Senators Recommend FTC Perform Antitrust Investigation Of Google 315
SharkLaser writes "U.S. Senators have written to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission about their concerns over Google's Internet monopoly. Google executives did themselves no favors when the Senators looked at Google's business practices in September. When asked if Google has monopoly in online search, Google chairman Eric Schmidt is quoted as saying 'I would agree, Senator, that we are in that area.' Another worrying quote is from Marissa Meyer, Google's VP of location services, who said that it was 'only fair' that Google put its own sites on higher placements than competitors. The Senators are also warning that Google is only facing one real competitor (PDF), Microsoft's Bing. Almost all other metasearch engines use either Google or Bing technology to deliver search results, including DuckDuckGo which uses Bing. In Europe Google is currently under investigation of monopoly abuse and the EU has also delayed Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility."
monopoly on free service... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:monopoly on free service... (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, just being a monopoly isn't, generally, enough to get in trouble. Using your monopoly status illegally, generally to force customers to use your other products, is illegal. You'd have to make an argument that Google is unfairly forcing their search users to also use their other services, which is an argument that can probably be made but is going to be hard to sell when nearly all their services are provided for free.
Re:Google? But not Microsoft? (Score:2, Interesting)
Google runs things like the Google transparency report:
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/ [google.com]
It's government's worst nightmare, a large corporate with a major prescence that doesn't bow down to it's every whim.
This is in stark contrast to the likes of Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook, who gladly do what government wants. How much of a share of social networking does Facebook own? how much of a share of the music player market does Apple own, whilst using that share to tie people in with DRM on movies, and previously music to force them to replace with more Apple products or lose their content?
This isn't about whether Google has a monopoly or not, it's about fall into line and play ball, or we'll fuck your business over.
Too Big to Ignore (Score:5, Interesting)
Any company that gets as big as Google should be investigated for being a monopoly, trust or anchor of a cartel. By "big" I mean both market share and sheer size in either revenue, profit, market cap or assets. Because when a corporation is that big, it probably is distorting the market substantially in those ways. All the other businesses, and of course the people, are paying taxes and expecting as citizens their government protect them from such abuses.
There's plenty of research the FTC could do automatically on any company that gets that big without causing any costs beyond routine compliance processing all its competitors also do. They should, and any substantial evidence of something more serious should automatically trigger a fuller investigation. The government should not have people whose discretion protects favored corporations from these compulsory reviews, who are obviously going to be corrupted by companies too big to stop. They should not get too big to stop before the government starts stopping them.
FWIW every president should have an impeachment committee fired up and researching impeachable offenses starting the day they're elected. These various executives have far too much power to corrupt, delay and stop investigations that are the people's only defense from their crimes.
Re:My ass (Score:2, Interesting)
Illegal monopoly, my ass. Google has done nothing to protect its monopoly, ....
How about dumping a smartphone OS on the market for free while ignoring other people's patents, to protect their market share of mobile searches? Or leveraging their search monopoly to try to drive people towards their other products instead of those offered by competitors? I don't know if once the legal battles are all sorted out it'll turn out that they actually did violate any laws, but it's plausible enough that the government would be remiss in its duties if it didn't bother to find out. Just because Google claims to "do no evil" doesn't mean they're not playing exactly the same games that the other major players (e.g. Microsoft, Apple, et al.) do. Maybe they've done nothing wrong, in which case they've got nothing to worry about. Or on the other hand, maybe they are improperly leveraging their search monopoly, in which case the government can and should intervene.
If they really wanted to investigate monopoly abus (Score:4, Interesting)
If they really wanted to investigate monopoly abuse:
Look no further than Ebay / Paypal. That relationship is a rediculous example of monopoly abuse. Ebay cornered the market for online auctions and then forced paypal on to everyone.