>” The index should be a public resource not controlled by one company that can see what users are searching for and engage in "front-running".” The thing is,

>” The index should be a public resource not controlled by one company that can see what users are searching for and engage in "front-running".” The thing is, it’s the index they built with the technology they built. Google is not the only index. To build a public index, you’d need to have public crawlers, which would bring a whole boatload more questions / regulation / debate. Google’s search ranking is part of the secret sauce that they try very hard to obscure, while hinting at how to be good at it; basically: provide something valuable to visitors, and you’ll rank highly, at least in theory. Get caught cheating and get blacklisted. Flight info is already public. Ticket prices are not, and vary tons based on all the deals and schemes out there. That’s not Google’s fault, but the fault (if one views it that way) of the airlines playing pricing games. Their business model relies on getting everyone to pay the highest price per seat they can get from a customer, so they benefit from not being open about pricing. Their goal is also to fill flights with paying customers or paying cargo, or the most profitable mix, depending on many factors. Again, not Google’s fault. Google is in a position to front-run results and provide an experience that other companies cannot by virtue of users already being on their site using their search. It doesn’t seem reasonable to compare Google to a travel site, as it’s pretty clear that one wouldn’t expect e.g. Expedia to list Travelocity results alongside their own with equal priority. I’m usually really against monopolistic behavior, as many companies use it to screw users and maximize profits (e.g. Comcast). Google isn’t in the same league IMO because they behave a lot more charitably — if it were Comcast running Google, I would wholly expect them to completely de-list every competing travel site and work on lobbying the government to get those competitors shut down, while channeling tax dollars paid to build infrastructure into their own pockets. It’s a dumb lawsuit that will go nowhere. The lawsuit is disingenuous as they know it will fail. The true purpose is political lip service — accomplish nothing while claiming to be doing something against a perceived enemy.