Google: The Couple That Took On The Tech Giant

The Bottom Line

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Business

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Shivaun and Adam Raff's shopping and price comparison website all but vanished from Google's search results just days after launching, the pair began a gruelling legal battle that would end with a landmark judgement and the tech giant receiving a then record fine.

European regulators found the search engine guilty of abusing its market dominance by making its own shopping recommendations appear more prominently than rivals' in its search results. Google spent seven years appealing its €2.4bn fine, but eventually lost in September this year.

In their first interview since that verdict the Raffs tell Evan Davis the story behind their website - Foundem - and what they learned about big tech, regulation, and themselves during their almost 20-year fight.

Evan is joined by:

Shivaun and Adam Raff, co-founders, Foundem; Anne Witt, professor of law, EDHEC business school.

Credits:

President Barack speaking to Kara Swisher, from the technology news website Recode, in February 2015; Joaquín Almunia speaking at a European Commission press conference in February 2014; Margarethe Vestager speaking at a European Commission press conference in June 2017.

Production team:

Producer: Simon Tulett Researcher: Drew Hyndman Editor: Matt Willis Sound: Jonny Baker and Neil Churchill Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison

(Picture: The Google logo displayed on a mobile phone and computer monitor. Credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images/BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts.
0:05.0	Hello, thank you for downloading this episode of The Bottom Line podcast, including extra content, by the way, we couldn't squeeze into the radio version.
0:14.1	And we have something a bit different for you this week.
0:17.3	We're going to tell you the story of an almighty business battle. Now, the fight itself is
0:23.5	fascinating, full of twists and turns, but it also tells us a lot about how the internet works,
0:29.4	how big tech works, how regulation works. It's actually been called a defining battle of the digital
0:35.7	era, and it is truly a David and Goliath tale.
0:39.1	Now in the role of Goliath is a company I think you've heard of, Google.
0:43.6	In the role of David is a British couple you may not have heard of.
0:47.8	The couple that took on Google.
0:50.8	Now when they set up their own shopping and price comparison website, it was called Foundum, almost 20 years ago now, there was actually nothing else like it at the time.
1:01.2	But their startup dreams quickly evaporated. Their path to success was blocked by one of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world.
1:09.4	They didn't back down, though, and they're here with me in the studio to tell us what happened,
1:15.3	married, very much life partners in the business sense,
1:18.9	Chivorn and Adam Raff.
1:21.1	Thank you so much for coming in.
1:22.7	We're going to hear about your website, the story behind it,
1:26.7	but you soft launched this in 2005, gets a full launch
1:31.1	in 2006, you're very excited, and June the 26th, 2006, something happened. Shavorn, what happened?
1:40.3	Yes, so we had just made the full set of pages on our service available and within
1:46.6	hours or days, we were struck by a Google search penalty that essentially disappeared us from
1:55.2	the internet because of course Google is so dominant that Google is the gateway to the internet.
	...

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