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The claim that Google has significant and durable market power in the search engine market doesn't hold up even by the FTC definition you quote here. There's pl

The claim that Google has significant and durable market power in the search engine market doesn't hold up even by the FTC definition you quote here. There's plenty of competition, and the switching cost for consumers is literally nothing. They clearly aren't able (or aren't trying) to exclude competitors, since all of their competitors I can think of are still in business (Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Brave, probably more...), and they clearly don't have the ability to raise prices (can you imagine how instantly Google Search would be consigned to irrelevance if they tried to charge users for searches?). This isn't a market that's in the grips of a monopolist limiting competition, this is an extremely competitive market, so competitive that the cost to the end-user has been driven down to literally nothing. It's not quite the most competitive market that exists, since the market for credit cards is so competitive that credit card providers actually pay users to use their credit cards, but it's close, and Brave has been testing those waters in the search engine market recently.

systemvoltage 4y ago
I disagree. There is literally no competition. It left the competition sometime in 2002 in the dust. Monumental achievement by Google and one of the most iconic companies ever to have existed on planet earth. But quoting regional competitors like Baidu and Yandex!? Come on, that’s just silly.
- dodobirdlord 4y ago
  Being better than the competition isn't the same as having no competition, and it's especially not the same as engaging in anti-competitive practices to prevent competition from existing. The purpose of consumer protection and antitrust laws is to ensure that market leaders hold their position by virtue of having the superior product and not by some other nefarious means. I don't think most people would dispute that Google Search is better than Bing. But is it really so much better that Bing doesn't even count as being in the same market?
Clubber 4y ago
>and they clearly don't have the ability to raise prices (can you imagine how instantly Google Search would be consigned to irrelevance if they tried to charge users for searches? The prices they raise would be on advertising. They do have significant competition with Facebook and the like in the internet advertising industry. >the cost to the end-user has been driven down to literally nothing The end user is the product not the customer. The customer is advertisers. So I think you are missing what market power means. Since Google earns most of the profits with search, it allows them to use those funds do things like: 1. Acquire YouTube 2. Run YouTube for two years without any supporting ad revenue 3. Making it impossible for anyone else to compete with YouTube in the first two years because they don't have that kinda bank. 4. Allow users 1G of storage on Gmail and offering it for free, blowing away (killing) any competitor. 5. Buy and releasing Android OS for free to hardware vendors and including Google services on those OSs, instantly taking the majority market share on the brand new mobile industry. 6. Build AWS. There are many more, but all those investments were built on the revenue from Google search.
- dodobirdlord 4y ago
  The topic of discussion from the original comment is a claim that Google has a monopoly on internet search. Whether or not Google has a monopoly in advertising is a separate topic and not one of huge significance because consumer protection laws exist to protect consumers. Google operates a multi-sided marketplace, and has both consumers (in the legal sense, users that consumer protection laws protect) and more complex business-to-business relationships with advertisers. Profit-seeking businesses in business-to-business relationships are not given the same sort of affordances and protections as end-users, and generally only get protections in consumer protection law if there's a clear relationship between them being scalped and a negative impact on consumer welfare. To your examples of Google's exercise of market power, these things have all broadly been great for consumers, and in each case listed have even also been great for a variety of businesses, further compounding the benefit to consumers. If this drove competitors out of business because they couldn't compete, that's fine. The point of antitrust legislation is to ensure competition exists so that consumer welfare is upheld. Nobody is owed a viable business model. I don't see the argument for these actions reducing competition in the economy or harming consumers. Competition to Youtube crops up from time to time and never seems to go anywhere because Youtube is a business that is extremely difficult to make profitable (i.e. they can't compete because their product is inferior). Many competing email clients exist, paid and non-paid. Buying Android, investing in it, and making it available to hardware manufacturers was a pro-competitive move, since it countered Apple's iPhone and brought a diversity of competing products into the marketplace. Building Google Cloud to compete with AWS is straightforwardly a pro-competitive move as well.

systemvoltage 4y ago

I disagree. There is literally no competition. It left the competition sometime in 2002 in the dust. Monumental achievement by Google and one of the most iconic companies ever to have existed on planet earth. But quoting regional competitors like Baidu and Yandex!? Come on, that’s just silly.

dodobirdlord 4y ago
Being better than the competition isn't the same as having no competition, and it's especially not the same as engaging in anti-competitive practices to prevent competition from existing. The purpose of consumer protection and antitrust laws is to ensure that market leaders hold their position by virtue of having the superior product and not by some other nefarious means. I don't think most people would dispute that Google Search is better than Bing. But is it really so much better that Bing doesn't even count as being in the same market?

Clubber 4y ago

>and they clearly don't have the ability to raise prices (can you imagine how instantly Google Search would be consigned to irrelevance if they tried to charge users for searches? The prices they raise would be on advertising. They do have significant competition with Facebook and the like in the internet advertising industry. >the cost to the end-user has been driven down to literally nothing The end user is the product not the customer. The customer is advertisers. So I think you are missing what market power means. Since Google earns most of the profits with search, it allows them to use those funds do things like: 1. Acquire YouTube 2. Run YouTube for two years without any supporting ad revenue 3. Making it impossible for anyone else to compete with YouTube in the first two years because they don't have that kinda bank. 4. Allow users 1G of storage on Gmail and offering it for free, blowing away (killing) any competitor. 5. Buy and releasing Android OS for free to hardware vendors and including Google services on those OSs, instantly taking the majority market share on the brand new mobile industry. 6. Build AWS. There are many more, but all those investments were built on the revenue from Google search.

dodobirdlord 4y ago
The topic of discussion from the original comment is a claim that Google has a monopoly on internet search. Whether or not Google has a monopoly in advertising is a separate topic and not one of huge significance because consumer protection laws exist to protect consumers. Google operates a multi-sided marketplace, and has both consumers (in the legal sense, users that consumer protection laws protect) and more complex business-to-business relationships with advertisers. Profit-seeking businesses in business-to-business relationships are not given the same sort of affordances and protections as end-users, and generally only get protections in consumer protection law if there's a clear relationship between them being scalped and a negative impact on consumer welfare. To your examples of Google's exercise of market power, these things have all broadly been great for consumers, and in each case listed have even also been great for a variety of businesses, further compounding the benefit to consumers. If this drove competitors out of business because they couldn't compete, that's fine. The point of antitrust legislation is to ensure competition exists so that consumer welfare is upheld. Nobody is owed a viable business model. I don't see the argument for these actions reducing competition in the economy or harming consumers. Competition to Youtube crops up from time to time and never seems to go anywhere because Youtube is a business that is extremely difficult to make profitable (i.e. they can't compete because their product is inferior). Many competing email clients exist, paid and non-paid. Buying Android, investing in it, and making it available to hardware manufacturers was a pro-competitive move, since it countered Apple's iPhone and brought a diversity of competing products into the marketplace. Building Google Cloud to compete with AWS is straightforwardly a pro-competitive move as well.