Google Vanquished a Rival in Prague. Payback Could Hurt.
The New York Times
A small search engine company in the Czech Republic helped inspire a law that is poised to put major limits on tech giants like Google.
As Google extended its dominance as a search engine over the past two decades, the Czech Republic stood out as a surprising holdout.
People in the European nation preferred Seznam, a search engine started in Prague in 1996, two years before Google. For about 15 years, the company’s focus on its local market provided a feel-good story about a hometown underdog prevailing against a rising global titan.
But when smartphones became commonplace, most of them with Google installed as the default search, Seznam’s luck ran out. Google today controls more than 80 percent of the Czech search market, and Seznam is a marginal search engine with more of a focus on media.