Submitted by “Search giant Google, facing a broad antitrust probe into its business practices, has hired 12 lobbying firms, a spokeswoman from the company said on Friday. The Federal Trade Commission, which investigates violations of antitrust law, is expected to look into complaints that Google’s search results favor the company’s other services, among other issues. Google, which runs an estimated 69 percent of Web searches worldwide, can make or break a company depending on its search ranking.”
wow, google decide to flex their muscle WAAAAAAyyyyy too hard.
At last, Google has figured out how government in the USA really works. Pay for play. The US Congress is so corrupt that legislators might as well post their selling price on eBay.
The “case” against Google is that Apple and Microsoft have bought enough legislators so that anti-trust laws are being applied against Google, rather than Apple and Microsoft. This is what they mean by “innovation.”
Way back in college days, my political science professor told us that a campaign contribution is the best investment a company can make. Now, belatedly, Google realizes this. They understand that they need to pay protection money, else they’ll be snuffed out.
Welcome to the real world, Google. America has the best government that money can buy.
Edited 2011-07-04 01:31 UTC
What I am interested to see is how even the corrupt American system can get an anti-trust decision to go against Google “which runs an estimated 69 percent of Web searches worldwide”.
69% is a monopoly now? Google search is installed as an irremoveable part of the OS? People cannot change search engines any more? To use Google search requires that you use only Google IT products and nothing else? Other search engines have been forced out of the market?
When did all this happen?
Edited 2011-07-04 07:15 UTC
My understanding is it is not the search that is the issue. It is peoples/companies perceived ranking in the searches that they say Google is manipulating due to “Market Dominance” and placing Google products higher in the ranking.
Personally I call shenanigans, but to each their own.
Well, a good investigation to keep Google on their toes can’t hurt, right?
Microsoft and Apple should follow, though. Just to keep ‘m in check.
It’s not just Google’s products, it’s sites that promote Google’s income generating products like Google Ads too.
I thought I’d bookmarked a blog article from a company that had all but proved this, but I can’t find the link. If my memory serves me correctly the site was ezdownloadsolutions.com, and it seems that’s now parked so they’ve probably gone out of business.
Anyway, from memory, after struggling for a couple of years to get any decent page rankings the company duplicated their site on a completely different domain name, one that wasn’t as good for their particular business, and simply adding Google Ads to the site improved it’s page rankings by more than 20% over their original site. Obviously it was only their word, but I don’t see they’d have had any reason to lie about it.
Huh? Microsoft have Bing so even though it has a massive 10% of the search market I can sort of see where you’re coming from, but Apple? How has this got anything to do with them? Don’t comments like this just fuel the fire about your purported bias?
Mrhasbean, not this bias shit again. You know why you got banned on your other account, right? I will not tolerate that nonsense, so be warned.
Companies the size of Apple, Microsoft, and Google need to be kept under tight oversight, especially considering the amount of personal information they hold (forgot about Sony already?). How is me saying that a sign of any bias? Because I include Apple in that list?
There could be a lot of reasons for why the new site was higher ranked than the old one. The first one that come to mind is that the old site was of bad quality and that therefore people never clicked on search results linking to this site and that it had its ranking decreased because of that when compared to the new one.
Also, I’m curious to know how they managed to replicate ALL the links pointing to the old site to point to the new site (Google’s PageRank uses the links in ranking). This seems just impossible to me, because you don’t have control on other sites linking to you.
Could also happen that Google has adjusted its algorithm just in the middle of their experiment (they do that very often – hundred of times per year if you read their blog post).
So I really doubt such a simple experiment proves anything.
Not that I think Google does anything other than provide one million Linux servers and a good search algorithm … but anyway the next question becomes: “It is illegal now for a non-monopoly to promote its own products and services?”
I can’t see where any anti-trust investigation into Google can get past these blaringly obvious observations.
As big as it is, Google search is simply not a monopoly, and Google does not deprive people of choice.
lemur2,
“As big as it is, Google search is simply not a monopoly, and Google does not deprive people of choice.”
That really depends on your definition of a monopoly, which can vary legally from country to country. In the US google is generally understood to be a monopoly because it controls the majority of the market.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Sherman+Anti-Trust+Ac…
“A market share greater than 75 percent indicates monopoly power, a share less than 50 percent does not, and shares between 50 and 75 percent are inconclusive in and of themselves.”
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_…
“Google Ups Share of Search To 72%; Yahoo, MSN and Ask Continue To Tank”
Google knows that they are not exempt from anti-trust laws, so it makes sense for them to lobby the government to get more lenient treatment.
You raise a reasonable-sounding point.
However, quoted from the very same page you link:
The prevailing economic theory supporting antitrust laws in the United States is that the public is best served by free competition in trade and industry. When businesses fairly compete for the consumer’s dollar, the quality of products and services increases while the prices decrease. However, many businesses would rather dictate the price, quantity, and quality of the goods that they produce, without having to compete for consumers. Some businesses have tried to eliminate competition through illegal means, such as fixing prices and assigning exclusive territories to different competitors within an industry. Antitrust laws seek to eliminate such illegal behavior and promote free and fair marketplace competition.
Until the late 1800s the federal government encouraged the growth of big business. By the end of the century, however, the emergence of powerful trusts began to threaten the U.S. business climate. Trusts were corporate holding companies that, by 1888, had consolidated a very large share of U.S. manufacturing and mining industries into nationwide monopolies. The trusts found that through consolidation they could charge Monopoly prices and thus make excessive profits and large financial gains. Access to greater political power at state and national levels led to further economic benefits for the trusts, such as tariffs or discriminatory railroad rates or rebates. The most notorious of the trusts were the Sugar Trust, the Whisky Trust, the Cordage Trust, the Beef Trust, the Tobacco Trust, John D. Rockefeller’s Oil Trust (Standard Oil of New Jersey), and J. P. Morgan’s Steel Trust (U.S. Steel Corporation).
Consumers, workers, farmers, and other suppliers were directly hurt monetarily as a result of the monopolizations. Even more important, perhaps, was that the trusts fanned into renewed flame a traditional U.S. fear and hatred of unchecked power, whether political or economic, and particularly of monopolies that ended or threatened equal opportunity for all businesses. The public demanded legislative action, which prompted Congress, in 1890, to pass the Sherman Act. The act was followed by several other antitrust acts, including the Clayton Act of 1914 (15 U.S.C.A. §§ 12 et seq.), the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 (15 U.S.C.A. §§ 41 et seq.), and the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936 (15 U.S.C.A. §§ 13a, 13b, 21a). All of these acts attempt to prohibit anticompetitive practices and prevent unreasonable concentrations of economic power that stifle or weaken competition.
The Sherman Act made agreements “in restraint of trade” illegal. It also made it a crime to “monopolize, or attempt to monopolize … any part of the trade or commerce.” The purpose of the act was to maintain competition in business.
My bold.
Whoever is going to try to prosecute Google for anti-trust behaviour is going to have to show how Google is engaging in “illegal behavior” such that it is preventing “free and fair marketplace competition”.
Given that Google has only 69% of the search market, and that consumers are charged nothing for the search services offered, and also that consumers can easily change their search provider at the drop of a hat, and are actively encouraged to do so by the most widely used OS and browser, this is going to be verrrrrrrry tough to show.
Let alone getting past the next huge hurdle trying to show that Google does indeed bias its search results.
Frankly you’re missing the point.
You stated they were not a monopoly, they are.
Google may not be what’s called a “natural monopoly” (like suppliers of electricity and water), but then neither was microsoft.
As you quoted, antitrust laws exist to promote competition, the government’s responsibility here is to determine if they are exploiting their monopoly power to impede the competition.
Edited 2011-07-05 06:43 UTC
… and in order to do that, they must build a case to prove that Google is excluding the competition using their monopoly power. You are missing the point if you cannot see that proving this is going to be extremely difficult when consumers can choose to use either Google search or a competitor’s search at the drop of a hat. Given this obvious fact, how is the opposition impeded in any way by any act of Google’s?
Based only on their market share, Google is not unequivocally a monopoly anyway. It is in the “maybe” band.
Given that there is absolutely no barrier to competing products, Google is most definitely not in any position to wield “monopoly power” in search.
http://duckduckgo.com/about.html
Given that consumers have good alternatives readily available, only way that Google can maintain it’s share in search is to provide consumers with a good search engine.
There is no problem with competition in the search engine market.
Edited 2011-07-05 09:54 UTC
Google is not exactly in the search market. There is virtually no search market. Google is in the online advertizing market. It controls more than 80% of it. It is currently not possible to grow a business without advertizing and if you are going to advertize your product online, you are going to advertize on Google. Advertizing on Yahoo or Bing alone is pretty much pointless.
Anti-trust law does not seek to protect the interests of advertisers, rather it seeks to protect the interests of ordinary-pople (consumers). Anti-trust law is more likely to impose additional conditions on advertisers than it is to help them.
Edited 2011-07-05 23:14 UTC
lemur2,
“Anti-trust law does not seek to protect the interests of advertisers, rather it seeks to protect the interests of ordinary-pople (consumers). Anti-trust law is more likely to impose additional conditions on advertisers than it is to help them. ”
Please back this up. I see no reason that B2B products/services are not subject to anti-trust.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Sherman+Anti-Trust+Ac…
Search engine providers are indeed subject to anti-trust provisions. The thing is, as can very easily be shown, there is plenty of competition and choice for consumers in the search engines that they may use. There are zero obstacles put in the way of consumers for them to switch from one search engine to another. Ergo, there is no anti-tust violation in this market.
Edited 2011-07-06 04:11 UTC
Well, the consumer is the business who advertizes, not the people who search the web. They are the product.
I can understand how hard it is to set up an advertizing business. You have a chicken and egg problem. You’ve got to advertize your service to start your business and you have to advertize on Google. If you want to compete with google and advertize on Google, there is a conflict of interest inside Google. If Google cheats and put his service above yours then you are fucked.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against monopoly, I am not pro competition and I hate the free market like the next guy. I would rather have a Google monopoly than Facebook. Google just seems to do a better job at contributing back to free software and not fucking the people too much. But I see what their competitor’s point are, even if I spit on them.
lemur2,
Nothing you quoted indicates that anti-trust doesn’t apply to b2b.
“The thing is, as can very easily be shown, there is plenty of competition and choice for consumers in the search engines that they may use.”
How come you just ignore anything contradicting your view rather than confront it? The mere presence of competitors isn’t proof that the market isn’t being interfered with.
In the 90’s I could have applied your logic to argue that next/mac/beos/linux/aix/solaris/os2/vax/XYZ DOS/BSD/and-so-on were proof that microsoft’s OS monopoly was not harmful to consumers.
Another example is Intel’s cpu market manipulation.
You continue ignoring that a monopoly can be harmful even in the presence of “choice”, but I don’t have the energy to argue with you again. If you want to convince yourself that there is no possibility for anti-trust violations with google, then whatever.
Edited 2011-07-06 05:38 UTC
Now I agree that a monopoly can be harmful. But I believe the Google monopoly is better than competition. I agree that unfortunately the competitors have a point in front of the stupid US law though.
I hate Facebook and I urge everyone to switch to Google+ or better, diaspora or something like that. I wish Google could use its weigh to advertize Google+ until Facebook dies.
“b2b” aren’t “the public”. The entire intent of anti-trust law is to protect “the public”, to ensure that they are offered choices in a free-market competition.
When it comes to search engines, “the public” are indeed offered copious choices, and what is more, google does absolutely nothing to try to restrict the choices that are offered to people.
It doesn’t matter one whit that you cannot see this, or that you are too lacking in energy to argue … anti-trust prosection against Google will nevertheless only succeed if it can be shown that “the public”, or “consumers” in reality have no choice when it comes to search engines. No-one will be able to show anything like this, because clearly it isn’t so.
This is why I cannot argue with you. You make a silly statement, which I call you out on, but you completely ignore everything in order to pretend your misguided claim cannot possibly be wrong. The fact that the FTC is currently probing google for antitrust violations is meaningless to you, I suppose in your world view they’re just trying to be dicks right? Good grief lemur2.
lemur2,
As spiderman said, consumers for google means advertisers, who face less choice and less competition when one player becomes a monopoly. But even end users will benefit from healthy competition.
However, as far as anti-trust law goes, “consumers” means ordinary people who run browsers and use search engines. They are what matters, and it is their interests that anti-trust law is written to protect. Not advertisers.
In order to show a breach of antri-trust law, prosecutors must show how Google search reduces choices for ordinary-people type consumers via abuse of monopoly power.
Prosecuters won’t be able to show that, because it doesn’t.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
Here is one search eangine that might be problematic, because the same serch engine is masquerading (to ordinary-people consumers) as two different brands:
http://www.bing.com/
http://search.yahoo.com/
It might be problematic under anti-trust for Microsoft (if it had a much bigger market share), but it helps Google.
Nevertheless, I would agree with the sentiment that end users will benefit from healthy competition. Indeed, this outcome is what anti-trust law seeks to ensure. The thing is, as far as end users are concerned, there is healthy competition in the search engine market.
http://www.thesearchenginelist.com/
Plenty of choice (for end users of search engines). There is absolutely no barriers placed in the way for end-user consumers to switch from one search engine to another.
Given this choice, IMO prosecutors face an impossible task mounting an anti-trust case against Google.
Edited 2011-07-05 23:20 UTC
lemur2,
“However, as far as anti-trust law goes, ‘consumers’ means ordinary people who run browsers and use search engines. They are what matters, and it is their interests that anti-trust law is written to protect. Not advertisers.”
Let me know where you see this in anti-trust law.
“In order to show a breach of antri-trust law, prosecutors must show how Google search reduces choices for ordinary-people type consumers via abuse of monopoly power. Prosecuters won’t be able to show that, because it doesn’t.”
It’s only in the case of a “natural monopoly” that consumers really have no choice. A “monopoly” doesn’t indicate a lack of choice, it indicates a lack of competition – there is a difference. Anyway I mentioned this already.
“Plenty of choice (for end users of search engines). There is absolutely no barriers placed in the way for end-user consumers to switch from one search engine to another.”
You’re still missing the point.
It might help to take a camera store monopoly as a hypothetical example unrelated to google.
This store might become so large that it can deliberately coerce a supplier to give it exclusive distribution rights, or get first dibs on new shipments, or do whatever else to disrupt their competitors. Of course the public is entirely ignorant of this, so they adopt the perception that the monopoly is simply being better than it’s competitors even though this is due to completely unfair market manipulation behind the curtains.
In this case, the fact that the consumers choose the monopoly over rivals is not a valid justification to categorically state that there are no anti-trust violations.
Ain’t central planning great? Best way to rig the free market.
Uh… Neither Microsoft or Apple have anything to do with the case against Google. But yeah, leave it to Google fanboys to think that this is some kind of conspiracy against Google. Google fanboys are as bad as Apple fanboys when it comes to thinking their beloved company can do no wrong, and can’t possibly be violating any laws or creating an unfair playing field.
Well, if you can’t beat them, bribe them.
GE got away with and and many others. Cept orphans and widows.