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?
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.
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?
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.
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 hope that they get shut down completely. They have no respect for privacy, like Steve does.
They are pure evil.
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.
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?
Good point! It would be like asking Apple to sell its competitors products on its Store.
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.
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?"
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.
Agreed on Skyhook, altho I personally feel they have the right to choose their partners, and how they wish to work with them.
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.
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.
Quote:
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.
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.
Agreed on Skyhook, altho I personally feel they have the right to choose their partners, and how they wish to work with them.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton
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?
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
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.
Agreed on Skyhook, altho I personally feel they have the right to choose their partners, and how they wish to work with them.
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".
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.
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.
When all the top results are Google advertisers, it's not just chance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cloudgazer
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.
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.
Actually, in the US, Microsoft is gaining market share slowly.
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.
Actually it's far harder to contest Apple's iPad market than you might think, because you can't reliably bid for just a bit of it. Consider how enormous Apple's investment in the iOS and iTunes 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 Apple's iPad is a good product, and it's quite clear that the tablet monopoly itself has been acquired innocently. That's a good thing for Apple because if it hadn't been just possessing the monopoly would be a Sherman Act violation. However as I said, just because Apple has earned their tablet monopoly with a good product doesn't entitle them to extend it into other areas.
Comments
The core of the matter is in Google's ranking system. 3rd parties are upset because Google is promoting it's services over theirs.
Usually typing in a generic term like Maps, and you'll see Google maps is the 1st followed by Yahoo, mapquest and Bing.
EX. http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&h...w=1280&bih=685
There are exceptions to the case such as News:
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&h...w=1280&bih=685
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
As they should. Google is NOTHING but pure evil.
I hope that they get shut down completely. They have no respect for privacy, like Steve does.
They are pure evil.
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.
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?
Good point! It would be like asking Apple to sell its competitors products on its Store.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed on Skyhook, altho I personally feel they have the right to choose their partners, and how they wish to work with them.
Moreover, outside of the US, Google is much less successful. Consider the case of China, where it has essentially no presence.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed on Skyhook, altho I personally feel they have the right to choose their partners, and how they wish to work with them.
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.
Your example doesn't work because no one car dealership has a monopoly.
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?
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.
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.
Agreed on Skyhook, altho I personally feel they have the right to choose their partners, and how they wish to work with them.
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 see no noticeable difference in results.
I definitely do - in fact earlier for the lolz I searched for 'google terrible service' on both. Google gave more relevant hits
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.
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.
When all the top results are Google advertisers, it's not just chance.
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.
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.
Actually, in the US, Microsoft is gaining market share slowly.
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.
Actually it's far harder to contest Apple's iPad market than you might think, because you can't reliably bid for just a bit of it. Consider how enormous Apple's investment in the iOS and iTunes 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 Apple's iPad is a good product, and it's quite clear that the tablet monopoly itself has been acquired innocently. That's a good thing for Apple because if it hadn't been just possessing the monopoly would be a Sherman Act violation. However as I said, just because Apple has earned their tablet monopoly with a good product doesn't entitle them to extend it into other areas.