as an add-on option for new installs. And once it became part of these packages, Toolbar started to pick up. “He set up this distribution channel so that it overcame the biggest point of friction,” Linus Upson, a Google VP who shared an office with Pichai, told me as I worked on Always Day One.
By the time Pichai finished, Toolbar was live in more than 100 million browsers. And when Microsoft eventually released Live Search, and then Bing…
