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Google does a bunch of things that are less than ideal. What this complaint alleges doesn't seem to be one of those things. Here's Google's response: https://b

Google does a bunch of things that are less than ideal. What this complaint alleges doesn't seem to be one of those things. Here's Google's response: https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/response-doj/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/respo...

actuator 6y ago
@dang makes sense to add this in the top level comment as well, lest people create separate threads for this.
permo-w 6y ago
How did google get their own top level domain?
- wmf 6y ago
  They bought it. A TLD costs $200K or more.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    A lot of other brands have them, but they use it only for redirects and not as their main domain like Google does. Example: experience.apple
- ayushgta 6y ago
  Brand TLD: https://icannwiki.org/Brand_TLD https://icannwiki.org/Brand_TLD
- bduerst 6y ago
  Many brands have their own TLDs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#Brand_top-level_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom...
hardtke 6y ago
The media reporting as well as Google's response is entirely focussed on the consumer monopoly on search, but the DOJ complaint focusses equally on potential anti-competitive practices in the search advertising market. The DOJ describes the situation well here: 110. There are barriers to entry in these advertising markets that protect Google’s advertising monopolies. Most critically, search advertising of any kind requires a search engine with sufficient scale to make advertising an efficient proposition for businesses. Specialized search engines require significant investment, including the cost of populating and indexing relevant data, distribution, developing and maintaining a search algorithm, and attracting users. Search advertising of any kind also requires (1) a user interface through which advertisers can buy ads, (2) software to facilitate the sales process, and (3) a sales and technical support staff. The same barriers to entry that apply to general search services also protect Google’s general search text advertising monopoly. Declaring search advertising an illegal monopoly would not only open up the possibility for structural changes (requiring them to license the search advertising to other search engines, giving aggregators the ability to buy search advertising on google.com) but also exposes them potentially to large payments to advertisers who have been harmed in the past.
- actuator 6y ago
  These arguments are so weak, if arguments like these hold we have similar analogies in other domains. > search advertising of any kind requires a search engine with sufficient scale to make advertising an efficient proposition for businesses. So does creating OSs. Let me make a similar statement on OSs: "selling OS of any kind requires certain scale with sufficient number of apps, for manufacturers to bundle your OS and app developers need the scale of OS to make it worthwhile for them to create apps". Remember Windows Phone Catch 22. They created an OS which was reviewed well, seemed like a fresh take on UIs. But apps didn't come or came late, often buggy and not fixed in time. In the end it was never able to compete on apps. > Specialized search engines require significant investment, including the cost of populating and indexing relevant data, distribution, developing and maintaining a search algorithm, and attracting users. Didn't Siri and Alexa do exactly this to entrench their position in market. In fact voice search engines(assistants) often come as non changeable defaults. In case of Siri it comes by default on more than a billion Apple devices. The only way we exclude these from our discussion is if we go by a very narrow definition of search, these are here to stay and will possibly dominate search behaviour.

actuator 6y ago

@dang makes sense to add this in the top level comment as well, lest people create separate threads for this.

permo-w 6y ago

How did google get their own top level domain?

wmf 6y ago
They bought it. A TLD costs $200K or more.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  A lot of other brands have them, but they use it only for redirects and not as their main domain like Google does. Example: experience.apple
ayushgta 6y ago
Brand TLD: https://icannwiki.org/Brand_TLD https://icannwiki.org/Brand_TLD
bduerst 6y ago
Many brands have their own TLDs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#Brand_top-level_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom...

hardtke 6y ago

The media reporting as well as Google's response is entirely focussed on the consumer monopoly on search, but the DOJ complaint focusses equally on potential anti-competitive practices in the search advertising market. The DOJ describes the situation well here: 110. There are barriers to entry in these advertising markets that protect Google’s advertising monopolies. Most critically, search advertising of any kind requires a search engine with sufficient scale to make advertising an efficient proposition for businesses. Specialized search engines require significant investment, including the cost of populating and indexing relevant data, distribution, developing and maintaining a search algorithm, and attracting users. Search advertising of any kind also requires (1) a user interface through which advertisers can buy ads, (2) software to facilitate the sales process, and (3) a sales and technical support staff. The same barriers to entry that apply to general search services also protect Google’s general search text advertising monopoly. Declaring search advertising an illegal monopoly would not only open up the possibility for structural changes (requiring them to license the search advertising to other search engines, giving aggregators the ability to buy search advertising on google.com) but also exposes them potentially to large payments to advertisers who have been harmed in the past.

actuator 6y ago
These arguments are so weak, if arguments like these hold we have similar analogies in other domains. > search advertising of any kind requires a search engine with sufficient scale to make advertising an efficient proposition for businesses. So does creating OSs. Let me make a similar statement on OSs: "selling OS of any kind requires certain scale with sufficient number of apps, for manufacturers to bundle your OS and app developers need the scale of OS to make it worthwhile for them to create apps". Remember Windows Phone Catch 22. They created an OS which was reviewed well, seemed like a fresh take on UIs. But apps didn't come or came late, often buggy and not fixed in time. In the end it was never able to compete on apps. > Specialized search engines require significant investment, including the cost of populating and indexing relevant data, distribution, developing and maintaining a search algorithm, and attracting users. Didn't Siri and Alexa do exactly this to entrench their position in market. In fact voice search engines(assistants) often come as non changeable defaults. In case of Siri it comes by default on more than a billion Apple devices. The only way we exclude these from our discussion is if we go by a very narrow definition of search, these are here to stay and will possibly dominate search behaviour.