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Antiturst laws are hard to enforce in the United States. Monopolies themselves aren't illegal. To be convicted of an antitrust violation, a firm needs to both
by Majromax 6y ago
Antiturst laws are hard to enforce in the United States.
Monopolies themselves aren't illegal. To be convicted of an antitrust violation, a firm needs to both have a monopoly and needs to be using anticompetitive means to maintain that monopoly. The recent "textbook" example was of Microsoft, which in the 90s used its dominant position to charge computer manufacturers for a Windows license for each computer sold, regardless of whether it had Windows installed or was a "bare" PC.
Depending on how you define the market, Google may not even have a monopoly. It's probably dominant enough in web search to count, but if you look at its advertising network it competes with Facebook and other ad networks. In the realm of travel planning (to pick an example from these comments), it's barely a blip.
Furthermore, Google can potentially argue it's not being anticompetitive: all businesses use their existing data to optimize new products, so Google could claim that it not doing so would be an artificial straightjacket.
- pmiller2 6y agoIs web search even a "market" independent of ads?
- rijoja 6y agoyes
- pmiller2 6y agoWhere's the money?
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoThat's like arguing that newspapers are not a market, because it makes money from ads.
- pmiller2 6y agoNo, I was asking if web search was a market independent of ads. BTW, newspapers also make money from subscriptions and sales of copies, so your analogy is doubly wrong.
- throwaway_kufu 6y agoIn collecting and selling your data to 3rd parties.
- twiddlebits 6y agoIt's got a monopoly on "search ads" by far.
- arrosenberg 6y agoIt's not that hard, we're just out of practice due to the absurd Borkist economic theories we've been operating under for 40+ years. The laws are all there if the head of the DOJ antitrust division has the gumption to go reverse some bad precedents. > In the realm of travel planning (to pick an example from these comments), it's barely a blip. They used their monopoly in web search to gain non-negligible marketshare in entirely unrelated industry. That's text book anti-competitive behavior. Google can argue whatever they want, but the argument that they're enabling other businesses is a bad one. It casts Google as a private regulator of the economy, which is exactly what antitrust laws are intended to deal with.