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:4, Informative)
No, but having a monopoly in one area legally precludes you from leveraging that monopoly to boost your business in other areas (mapping, advertising, email, online video, online document editing, mobile operating systems, etc etc etc).
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e.g. If they tell someone who uses Google that they can only use Google, and any radio, newspaper or Bing advertisements will result in them being banned for life from Google, that would be unfair. A natural monopoly just because no-one else is as smart as you is ok.
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Also, from the first link, Schmidt said it was possible to not use Google search. He didn't say it was possible to not use Google services while running Android.
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It's possible to do so - it's just that no one has bothered to write an app suite to use alternative services that can come close to Google Apps. There's nothing preventing anyone from doing so.
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There are many alternative services, written by third parties, and even basic android comes with services like Microsoft exchange. My SGS2 arrived with Windows Live Mail and Yahoo Mail syncing, plus lots of social services.
The google ones work the best though.
Re:monopoly on free service... (Score:5, Informative)
By your definition, any new invention, in any field, is monopoly abuse. After all, when it first appears, there is no alternative, therefore it's a monopoly that's being abused.
Now, if Google were to make it technically impossible to do so (which they haven't), or legally forbid others from doing so (which they haven't), then it would be monopoly abuse.
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It wasn't technically impossible to sell linux on Dell computers. But Microsoft made it difficult to do anyway. That's the idea of monopoly abuse.
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WRONG....
It is possible, and you CAN do them right now. There is nothing on Android preventing it. Nor does Google create any specific rules forcing manufacturers to include Google services (like Microsoft did). Custom firmware need to include Google services as an additional package (see cyanogen mod)
That is not signs of a leveraging a monopoly.
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In fact I have only Froyo still, and you can export the contacts individually or en masse to the SD card or off the phone via Bluetooth or email or MMS. The contacts are exported as a vCard 2.1 file (.vcf) which I edited by hand (using vi, a commonplace free text editor) then reimported the corrected contacts to my phone with no loss of information.
its a pretty good backup, on my laptop. Google account not required.
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So you need a Google app to use a Google service and this is somehow supposed to be a "monopoly"?
It's suboptimal but not exactly a "monopoly".
One could simply use a Contact management method that doesn't use Google anything outside of the phone itself. I think that was one of the first things I installed for my own (Android) phone.
Troll harder.
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Got any syncing services that run on Android and don't use Google services?
Re:monopoly on free service... (Score:4, Informative)
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Erm. How do you plan to synch to Google contacts without use of a Google API? Now, if he would have said that he can't use contacts at all, fine. But he's complaining that he can't use easily access Google contacts when he removed the various Google hooks? *facepalm*
Re:monopoly on free service... (Score:5, Informative)
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Monopolies aren't against the law, though abusing a monopoly position is.
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iTunes on OSX is clearly damaged and crippled too..
I do think that Apple abuse their position with the app store, I hadn't really thought about iTunes though. Probably because I've always used other sources for my music and TV streaming.
They also kind of abuse their position with iPods by not opening up the connector spec to allow competitors to connect into iPod enabled devices like cars and stereos. I ended up buying a used iPod just so that I could use some of the accessories...
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Search is not a monopoly yet at least on desktop computers- go ask altavista, infoseek, hotbot.
I've actually been using Bing for some searches because I'm too lazy to put double quotes around everything, or:
Click More search tools on the left side of the search results page.
Click Verbatim.
Nobody is stopping you from making a better search engine and/or interface than Google.
Start small, try it on Amazon EC2, if it's successful try to get big discounts/incentives/$$$$ from Microsoft to migrate it to Windows Azure ;).
Re:monopoly on free service... (Score:5, Insightful)
It may be free for me and you, but it so happens that we aren't google's clients. In fact, we are google's product. Just like facebook, these companies rely on us to grant them "eyes" for advertisements and our personal information for them to profit as they see fit.
As a more sinister aspect of this monopoly, if everyone relies on a single private company to access information then they also control what we can and cannot access. For example, google currently censors our search results [torrentfreak.com] in order to bury sites which google doesn't want us to access, sites such as the pirate bay, isohunt and 4shared. If we keep relying on them to access information then what today affects only harmless download sites, tomorrow may also cover sites on political parties, corruption scandals, disasters and whatever they see fit. And, of course, potential google competitors.
So, a monopoly affects a lot more than our wallet, and google is currently placing itself as both the knowledge gatekeeper and big brother. You bet it poses a serious danger to humanity.
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Very true. Now look a bit further, and check why Google is burying those sites. You'll find a few laws passed by government bodies who listened more to people objecting to those sites than to Google.
Re:monopoly on free service... (Score:5, Informative)
Possible monopoly on a NOT free service... (Score:2)
"is a monopoly on something that is free, against the law?"
It's free to you. It's not free to advertisers who are google's actual customers of its main business area.
Your eyes on google's search pages are the commodity being sold.
Look at broadcast TV in the decades before cable. It was free to the "users". It wasn't free to the actual customers, the advertisers. The user's (viewers) attention was what was being sold.
(This isn't saying google is doing anything wrong, or right for that matter. Just that your
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Re:monopoly on free service... (Score:4, Insightful)
lol, I hope you are just trolling.
Monopoly means its the only one. Ma Bell was a monopoly. Google isn't a monopoly, it's just successful.
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:monopoly on free service... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not in the light of the remark quotes in the summary. If they have a monopoly of search, it is reasonable that they report search results as impartially as reasonably possible. But the quote implies that Google will bias its results to favour its own sites. If it were one of many, this wouldn't matter; people could decide to use more impartial search engines if they wished. But if it is a monopoly, this could be construed as abuse of monopoly power. Monopolists are held to a higher standard than those with competition. (And, ISTM, this breaks the now-dropped "Don't Be Evil" maxim. Providing clearly marked advertising around honest search results is fine; providing slanted search results is not).
Re:monopoly on free service... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your analysis is correct, but it relies on one assumption: Google biases its results to favor its own sites. From what I've seen so far, the only argument in this direction is coming from people who claim that when doing things like searching for stock tickers, Google defaults to showing the graph from its own site, finance.google.com. Which is fine, but it's a) not a search result (it lives in the same space that calculation results do) and b) right next to its own link, it provides links to every other major stock charting site. If it's ok for MS to ship a browser in its OS by providing a list of browsers on initial boot-up, this setup should be entirely fine as well.
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No, but that may be abuse of monopoly.
I'd arguee that Nestle is a monopoly, but it is so obvious that the ingrdients can be changed that it isn't a problem. I'd arguee the same for Google, but IANAL, and everything...
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If your google to google to find say.... 'photo editors' then listing their own product (Picasa) isn't that much of a stretch, your already there and could in fact be trying to find Picasa (but not remember the name only what it does). I don't think it's at all unreasonable that they list their own products in those categories fairly high as your already going to google to look for them. I've done this before when specifically looking for a google tool, but not knowing where to find it so searching was the
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But if Google's monopoly power has ensured that they are by far the best search engine, because they can afford (as monopolist) better spiders, more defences against link farms and so on, then the alternatives are no good. As I said, if there are many equal search engines it doesn't matter if one is slanted. But the allegation being raised by the Senate is that there are no other "good" search engines, except Bing. That was my point about monopolists: if Google has destroyed, by being better, all other sear
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Re:You are incorrect (Score:4, Insightful)
But if Google's monopoly power has ensured that they are by far the best search engine, because they can afford (as monopolist) better spiders, more defences against link farms and so on, then the alternatives are no good. As I said, if there are many equal search engines it doesn't matter if one is slanted. But the allegation being raised by the Senate is that there are no other "good" search engines, except Bing. That was my point about monopolists: if Google has destroyed, by being better, all other search engines, then the demands for fairness made on it are higher than if it has face-to-face competitors. Your point is a bit like saying that, if there is a monopoly car manufacturer but you consider its cars unsafe, you can always walk.
I am not sure the allegation of being a monopolist holds water, but my reply was couched on the basis that it is, as alleged. IF Google is a monopolist THEN there are no alternative good search engines SO the government is entitled to demand impartiality from Google. IF the initial premise is false, then the whole response does not apply.
Your real point is whether entry costs for startups are prohibitively high, enough so that a free-market cannot exist: a "natural monopoly." You speculate that they are, and that Google has a "natural monopoly." I, and most others, would disagree. If you want to look at real examples of natural monopolies, you should better focus on the airlines. They are often touted as textbook examples.
Re:monopoly on free service... (Score:5, Informative)
"You'd have to make an argument that Google is unfairly forcing their search users to also use their other services,"
The argument for a monopoly is generally about the customers, and the people searching on Google are not the customers. People searching on Google are part of the product. The advertisers are the Google's customers. If Google is overly dominant in the advertising or possibly even in just the search/advertising markets, AND they are charging more when they feel someone is competing with them, it could very well be considered anti-competitive behavior.
Also, if they have search dominance, and are using that to gain advantage in other markets(even if their only profit in those markets is ad revenue), then they could also be considered anti-competitive.
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I'd love to see some data around this. This is the only conceivable situation I've heard so far where Google could indeed run afoul of anti-trust laws. But nobody is arguing this - instead, it's "Google has a monopoly on the Internet" and similar nonsense.
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Monopoly does not, in fact mean "only one". Not in today's markets, and not in US or EU law.
Monopoly simply means commanding the market. I believe the EU has brought penalties against "Monoplolies" holding a measly 37% market share.
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Why not though it's not like we don't have anything else that this money could be used for.
Google? But not Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has like 64% (google market share [bloomberg.com]), with competitors Bing and Yahoo (now powered by Bing), and some others.
Microsoft has a 91% market share ( windows market share [bgr.com]) with competitors Linux (FOSS) and Mac OSX (only available on Apple hardware, Apple openly sues you for building hackintoshes).
And yet GOOGLE is the one who needs investigating? Really?
Oh wait, I forgot, Microsoft is all buddy-buddy with congressmen.
Re:Google? But not Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there's the fact that the EU is suing MS for millions and millions for their practices with IE, but over here in the US, its A-OK.
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Re:Google? But not Microsoft? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let us also not forgot that many GNU/Linux users are dual booting. I do not think many people use multiple search engines.
That's because Google almost always finds the result they're looking for, and does it better than the competition. If Google's results start sucking people will go use another search engine that provides better results.
It's telling that nearly every company complaining about Google excluding them from search results are the type of things that people don't want. They're, to be polite, middlemen, trying to milk you for ad views before you get to the actual destination you were really wanting. Adding another step between search -> result doesn't benefit the people searching. If Google's forced to leave them in it it'll destroy the value of their search engine almost overnight.
But the truth of the matter is this is congress sending Google a warning message. The real message is "You're not donating enough money to our campaigns, fix that or we'll destroy your business.
Re:Google? But not Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real message is "You're not donating enough money to our campaigns, fix that or we'll destroy your business.
Yup, pretty much this.
follow the $ (Score:3, Insightful)
seriously, let's just cut to the chase here:
who's paying off which senators to do this?
congress doesn't do ANYTHING on principle any more & this doesn't make sense on principle anyway so obviously somebody (m$?) is greasing some palms to get this on the docket. debating it on the merits (or lack thereof) is completely irrelevant & a waste of time as we all know that isn't what drives the process.
sorry, but I'm in a particularly cynical mood today after reading Matt Tiabbi's latest article...
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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
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It's not market share that determines if you violate antitrust legislation, it's what you do with it.
You can have a 100% market share without having done anything wrong ( if not you could never
bring a new product to the market, since it would initially have no competition ). What is illegal
is to use your monopoly in one area to stifle competition in another.
I'm not saying Microsoft is innocent of doing so ( indeed they have been convicted of such practices
in the past), just that people tend to misunderstand
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Anyone else could have made Firefox an offer. They didn't.
Oh yeah, and it's only making Google the default - it's really damn easy to change, unlike, for example, the incredibly difficulty of extracting IE from a Windows system.
Microsoft uses their large market share to keep market share, with aggressive vendor lock-in practices.
Google, on the other hand, actively fights against vendor lock-in whenever they can. Gmail can export contacts as CSV, etc.
http://www.dataliberation.org/ [dataliberation.org] - this is about as far fr
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Google is gaining power in many areas of technology, so the FTC is looking into it to be sure they aren't abusing their monopoly. This is normal and expected. As a consumer and citizen you should welcome it.
Read their conclusion and data and base an opinion at that time.
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I'm not a bug fan of Microsoft but I know they never prevented me from installing another browser. It's almost as easy as changing my default search engine. Using a different standard for you platform of choice?
"Nice little search engine you got there buddy,... (Score:5, Insightful)
How you can own a monopoly in an environment where switching to a competitor who offers a better product at zero cost is beyond me but evidently some people in Washington seem to think differently.
Odd that the issue is being raised (yet again) just as Google publicly comes out against SOPA and Protect-IP.
The threat comes from the same politicians who are clueless enough to think they can tinker with the Internet's infrastructure without harming it.
My ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Illegal monopoly, my ass. Google has done nothing to protect its monopoly, certainly nothing like forcing pretty much every PC maker in the world to use Windows, giving the illusion of no choice in software, and attacking competitors with underhanded tactics to help them maintain a monopoly. Microsoft should have been tried, convicted, and broken up LONG ago but Microsoft became a friend of the government and thus got a pass.
Just because Google does things right,getting where they are thanks to hard work and brand recognition, and that no one else has been able to duplicate their success doesn't make them an *illegal* monopoly. (Remember kids, it's not illegal to simply be a monopoly -- you have to do underhanded garbage like Microsoft has done to be an *illegal* one.) It's just because Google doesn't want to bend over and play the government's games that they're now being wrongfully accused of being one.
What a nightmare we all live in. Sadly, things aren't going to change until our citizens converge on Washington, D.C. armed and demanding to take their government back from the greedy moneyloving fucks that are ruining things for everyone.
AC for very obvious reasons.
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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 G
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It's quite easy actually.
It's actually much easier than the same exercise with Android replaced with an iPhone and Apple.
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Except that Google is selling Android as open. Apple is selling it as Apple hardware with Apple services.
And no, it's not "quite easy". It's actually quite difficult, and you lose a ton of functionality.
That's what monopoly abuse looks like.
Hahahaah bing (Score:2)
Consumers give monopoly position to Google (Score:2)
Almost all consumers choose to use Google, instead of other search engines. Almost everybody has tried several other ways to search, but Google simply gives the best results the quickest, and consumers voluntarily choose to ignore the competition. What's the problem?
Oh well, I guess this gives the politicians something to do. Whatever keeps them busy, and doesn't harm the public too much is a good activity for politicians.
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They HAVE something to do. It's called actually balancing the budget, which they seem to be failing pretty comprehensively at. They can't even seem to pass a bill which everyone agrees needs to happen, and might even make the voting public happier with them (ie. payroll tax deduction).
monopoly vs abuse (Score:2)
I don't understand why they keep investigating and investigating and just won't finally leave google alone. Are they a monopoly? obviously. Do they abuse their monopoly position? That stone's been turned over more times than the average river rock, and nothing's been found. Why don't they give it a rest already?
I can only assume at this point that the others that wish they were in google's position keep lobbying and prodding and whining for still another investigation, if nothing else than to be a thor
On the outside maybe (Score:3)
While I agree Google does appear to be a monopoly on the outside, I don't think it's been abusing it's position and there is an alternative that people can use if they do not want to use Google. After all it's not like Google is saying that they own your computer and you're just leasing it from them.
Sadly the same cannot be said for the Cable provider. Cable Internet from one provider or my choice of Dial Up providers.
It's Not Illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Limiting Supply - there's no way Google is doing that...
Predatory Pricing - They have always been free, as are the competitors. Then again, could that be classified as predatory I guess...
Price Discrimination - The same as above
Refusal to deal - Not that I've heard of...
Exclusive Dealing - Not that I've heard of either
Product Bundling - This is tricky. Sure, their products integrate. But then again you need to sign up for each one separately. There's no "Use search and automatically get this other product"...
So, either they will need to go out and tread new territory with little legal precedent to lead the way. Not saying it should or shouldn't be done, but just that it's a relatively new area.
Additionally, I really find the line who said that it was 'only fair' that Google put its own sites on higher placements than competitors odd. Let's show a few examples:
Free Email [google.com] - GMail is #5 on the list for me. Yahoo, Mail.com, Hotmail and GMX.com are all above it...
ebooks [google.com] - Google Books is #6 on the list. Ebooks.com, Amazon, Project Gutenberg, Barnes and Noble and Free-ebooks.net are all above it...
Online Calendar [google.com] - Google Calendar is #3 on the list.
US News [google.com] - Google News isn't even on the first page for me (not even in an ad)...
Shopping [google.com] - Google Shopping is #2 behind Shopping.com
Now, searches for News, Gmail, Images, Videos, Maps and other product names return google first. But that sort-of makes sense, since those are the product names...
In fact, searching for Maps and Images on Bing returns Google for the first results! Is it an anti-trust violation to name your products intelligently???
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I guess that depends on your definitions. Simply using search, no, that doesn't come with anything else (other than links to their services and according to the Google executive quote in the summary, deliberately prominent ones). But the second you sign up for an account for any one service you're signed in to all o
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You're correct - Google does some light bundling with single-sign-on.
However, they go to great efforts to allow their various individual products to be used with software outside of their "bundle".
Look at gmail's robust POP/IMAP support.
Look at Google Calendar's robust support for open calendar formats
In general - look at Google's approach in general to data availability, such as Google Takeout.
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Google wins because people like them -- they like their search algorithm, they like their we
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Google isn't free. Google is an advertising agency that is paid by all its advertisers, for whom others compete.
Those prices could be manipulated by Google to protect its ability to manipulate those prices, by its power of market dominance and other advantages that aren't simply competing. Likewise Google could be using other such advantages that aren't simply competing, to interfere with advertising competition.
And besides, the free searching and other features all support that advertising, which in turn s
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I would just like to point something out here. If other companies can't compete because Google is really good at search, that's not anti-competitive (in fact, it's the exact opposite
Re:It's Not Illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
Limiting Supply - there's no way Google is doing that...
Of course they do that -- they sell adwords, and they sell a limited number of them based on raising prices to the highest level they can, based on their dominance in search. Remember, the person doing the search isn't Google's customer. They're Google's *product*. The services you use at Google are there for one reason -- to increase *your* value as the product they are selling.
Predatory Pricing - They have always been free, as are the competitors. Then again, could that be classified as predatory I guess...
As I said above ...
Price Discrimination - The same as above
Exactly.
Product Bundling - This is tricky. Sure, their products integrate. But then again you need to sign up for each one separately. There's no "Use search and automatically get this other product"...
Try to use any of their services without Google+ anymore ...
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Of course they do that -- they sell adwords, and they sell a limited number of them based on raising prices to the highest level they can, based on their dominance in search. Remember, the person doing the search isn't Google's customer. They're Google's *product*. The services you use at Google are there for one reason -- to increase *your* value as the product they are selling.
I'm not sure I understand your reasoning here. They're not the only Ad network, just the most popular. And AdWords is a bidding system so Google isn't the one setting the price. Furthermore, don't YOU get to pick the search terms? So how is Google raising prices?
So I don't quite understand your argument that they're abusing their position. It's not like Microsoft charging more for Windows if you happen to sell other OSs. Now THAT would be abusing your position
Try to use any of their services without Google+ anymore ...
Me? I do it all the time. I have Gmail b
100% a Hit (Score:5, Insightful)
They are just doing everything they can to beat up Google. To tie it and restrict it and (if all else fails) destroy it. Facts be damned.
Congress' brief relationship with silicon valley has long since ended, and they're doing everything their rusty old selves can manage in order to placate and "secure" America's "#1 Industry".
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They are just doing everything they can to beat up Google. To tie it and restrict it and (if all else fails) destroy it. Facts be damned.
... and this couldn't possibly have anything to do with Google's denouncement of the Congressional idiocy known as SOPA, now could it?
Nothing to see here, civilian, move along before your presence forces us to bust out the OC spray...
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.
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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.
I wonder how many US presidents would even have lasted long enough to take their oath after election?
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.
Where have I heard this before? (Score:2)
Oh wait... we haven't heard this before. Where was the letter from senators complaining that Microsoft could do these same kind of things?
I haven't checked yet but does anyone know whether senators Kolb and Lee have received sizable bribes^Wcampaign contributions from Micr
Wat. (Score:2)
The Senators are also warning that Google is only facing one real competitor (PDF), Microsoft's Bing.
That's like saying the only competition Country Time Lemonade has is that kid selling lemonade on the street corner, which may or may not have come from a bottle of Country Time Lemonade to begin with.
Google's main problem (Score:2)
AdWords, not search! (Score:3)
I can't believe all y'all're missing the point so spectacularly.
Yes, searching on Google is free. So what? Over-the-air TV is free. That doesn't mean a broadcaster can't have a monopoly.
Google's not a searching company any more than they're a Webmail company or a YouTube company or whatever.
They're an advertising company. Their customers are those who pay them to run ads, and the product they sell to their customers is the eyeballs of those who see the ads.
And they are very much a monopoly in that arena.
Sheesh. It's like everybody else who's posting on this thread needs to turn in their Geek cards. I thought y'all knew this already...?
Cheers,
b&
actual Schmidt quote (Score:4, Informative)
The original poster oversimplifies what was said at the actual Senate hearing. Fast forward to 1:21:50 here: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/301681-1 [c-spanvideo.org]
Herbert Kohl: but you do recognize that... in the words that are used in antitrust kind of oversight... your market share constitutes monopoly...dominant - special power dominant for a monopoly firm. you - you recognize that you're in that area?
Eric Schmidt: um i would agree senator that we're in that area um again with apologies because i'm not a lawyer my understand of monopoly findings is that it's actually a judicial process so i'd have to let the judges and so forth actually do such a finding...
Google's strong preference for their own services (Score:3)
The big antitrust issue is Google's preference for its own services in search results. Search for "new movies" with Google. [google.com] Everything on the screen is a Google ad or service. No organic search results appear above the fold. The same thing happens for "DVD player" [google.com], where everything is either an ad or Google Shopping.
As Senators Kohl and Lee write: "Rather than act as an honest broker of unbiased search results, Google's search results appear to favor the company's own web products and services. Given Google's dominant share in Internet search, any such bias or preferencing would raise serious questions as to whether Google is seeking to leverage its search dominance in adjacent markets, in a manner potentially contrary to antitrust law." Exactly.
US antitrust law comes from an era when railroads dominated the economy. Railroads could use their routes and shipping rates to extend their influence into real estate (especially in the western US, where the railroads came before the population) and manufacturing (by favoring affiliated manufacturers in shipping rates). Google now has something of a comparable position on the Internet.
yeah. ayn rand. (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/149721/ayn_rand_railed_against_government_benefits,_but_grabbed_social_security_and_medicare_when_she_needed_them/ [alternet.org]
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I am of the same mindset. I don't like big government programs - they cost a gigantic pile of money that I could otherwise keep, invest, and retire on later in life. But, since I'm currently being forced to pay into the bureaucratic monster, I might as well get a bit of it back. You know, getting back some of the money that I would have had if I wasn't forced to pay these high taxes.
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The problem is not that taxes are too high OR too low, its that they're too high for the low earners, and too low for the high earners.
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TBH I am sort of conflicted on that since she was required to pay into the system, was it not her right to be able to take out the money she paid into it?
Of course it would be nice for some of these people who decry Medicare/SS to forgo the benefits later in life. I guess it's how many Pro-Lifers are one unplanned pregnancy away from being Pro-Choice.
"I am against X, until I have to face the repercussions of that in which I case I am now in favor of it"
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Obviously its a complex issue, I am simply open to both sides of the argument. Though I agree with your sentiment, people in general not just the Boomers are very "I got mine" about social services. "No socialized healthcare for the poor and infirm, but don't touch my medicare"
Personally I would prefer to manage my own money, let me invest/save for my own future, if I am broke when I'm old I'll have only myself to blame.
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Oh really? I'll bet when you were growing up mommy and daddy paid about a half million dollars total for YOU to have food, clothing, shelter, health care, transportation, education, heat, hot water, electricity, telephone, cable TV, and high-speed internet. Now that they are old and grey and ready to retire, you just can't wait to throw them under the bus.
So who is
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the same leech who
FTFY
Re:yeah. ayn rand. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ayn Rand's arguments fall apart on many merits, but using the fact that she took money from a system she paid into is a foolish argument.
You must attack the argument, NOT the person.
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You must attack the argument, NOT the person.
Its called the Ad Hominem Fallacy, named in Latin because the GREEKS recognized it was a fallacy. Sadly, the modern world has completely abandoned things like logic, reason or rational discourse. Instead we teach people to follow your emotions and yell and kick and scream and get what you want and don't bother to understand other people because they're just different and wrong.
To quote Isaac Asimov, “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural
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Please, this is just an investigation, and even if Google is found to be abusing its position the worst that will happen is they will get a slap on the wrists, like Microsoft did.
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That'd be a neat proposition. But when you're #1 in your field and you use this to unfairly bash in people trying to compete... Then we have a problem.
I mean, Yelp content scraping? [andre.me] Undercutting costs on Android so they can bolster their own ad and search business(iOS is doing fine but what of WebOS, MeeGo and WinPhone 7?).
Sure, it's the unproductive politicians that are the problem. Not monopolists abusing their power. Or as Ayn Rand calls, "A wet dream."
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The idea is this:
Being a monopoly is fine. (In this regard, a Monopoly is defined as holding a lion's share of the market, regardless of how many actual competitors there are.)
Being a monopoly, and *using* that market share advantage to take more of a share in other markets (using "search" to steal share in "advertising", for example), is deemed anti-competitive and subject to Anti-Trust laws and penalties.
Note: I am not taking sides in this, simply doing my best at explaining the concept behind what is goi
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I think you are confusing a few things here.
Search is not Google's market. Advertising is. It sells eyeballs to marketing departments. That's its cash cow. Here is its business model: offer a variety of services for free to attract users, then sell those users to marketing departments. It has a service for maps, for search and for email, all of which are doing very well. It has a variety of other services that are not doing nearly so well. Furthermore, only the search service can be considered as even appro
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You have a monopoly on that property, and control over it. That's ok. What's not ok is when you start to tell your customers that you won't deal with them at all if they ever use a competitor's product.
Excellent legal hackers can invent ways that are just this side of monopoly practices, but effectively give you
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DuckDuckGo gets its results from over 50 sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites (in our own index), Yahoo! BOSS, embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Bing & Blekko.
Added bold for emphasis. Granted they seem to do a lot more than just Bing so the summary is somewhat misleading (a misleading slashdot summary, how shocking).
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What makes you think the crud won't be a problem for any competing search engines? If you put a weight on only sites that people have voted up, then you'll end up with valid sites that never get seen, and dodgy companies being paid to vote up the spam sites, etc..
It's the same idea as fighting spam. It will always be a perpetual arms race unless you stick to some kind of whitelist. Gmail just so happens to have better spam filtering than any other service I've used, so excuse me if I'm a little sceptical th