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This will happen to Google. Sooner than people realize. (From another story on the front page) http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/general-news/20160513/uc-stude

This will happen to Google. Sooner than people realize. (From another story on the front page) http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/general-news/20160513/uc-students-suit-claims-google-scanned-accounts-without-permission/1 http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/general-news/20160513/uc-st...

beambot 10y ago
Alphabet is already fractionating the various business units into quasi-independent companies. There's a good case to be made that they're already taking measures to mitigate a antitrust-bust.
- baq 10y ago
  is it possible for them to do something to search that would prevent such an outcome? and what does splitting search even mean - the word 'google' appears on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum of current age?
  - toast0 10y ago
    The way to avoid an anti trust ruling is probably to voluntarily limit their actions to what would be allowed under a consent decree. That's a bit hard to predict, though. I would be careful about featuring products on top of search results, because that seems to irritate regulators (although all the other search engines do it, and it can be good user experience); also I would be careful about bundling requirements for google play services. If broken up, I would imagine at least three companies would result: Web search, advertising, and everything else.
eloff 10y ago
Monopolies are not illegal. Abusing a monopoly position to unfairly crush the competition is. I don't see Google doing that. The market is open to competition, and Google is very disruptable, if somehow you think you can do a better job than they do. If another Larry and Sergey came along with a search engine that was significantly better, they'd disrupt Google just as easily as the original Larry and Sergey did to whatever was popular before them (I don't even remember.) Do they have the vast majority of the market share? Yes. But they also have plenty of competitors and there's no lock in for people searching, nor a high pain threshold for people to switch search engines. The reason Google holds such a dominant position is simply that their search results are best. If that weren't the case, I'd switch today, and so would you.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  The issue is that what was before them didn't depend on training ML algorithms against ridiculous amounts of current and historic data, including per-user data which is not accessible to anyone except Google. Google's search engine at this point is nearly impossible to beat. The only way to outcompete it would be to come up with a better system for finding information than full-text search.
  - superuser2 10y ago
    "Because having a dominant position in this market makes the monopoly too good to compete with, no one should be allowed to succeed in this market" seems like a stupid rule.
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      How about rewording that to "markets in which there are only 1-2 possible good providers are not, in fact markets at all", and try to figure out what you do with things that are not markets?
      - chimeracoder 10y ago
        > markets in which there are only 1-2 possible good providers are not, in fact markets at all First, it's completely false that there are only 1-2 possible good search providers, given that there are already several good search providers that exist today. You may think Google is better than Bing or DuckDuckGo[0] or Baidu, but there's no arguing that they aren't good. And the barriers to entry for search are about as low as possible. Google can't stop you from writing your own web crawler, and there's no law preventing you from indexing pages yourself. Yes, that requires time and money, but so does every large market opportunity. [0] No, this is not redundant, because DuckDuckGo does use its own crawlers in addition to the search results it gets from Bing.
        vertex-four 10y ago
jowiar 10y ago
I'm curious whether Google's "Search" even could count as a monopoly, considering that there's no actual "market" to speak of. Are there any lawyers here who can chime in as to whether there is any case law on the topic? Ditto FB with "social networking". Is the actual market at hand "Online Advertising", rather than either search or social networking?
- colejohnson66 10y ago
  Google's Search has many competitors. Bing and Yahoo to name a few. Definitely not a monopoly.
- nihonde 10y ago
  The whole practice of antitrust/competition law is basically about defining markets to serve whatever goal your client wants. If you're an underdog or regulator looking to bust a trust or cartel, you argue that the market in question is narrowly defined and show evidence of abuse in that market. If you're defending antitrust/competition claims, you argue that the market is broadly defined and show evidence of competition. Rinse. Repeat. Charge $1,500 per hour per attorney.
kristianp 10y ago
Google isn't a monopoly in search (bing,duckduckgo), mail (many), advertising (facebook), mobile (apple). It has substantial competitors. Facebook on the other hand, I suppose it does have competitors in Snapchat and similar.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  Duckduckgo's results are derivative of other search engines. Bing is a product of a particular Microsoft species that waits in the wings for year after year, losing money hand over fist, hoping that the industry leader will trip and fall on its face one day. Like the Xbox. For some reason, the West has let Google become its only search engine. Its only real competitors are Russian and Chinese. And Facebook isn't an advertising competitor, no matter how the revenue compares. Facebook advertises on its own website. It just happens to have a big website with finely sliced users.

beambot 10y ago

Alphabet is already fractionating the various business units into quasi-independent companies. There's a good case to be made that they're already taking measures to mitigate a antitrust-bust.

baq 10y ago
is it possible for them to do something to search that would prevent such an outcome? and what does splitting search even mean - the word 'google' appears on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum of current age?
- toast0 10y ago
  The way to avoid an anti trust ruling is probably to voluntarily limit their actions to what would be allowed under a consent decree. That's a bit hard to predict, though. I would be careful about featuring products on top of search results, because that seems to irritate regulators (although all the other search engines do it, and it can be good user experience); also I would be careful about bundling requirements for google play services. If broken up, I would imagine at least three companies would result: Web search, advertising, and everything else.

eloff 10y ago

Monopolies are not illegal. Abusing a monopoly position to unfairly crush the competition is. I don't see Google doing that. The market is open to competition, and Google is very disruptable, if somehow you think you can do a better job than they do. If another Larry and Sergey came along with a search engine that was significantly better, they'd disrupt Google just as easily as the original Larry and Sergey did to whatever was popular before them (I don't even remember.) Do they have the vast majority of the market share? Yes. But they also have plenty of competitors and there's no lock in for people searching, nor a high pain threshold for people to switch search engines. The reason Google holds such a dominant position is simply that their search results are best. If that weren't the case, I'd switch today, and so would you.

vertex-four 10y ago
The issue is that what was before them didn't depend on training ML algorithms against ridiculous amounts of current and historic data, including per-user data which is not accessible to anyone except Google. Google's search engine at this point is nearly impossible to beat. The only way to outcompete it would be to come up with a better system for finding information than full-text search.
- superuser2 10y ago
  "Because having a dominant position in this market makes the monopoly too good to compete with, no one should be allowed to succeed in this market" seems like a stupid rule.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    How about rewording that to "markets in which there are only 1-2 possible good providers are not, in fact markets at all", and try to figure out what you do with things that are not markets?
    - chimeracoder 10y ago
      > markets in which there are only 1-2 possible good providers are not, in fact markets at all First, it's completely false that there are only 1-2 possible good search providers, given that there are already several good search providers that exist today. You may think Google is better than Bing or DuckDuckGo[0] or Baidu, but there's no arguing that they aren't good. And the barriers to entry for search are about as low as possible. Google can't stop you from writing your own web crawler, and there's no law preventing you from indexing pages yourself. Yes, that requires time and money, but so does every large market opportunity. [0] No, this is not redundant, because DuckDuckGo does use its own crawlers in addition to the search results it gets from Bing.
      - vertex-four 10y ago

jowiar 10y ago

I'm curious whether Google's "Search" even could count as a monopoly, considering that there's no actual "market" to speak of. Are there any lawyers here who can chime in as to whether there is any case law on the topic? Ditto FB with "social networking". Is the actual market at hand "Online Advertising", rather than either search or social networking?

colejohnson66 10y ago
Google's Search has many competitors. Bing and Yahoo to name a few. Definitely not a monopoly.
nihonde 10y ago
The whole practice of antitrust/competition law is basically about defining markets to serve whatever goal your client wants. If you're an underdog or regulator looking to bust a trust or cartel, you argue that the market in question is narrowly defined and show evidence of abuse in that market. If you're defending antitrust/competition claims, you argue that the market is broadly defined and show evidence of competition. Rinse. Repeat. Charge $1,500 per hour per attorney.

kristianp 10y ago

Google isn't a monopoly in search (bing,duckduckgo), mail (many), advertising (facebook), mobile (apple). It has substantial competitors. Facebook on the other hand, I suppose it does have competitors in Snapchat and similar.

pessimizer 10y ago
Duckduckgo's results are derivative of other search engines. Bing is a product of a particular Microsoft species that waits in the wings for year after year, losing money hand over fist, hoping that the industry leader will trip and fall on its face one day. Like the Xbox. For some reason, the West has let Google become its only search engine. Its only real competitors are Russian and Chinese. And Facebook isn't an advertising competitor, no matter how the revenue compares. Facebook advertises on its own website. It just happens to have a big website with finely sliced users.