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> American law tends to center around harm to consumers. By that reasoning, it can be hard to prove a market with a single player is actually anticompetitive if

> American law tends to center around harm to consumers. By that reasoning, it can be hard to prove a market with a single player is actually anticompetitive if that player isn't muscling out better options for consumers from the space. I think censorship changes the equation a lot. Because of the right of free association, a company can choose to favor a side of the political spectrum. This is not problematic in the absence of a monopoly as there will likely be a diverse range of companies, and new companies can enter that cater to one side or the other. However, if a company is a monopoly with a huge barrier to entry because of network effects and/or data, it can be argued that the monopoly is harmful to consumers on the other side of the political spectrum because they will not get the chance to promote their views.

shadowgovt 7y ago
The thing is, if Google decides to favor a side and Bing doesn't, Bing search is just a click away. And if consumers value a politically-unbiased (or other-biased) opinion, they can migrate to Bing, right?
- Moru 7y ago
  They need to know this bias exist first. And they also need to know that there is alternatives. And then they also need to know how to change. This is a lot to ask from a lot of people I'm affraid. Are you willing to bet your and your countrys future on people switching to bing when someone manages to game Googles algorithm to favor a side in the next election in whatever country you live in?
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    That's a large and complicated question. To a first approximation: if people aren't smart enough to figure out if they need to do that and how to do that, then my country's future is already in a tailspin because my country is a representative democracy and a minimal amount of collective intelligence and savvy is necessary to maintain such a system of government (hence, the public schools).
    - inlined 7y ago
      Arguments about potential political bias are built on some pretty shaky and dangerous hypotheses. At this point, the number of current and former employees who have seen Google’s ranking algorithm and not whistle blown about some political signal makes its existence highly improbable.
      - shadowgovt 7y ago
        Definitely. To be clear: my previous lines of reasoning here were assuming a political bias from Google and noting that even if it exists, the populace has alternatives. I'm personally of the school of thought "Google seems to have liberal bias in the US because relative to US politics, reality has a liberal bias," and not of the conspiracy-to-delude-the-public school of thought. ;)

shadowgovt 7y ago

The thing is, if Google decides to favor a side and Bing doesn't, Bing search is just a click away. And if consumers value a politically-unbiased (or other-biased) opinion, they can migrate to Bing, right?

Moru 7y ago
They need to know this bias exist first. And they also need to know that there is alternatives. And then they also need to know how to change. This is a lot to ask from a lot of people I'm affraid. Are you willing to bet your and your countrys future on people switching to bing when someone manages to game Googles algorithm to favor a side in the next election in whatever country you live in?
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  That's a large and complicated question. To a first approximation: if people aren't smart enough to figure out if they need to do that and how to do that, then my country's future is already in a tailspin because my country is a representative democracy and a minimal amount of collective intelligence and savvy is necessary to maintain such a system of government (hence, the public schools).
  - inlined 7y ago
    Arguments about potential political bias are built on some pretty shaky and dangerous hypotheses. At this point, the number of current and former employees who have seen Google’s ranking algorithm and not whistle blown about some political signal makes its existence highly improbable.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      Definitely. To be clear: my previous lines of reasoning here were assuming a political bias from Google and noting that even if it exists, the populace has alternatives. I'm personally of the school of thought "Google seems to have liberal bias in the US because relative to US politics, reality has a liberal bias," and not of the conspiracy-to-delude-the-public school of thought. ;)