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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

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
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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
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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
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