5 ms·

Google is free for users and free to anyone wanting to get in their index, so they do not owe any self proclaimed competitor anything and that is the crux of it

by yanw 15y ago

Google is free for users and free to anyone wanting to get in their index, so they do not owe any self proclaimed competitor anything and that is the crux of it, the law is on their side, you cannot monopolize "free" and all this politicians' propaganda is waste of time and tax payer dollars..

Zakuzaa 15y ago
You clearly have very little understanding of how antitrust laws work.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- coderdude 15y ago
  He shares the point of view of the person defending Google (she's a former anti-trust investigator?). If you can freely and instantly switch from Google to Bing then you cannot claim they have a monopoly. If you don't like Google's results there is nothing locking the consumer into Google except their own choice.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - Zakuzaa 15y ago
    She, in my opinion, was taking advantage of apparent naivity of senators.
  - mrtron 15y ago
    Not only can you switch instantly from Google to Bing, you can do the same with the indirect competitors such as yelp. Yelp claims Google is hurting consumers because often Yelp's results are better than what Google displays as their own Location results above. Is it really hurting a user to have to scroll slightly down? Or if Yelp's results were really better would users not go directly there or use their apps as an alternative? I find it very interesting you can claim Google has a monopoly on the web + mobile, which seems to be the necessary premise to make these claims.
    - vogonj 15y ago
      it's anti-competitive. the question is not whether it's hurting consumers directly, but whether it is stifling competition in the spaces that Google enters, which then indirectly hurts consumers -- a lack of competition, the theory goes, slows down the pace of innovation, and gives dictatorial control over a market sector to one actor. bundling IE with Windows didn't directly hurt the consumer, either (and for a long time, IE was the best browser available on Windows), but it didn't stop the DOJ from pursuing Microsoft over it. given how steeply traffic falls off as you get farther down a SERP (see, to name the first page I found searching for "serp clickthrough", http://www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/understanding-google-serp-clickthrough-rates/5123/ http://www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/understanding-google-serp-cli...), it's hard to argue that (theoretically) practices which unjustly downrank non-Google properties would not constitute anticompetitive behavior when Google has a 65%+ share of search.
    - anon1385 15y ago
      Not only can you switch instantly from Google to Bing, you can do the same with the indirect competitors such as yelp. That argument is quite compelling for search, where switching is easy and other search engines are going to give you fairly comparable results most of the time. But search isn't the only market Google is in. In the advertising market the "just switch" argument doesn't hold as much weight in my opinion: what good is switching to an advertising network that doesn't generate any views? If Google can dominate advertising and analytics due to their search monopoly, does any other advertising platform stand a chance? Disclaimer: I've never been a Google customer, and I don't really know how much competition they have in the advertising market, so I don't know how much ability they have to jack up prices etc.
  - ugh 15y ago
    It's a bit too much gymnastics for my brain right now but shouldn't one also look at this from the perspective of Google's paying customers, i.e. advertisers? Looking only at those who use Google to search seems to be missing one half of the business.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
tsunamifury 15y ago
When you become a monopoloy in a certain industry, under american law, you do owe it to your competitors to allow them to compete on fair ground with you. This is why theaters were not allowed to be owned by studios, Car Dealerships by actual Car companies, etc.
- yanw 15y ago
  Anti trust exists to protect costumers and when the product is free and the alternatives are free, where is the harm?
  - dhimes 15y ago
    I can't speak for the down-voters, but I disagree with you on the grounds that Google is not free. You seem to be confusing its users with its customers. The advertisers are the customers. The have terrible customer service for people who don't spend a bundle, you can point out faults with their penalties and get a response of "meh" (when you eventually do get a response). In principle I can see great harm from a Google monopoly, not the least harmed being myself as a small G customer. That said, I can't argue this article specifically because I didn't rtfa, and probably won't until much later if at all.
  - daleharvey 15y ago
    Yelp cant build google to in order to funnel traffic into their local business ratings website
  - aamar 15y ago
    Let's say Google entered a clearly different market, such as making & delivering pizza. Further say: Google's pizza is slightly more expensive and somewhat less good than pizza created by their competitors. Based on that, we would ordinarily guess that their market share will be low to nonexistent. But let's say Google reserves the most prominent position on their SERP for hundreds of relevant queries for one-click pizza delivery. Maybe the majority of people will still click through to Goat Hill Pizza or whatever, with tastier, cheaper pizza. But Google's more prominent position gives them an advantage vs. their competitor, and that will lead to increased and probably significant market share. Now this is the key: we users could decide that Google's promotion of bad pizza on their SERP means we should switch to Bing. But Google's search engine is, despite this one bad case, still far superior to Bing's. So according to standard micro-economic analysis, pretty much all of us stick with Google, so Google Pizza continues to get the boost. In summary, in this hypothetical, Google is using the "excess" excellence of their search engine to increase market share of very different products. Since those products may be unusually profitable, they also have an increased ability to drive competitors out of the market. If unchecked, wealthy firms with one great product can use this technique to extend their monopoly into more and more fields. The end result is that more consumers end up with worse quality products and (over time) fewer options due to less competition. (Note: I'm not arguing that this is truly happening in real life. I'm trying to explain how even a free product with monopolistic dominance can be used to take over other markets with inferior products.)

by yanw 15y ago

Zakuzaa 15y ago

You clearly have very little understanding of how antitrust laws work.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
coderdude 15y ago
He shares the point of view of the person defending Google (she's a former anti-trust investigator?). If you can freely and instantly switch from Google to Bing then you cannot claim they have a monopoly. If you don't like Google's results there is nothing locking the consumer into Google except their own choice.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- Zakuzaa 15y ago
  She, in my opinion, was taking advantage of apparent naivity of senators.
- mrtron 15y ago
  Not only can you switch instantly from Google to Bing, you can do the same with the indirect competitors such as yelp. Yelp claims Google is hurting consumers because often Yelp's results are better than what Google displays as their own Location results above. Is it really hurting a user to have to scroll slightly down? Or if Yelp's results were really better would users not go directly there or use their apps as an alternative? I find it very interesting you can claim Google has a monopoly on the web + mobile, which seems to be the necessary premise to make these claims.
  - vogonj 15y ago
    it's anti-competitive. the question is not whether it's hurting consumers directly, but whether it is stifling competition in the spaces that Google enters, which then indirectly hurts consumers -- a lack of competition, the theory goes, slows down the pace of innovation, and gives dictatorial control over a market sector to one actor. bundling IE with Windows didn't directly hurt the consumer, either (and for a long time, IE was the best browser available on Windows), but it didn't stop the DOJ from pursuing Microsoft over it. given how steeply traffic falls off as you get farther down a SERP (see, to name the first page I found searching for "serp clickthrough", http://www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/understanding-google-serp-clickthrough-rates/5123/ http://www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/understanding-google-serp-cli...), it's hard to argue that (theoretically) practices which unjustly downrank non-Google properties would not constitute anticompetitive behavior when Google has a 65%+ share of search.
  - anon1385 15y ago
    Not only can you switch instantly from Google to Bing, you can do the same with the indirect competitors such as yelp. That argument is quite compelling for search, where switching is easy and other search engines are going to give you fairly comparable results most of the time. But search isn't the only market Google is in. In the advertising market the "just switch" argument doesn't hold as much weight in my opinion: what good is switching to an advertising network that doesn't generate any views? If Google can dominate advertising and analytics due to their search monopoly, does any other advertising platform stand a chance? Disclaimer: I've never been a Google customer, and I don't really know how much competition they have in the advertising market, so I don't know how much ability they have to jack up prices etc.
- ugh 15y ago
  It's a bit too much gymnastics for my brain right now but shouldn't one also look at this from the perspective of Google's paying customers, i.e. advertisers? Looking only at those who use Google to search seems to be missing one half of the business.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

tsunamifury 15y ago

When you become a monopoloy in a certain industry, under american law, you do owe it to your competitors to allow them to compete on fair ground with you. This is why theaters were not allowed to be owned by studios, Car Dealerships by actual Car companies, etc.

yanw 15y ago
Anti trust exists to protect costumers and when the product is free and the alternatives are free, where is the harm?
- dhimes 15y ago
  I can't speak for the down-voters, but I disagree with you on the grounds that Google is not free. You seem to be confusing its users with its customers. The advertisers are the customers. The have terrible customer service for people who don't spend a bundle, you can point out faults with their penalties and get a response of "meh" (when you eventually do get a response). In principle I can see great harm from a Google monopoly, not the least harmed being myself as a small G customer. That said, I can't argue this article specifically because I didn't rtfa, and probably won't until much later if at all.
- daleharvey 15y ago
  Yelp cant build google to in order to funnel traffic into their local business ratings website
- aamar 15y ago
  Let's say Google entered a clearly different market, such as making & delivering pizza. Further say: Google's pizza is slightly more expensive and somewhat less good than pizza created by their competitors. Based on that, we would ordinarily guess that their market share will be low to nonexistent. But let's say Google reserves the most prominent position on their SERP for hundreds of relevant queries for one-click pizza delivery. Maybe the majority of people will still click through to Goat Hill Pizza or whatever, with tastier, cheaper pizza. But Google's more prominent position gives them an advantage vs. their competitor, and that will lead to increased and probably significant market share. Now this is the key: we users could decide that Google's promotion of bad pizza on their SERP means we should switch to Bing. But Google's search engine is, despite this one bad case, still far superior to Bing's. So according to standard micro-economic analysis, pretty much all of us stick with Google, so Google Pizza continues to get the boost. In summary, in this hypothetical, Google is using the "excess" excellence of their search engine to increase market share of very different products. Since those products may be unusually profitable, they also have an increased ability to drive competitors out of the market. If unchecked, wealthy firms with one great product can use this technique to extend their monopoly into more and more fields. The end result is that more consumers end up with worse quality products and (over time) fewer options due to less competition. (Note: I'm not arguing that this is truly happening in real life. I'm trying to explain how even a free product with monopolistic dominance can be used to take over other markets with inferior products.)