Google confirms FTC conducting review of its business - Page 2

not really. Considering Apple uses the same harddrives on the xserver servers.

Also there is no clear classification for a "server grade" harddrive. Now if they say it's a Enterprice class harddrive, then it might be a problem.

Maybe I'm being stupid, but if you walk in to a Cadillac dealer, and ask to see "cars" and they show you a Caddy instead of a BMW or Mecedes, is that "unfair" to BMW and Mercedes?

Although Google does sell our personal information like a used car salesman, but Google search's not supposed to be a car dealership.

If Cadillac had a monopoly of car dealerships in the USA then it could be, because once you are a monopoly in a market, the law regarding your actions changes - even if your monopoly was acquired through entirely legal means.

You aren't allowed to use your monopoly in one area to exert leverage in another - which is why Microsoft ran into such trouble when they leveraged their Windows monopoly to gain a virtual web browser monopoly.

I suspect Google will get away with it in the US because the current Supreme court seems willing to grant 1st amendment protection to corporations, and in that case Google can claim that they have a first amendment right to publish search results in whatever order they like. Sherman act be damned.

What proof is there that any search results order should be different? That the results from a Google search are intentionally improperly weighted for the individual's query and show prefenetial treatment for Google's own services in an unfair manner? That's the issue that would have to be shown.

That has nothing to do with the Supreme Court. Your argument would intimate that Google has in fact been unfairly treating competitors and would be found guilty if not for the current court. I've not seen anything that backs that claim. Nor even that the FTC thinks that anything unlawful has occurred. It's an inquiry. So far it appears more like Yahoo and Bing have been eating sour grapes.

I am not the biggest fan of Google's business strategy, but on the face of it, this does seem like an overreach on part of the FTC. Microsoft has thrown everything at the wall trying to become even quasi-successful in search and has failed miserably. Yahoo has imploded.

Moreover, outside of the US, Google is much less successful. Consider the case of China, where it has essentially no presence.

Search is a perfectly contestable market worldwide with some huge players who can throw a lot of resources at it. Google's search is successful because people simply choose it. (I know I do. I am not bothered a bit by Google's ads.) We certainly don't hear of any major complaints from consumers.

You might dislike Google, but you have to be careful what you wish for. This sort of government meddling could very well come back to bite successful companies like Apple. For example, a bunch of disgruntled competitors in the tablet space could start to go after iPads next, if the FTC gets anywhere with this.

Good point! It would be like asking Apple to sell its competitors products on its Store.

No - my argument is that even if Google was grotesquely manipulating search order then 1st amendment interpretation would seem to exonerate them. I'll admit I phrased it badly though.

Where they might be more vulnerable is with Skyhook.

Yup, Schmidt searched on Bing and realized his company was being investigated. He is believed to have uttered, "Larry, Sergey, how come I'm always the last to know these things? What's that? There's more? Holy #$%% - We bought Android? I'd better tell Steve Jobs since I'm on his company's board. Oh ... not anymore?"

Agreed on Skyhook, altho I personally feel they have the right to choose their partners, and how they wish to work with them.

Actually it has a decent presence in China - http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_en...005-201105-bar

amd besodes. that doesn't change whether it's a monopoly in the US, which it clearly is

http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_en...005-201105-bar


Actually it's far harder to contest Google's search market than you might think, because you can't reliably bid for just a bit of it. Consider how enormous Google's investment in server infrastructure is, in order to compete you have to build an equally sized infrastructure, because otherwise when you launch your big advertising blitz to get people to switch, they do so - suffer horrible performance and never come back.

On the other side if you build multi-billion dollar infrastructure and you don't even have a certainty of a market at the end, then you're seriuosly screwed up. It's not such a strong natural monopoly as OS is, but it is a market with a big barrier to entry. In fact it's arguably harder than it was to break MS' monopoly in the 90s because there we had freeware rivals like linux and bsd that could be used as a jumping off point for a competitors product.

You're right that google search is a good product, and it's quite clear that the search monopoly itself has been acquired innocently. That's a good thing for Google because if it hadn't been just possessing the monopoly would be a Sherman Act violation. However as I said, just because Google has earned their search monopoly with a good product doesn't entitle them to extend it into other areas.


People said much the same when the DoJ went after MS. I would say it's far better for us as consumers if firms like Google, MS and yes even Apple compete on the quality of their products and not by monopolistic power. Google faced a superior competitor in Skyhook - pretty much by their own admission - but they were able to remove it from Moto phones with their power over a platform. That's a textbook MS play.

Monopolies have obligations though, and Google should be happy they do - imagine if MS had decided to block Google from IE. Google's best argument in moblie is that Android isn't a monopoly and that while it may be aggressively using Android to enter other markets, it isn't aggressively using search.

It isn't the same thing. Google is arguably using its monopoly position in one area (e.g. search) to strengthen its position in other areas. For instance, if you were to go to Google and use its search service and type in smart phones and it were to kick back the Nexus One as the number one result, it arguably would be using its dominant position in search to try and conquer another market. If it didn't have a monopoly in search (which it might not), that would be OK. If it does have a monopoly in search, it can't use its monopoly to gain an unfair advantage in other areas.

Your example doesn't work because no one car dealership has a monopoly.

For every issue there's an xkcd http://xkcd.com/461/

Actually, in the US, Microsoft is gaining market share slowly. I use Bing often because Microsoft gives me credits that I can buy X-Box points with. I see no noticeable difference in results. Further, Bing does some things arguably better. For instance, image searches. I also like the home page better. Bing does some things worst as well. Competition is good.

Where Google has to worry is in Europe where its market share is much higher. I don't think Google has a monopoly position in the US. Europe might be different though.

Just like Microsoft had the right to give their partners incentives to not include netscape navigator by default on their computer?

It's scary how back in the days everybody thought Microsoft was the evil empire. Now Google's doing the exact same thing and they are the saint. Simply because they are doing it for "free".

I definitely do - in fact earlier for the lolz I searched for 'google terrible service' on both. Google gave more relevant hits

When Bing and Yahoo can produce better search results I'll use them. For a while I felt Bing had better results with image searches. Then they changed something and I went back to Google. Yahoo has always been a bit different and I just don't like it. I use Yahoo's home page as my news source each day just to keep in touch with the world's blurbs. I might use Yahoo search a couple of times a year and that is only because I'm starting out on a Yahoo News page.

I had high hopes for Cuil but it didn't live up to it's claims. The concept was great but their implementation of it didn't work. Their idea was to link relevant topics in addition to keywords.

Ask.com just has so many duplicate listings that it is just a joke to use.

Ninety-nine percent of my searches are done on http://startingpage.com. They are a proxy for Google search results. They don't record any of my information. My other search engine is http://ixquick.com. They are the originators of StartingPage.com. They originally had their own private search engine service before partnering with Google as a proxy search engine. If you value your privacy and must use Google then use StartingPage.com.

I don't know of any law that tells a company that they must promote their competitors. If Google wants to put their services on the top of every relevant search result then let them. It's their business. It's their page people are looking at. People directly went to Google to get that information. Google didn't force them to utilize that service.

Is Google misbehaving with the licensing of Android and it's hardware partners? Maybe it is. We'll see.

When all the top results are Google advertisers, it's not just chance.


So you don't understand either the 1st amendment or antitrust law. No surprise there.

Google can not legally use a monopoly in one market (search) to enhance their presence into another market (advertising). Of course, it hasn't been prove that they've done that, but the argument that they can do whatever they want because of the first amendment is surely an indication that you don't know what you're talking about.

Where are you getting that from? As far as I can tell it surged to 8.5% over its first few months of operation, without even slightly impacting google - it just took share from the old MS services and some from Yahoo.

It's been dropping since then though, and is now down to 7.52%.

To put it another way, since the month before bing launched Google has gained 3% share in the US.

There. Hope that makes more sense.

Your experience is dependent on the types of things you search for and what you view relevant. What service one finds better is always going to be subjective.

More importantly though, for me, Bing is improving. For the first year it was out, I couldn't use it at all. Now I find most searches reliable. Google probably still has the upper hand, but for common searches I think both are reliable. Microsoft is also doing the smart thing to try and improve Bing by integrating its X-Box ecosystem (which is OK because Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in game systems).


I tried your search as well. I don't see how you can come to the conclusion Google's results were more reliable. Google's first link, was Bing's second. The results didn't seem to far off from one another.

Correct, the law says that Google cannot use a monopoly in one market to extend presence in another, specifically anti-trust laws. However, in the US laws cannot infringe constitutionally protected rights, and the 1st Amendment Guarantees freedom of speech.

Commercial speech has less protection than normal speech, I'm not allowed to advertise a product as curing cancer if it does no such thing, however the 1st Amendment still provides considerable protection - as has been recently in the news with the Citizens United case. Search results are very plausibly a form of commercial speech, and mixing search with advertising isn't even new - in fact pre-google it was common, so it would be hard to argue that search results were some special class of speech that under no circumstances can contain advertisements.

The fact is there has never been a case in the past where a monopolist has had a monopoly over a form of speech, and it's impossible to say exactly what will happen when the two forces meet - but given the generally pro-business slant of the current court I would say Google has a good chance.

Please try to get your head around the fact that I'm not saying this is a good thing. I also don't think it will completely rescue Google, because at some point the EU regulators will get in on the act, and there's no similar protection for commercial speech in the EU.

If the court decided that the iPad constituted a market then that argument would indeed fly. They probably wouldn't though, since a case would be made that laptops, notebooks and phones all compete. Internet search has no such substitute products - I don't think there's any doubt that the court would determine that Google possesses a monopoly.

Bing's results go like this

1) Relevant
2) Somebody random's google profile
3) something random on google groups
4) Relevant
5) Relevant
6) something random on google groups

Google's go like this

1) Relevant
2) Relevant
3) Relevant
4) Relevant
5) this forum thread - OMFG how did they find it this fast?
6) not relevant

Yes, but how does Google fit the definition of a monopoly? There are other search engines, and I can choose which one I use.

I see iLuv is back.

Back in the 90s people could choose to use System 9 or linux, or even a bsd variant but nevertheless Microsoft was found to be a monopoly. In practical terms the existence of a small competitor or two wouldn't be enough to immunize Google from the case that it was a monopoly.

Speaking of Microsoft, it filed a complaint against Google in the EU that is well worth reading if you have the time.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft...in-europe.aspx

While I must admit to a delirious amount of schadenfreude seeing MS complain about another firm's monopoly, they do raise some interesting points. I would guess that their complaint about youtube is particularly significant, if Google are limiting access to the tagging to other search sites then that would seem to indicate that they are using a near monopoly in one service, video hosting, to extend their monopoly in internet search. Likewise refusing to allow MS access to YouTube on equal terms to Android or iOS would be a serious complaint.

It will be interesting to see how they try to defend against that one - presumably it will come down to where the line is drawn on what market YouTube operates in.

Please try to get your head around the fact that you don't know what you're talking about.

Show me in the Constitution where someone has the right to monopolize a market. Show me where the Constitution says even one word about advertising. The right to free speech is not, and never has been, absolute. The right of the U.S. Congress to regulate interstate trade is well established both in the Constitution and in countless Supreme Court cases.

I don't need to because that's not relevant. The constitution protects more than the things it explicitly states, there's no mention of abortion in there and yet it's a protected right thanks to Roe vs Wade. The first amendment applies to advertising, you can disagree with me if you like but the Supreme court has spoken on this issue on numerous occasions.

Let's take a recent example from back when the court was actually slightly more 'liberal' http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/project...lorrilard.html

The court found that the Massachusetts' interest in protecting public health didn't automatically supercede the Tobacco Firm's right to free speech. I can find more case law for you if you like, or you could just google it yourself. This quote though from Kennedy's majority opinion will hopefully be sufficient

For over 25 years, the Court has recognized that commercial speech does not fall outside the purview of the First Amendment. Instead, the Court has afforded commercial speech a measure of First Amendment protection “ ‘commensurate’ ” with its position in relation to other constitutionally guaranteed expression.

Google has no constitutional right to be a monopoly, but it may have a constitutional right to produce search results in pretty much whatever way they want that fits the constraints of free speech.


Aside from famously not permitting the (false) cry of fire in a crowded cinema,child pornography or death threats most other forms of speech are permitted. Commercial speech is more limited, but it's not even clear that Google's pages would constitute commercial speech, they could argue that they are in fact news or some other form of vaguely defined reportage.

The right to free speech is not absolute but it is the court and not congress that gets to decide where they lie. When a law stands in conflict with the constitution, the constitution wins. It is possible that the court would decide that Google's search pages are not protected speech, but it's far from certain, if I were a betting man I wouldn't wager on it.

More likely, short of Thomas, Scalia and Alito dying simultaneously from a bad batch of caviar, they will decide that they are, in which case any anti-trust complaints based specifically on search results would be non-starrters. Other complaints such as the YouTube complaint by Microsoft I mentioned just now would still apply though - the first amendment doesn't come into that case.

It isn't only Google where the first amendment is making trouble for the government these days, the credit rating agencies, Moodys, S&P and Fitch are a huge problem too. They are easily the least regulated part of the financial system and were significant actors in the banking crisis, but their ratings are issued as opinion and, short of proof of intent to defraud are thought to come under first amendment protection.

Go after Apple iPads for what reason and do what? Sue Apple because they can't make or sell a product that compares to an iPad as far as the consumer is concerned? Not the same at all, you are delusional. Google could directly affect search results, Apple can't directly affect a competitor's product.

Remember Google is buying a company that is in advertising and this FTC probe is probably just part of the FTC process to make sure that this purchase won't give Google an unfair advantage in that space I'll bet.

And, you are not being realistic. (i) How does Google affect a competitor's search product? (ii) Why do you -- anyone -- need Google to search?

I think I am finally getting around to see what jragosta is talking about: it is clear that you're having some issues getting your head around some obvious facts.

Actually everything I said in that post is pretty much obvious - the problem of market definition is fundamental to monopoly law.

Here's a UK paper on the subject http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/bus...nes/oft403.pdf

Here's a link to a paper about the MS trial that refers to how market defintion played out in that case

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...=rep1&type=pdf

DOJ proposed and the District Court Judge agreed that the relevant antitrust
market was the market for operating systems for personal computers that are based on an
Intel-compatible Central Processing Unit (“CPU”)

Had the market been drawn more widely to include machines based on different chips then MS may have had a slightly better chance.

Early in the trial, Microsoft argued that the concept of market definition for
antitrust purposes was inappropriate for the dynamic setting of software markets.

The judge disagreed.

So I'm happy to stand by my point. If a court chose to view the iPad as a market, or even chose to view Tablet computers as a market then Apple could at present be said to have a monopoly. If rather more reasonably the market was held to include other mobile computers then they quite clearly do not.

All obvious facts and conforming with case-law, so I must ask, where's your beef? How could you define the internet search market such that Google were not dominant? Remember in the MS trial the judge didn't even consider a 68030 or 68040 based computer as part of the same market as PCs, what other service are you thinking would be included in the same market as internet search?

I never said Google did or does anything. Controlling better 60% of the search market they could easily alter search results (not a competitor's search product) that could put their competitors at a disadvantage. Being the dominant player in a large and critical internet market like search means Google needs to play nice with others otherwise the FTC might get involved.

Nobody needs to use Google for search just like nobody needed to use IE from MS back in the days before the FTC became involved with that.

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Well, you're a troll, so nothing you say is of any consequence. But, Jexus' arrival and commentary follows a pretty familiar MO, so I'm pretty comfortable with my accusation.

And that's the important point here. Not competition in the search market, but how they use their dominance in search to leverage other products into other markets to the disadvantage of competitors in those markets, most of whom don't control any percentage of the search market.

We know Google manipulates search results, the question is are they manipulating them to advantage themselves over others to gain a competitive advantage in markets other than search. I think it's fairly obvious that they do.