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Congressman warns FTC To Leave Google alone

33 points by DaNmarner 14y ago

DaNmarner 14y ago
My take on this: lobbying works.
- jlarocco 14y ago
  Probably doesn't hurt that Google has an office in his home town, either.
- beedogs 14y ago
  My take is that the US is basically a corpocracy at this point. They should just drop all pretenses of being a government of, for, and by the people.
- capo 14y ago
  "lobbying works." both ways I guess. Lobbying made the FTC start a costly investigation and now they struggle to let go.
duxup 14y ago
Maybe google bought them self a congressman? I always wanted one myself.
- saalweachter 14y ago
  I hear they're pretty cheap in the empty states, especially if you're willing to share them with their current owners.
ck2 14y ago
Google may do some questionable things but it certainly is no Microsoft or Facebook or ebay/PayPal. Google contributes to open source software in a very significant manner and completely voluntary - from early in it's history. Not sure I can name more than one or two others at their level who have done that. Google's biggest problem is lack of human beings vs technical automation ratio. When things go horribly wrong with their services (ie. ban) and you need a human, it's pretty much impossible unless you can reach the top of a popular website with the story of your problem.
- Steko 14y ago
  "Google contributes to open source software in a very significant manner and completely voluntary" So what, that means they can't break the law?
  - capo 14y ago
    Who said they broke the law? I'm no expert on antitrust law but as I understand the FTC will basically try to argue a theory in front of a judge, and if it's indeed concerning which results rank where it's not a particularly strong theory. At this point it's really inertia that is keeping the FTC on track towards a lawsuit.
    - Steko 14y ago
      "Who said they broke the law?" Stop moving goalposts, grandparent was clearly peddling what amounts to an "upstanding member of the community" defense. I'm not claiming Google broke any law, but they're not above the law, they can get investigated like anyone else.
      - capo 14y ago
        Not sure if you've noticed but they are being investigated. Investigations however do not imply guilt, and this is not a criminal investigation so it's not analogous to your example. There is no clear and shut case here, no evidence of cartel-like behaviour or raising prices on consumers. The FTC will hire an economist who will argue that exists "market failure", Google will in turn hire several economists, scholars, and law firms to prove them wrong.
- redm 14y ago
  The notion that competition is a click away is ridiculous when you look at all the infrastructure Google builds to make any algorithm work at scale. Its no different then saying, "Building a better Operating System is just a program away." Google is the de-facto standard and that gives it a huge amount of power, just like Microsoft on the desktop.
hiddenstage 14y ago
I never understood the FTC's position on this anti-competitive case. Google is promoting their own services on their own website.. how is that anti-competitive? They should be able to make their products the number one result of every search if they wanted to but they obviously wouldn't do that. Microsoft was anti-competitive because there was a significant roadblock to use competitor's services. With Google, all you have to do is type in bing.com/yahoo.com/duckduckgo.com instead of google.com.
- nivla 14y ago
  >Google is promoting their own services on their own website. Microsoft was doing the same thing by promoting Internet Explorer within their OS. >all you have to do is type in bing.com/yahoo.com/duckduckgo.com instead of google.com. The same way you could type getfirefox.com and chrome.google.com and get those browsers in Windows. If you want to see the real anti-trust violations, look at the mobile market. All three Apple, Google and Microsoft can be held responsible for violations.
  - Retric 14y ago
    Microsoft was actively creating patches that broke other browsers, and offering discounts to prevent companies like Dell from selling competing operating systems. That's a little more than some advertising. Just picture it, run Microsoft update Chrome and Firefox break now what?
    - nivla 14y ago
      >Microsoft was actively creating patches that broke other browsers Do you realize there wasn't a official specs set at that time? Different browsers came up with "patches"/features own there own. From the blink tag to Ajax, all were proprietary to each browser. >offering discounts to prevent companies like Dell from selling competing operating systems. Isn't that what Google is doing with android too? >Just picture it, run Microsoft update Chrome and Firefox break now what? I don't believe it ever happened or ever will. If Microsoft had to go that route, they would have done it before losing the biggest chunk of the browser share.
programminggeek 14y ago
I realize that we are pro-tech around here, but Google really has close to a real monopoly power in many forms of online advertising: search, display, mobile, affiliate, they are pretty much bigger than most of the competition. That doesn't mean they are a monopoly, but they certain can and do set their own rules about how business should be done on the internet. For example, Google artificially inflates their AdWords ad rates using the quality score algorithm. It's an ingenious little black box that they can turn up the dial periodically as needed without looking like they are raising their rates, they're just "adjusting the algorithm". Or, Google has many times changed their organic listings that hurt businesses traffic enough to push them to AdWords. For example, selling links as advertising can get you banned from Google, and Google aggressively pursues link networks because they can be a cost effective way of advertising on Google that is cheaper than AdWords. Google does open source and a lot of amazing things for the tech community, but it's also a business out to protect its core business - online advertising and search. Sure, it has a right to do these things on its own network, but when you own 60, 70, 80% of the internet search volume, it's a fine line between reasonable business decision and anti-competitive behavior.
- voodoomagicman 14y ago
  The reason that google punishes paid links and link networks is that incoming links are a huge component of pagerank - if these weren't punished, it would lower the quality of their search results.

33 points by DaNmarner 14y ago

DaNmarner 14y ago

My take on this: lobbying works.

jlarocco 14y ago
Probably doesn't hurt that Google has an office in his home town, either.
beedogs 14y ago
My take is that the US is basically a corpocracy at this point. They should just drop all pretenses of being a government of, for, and by the people.
capo 14y ago
"lobbying works." both ways I guess. Lobbying made the FTC start a costly investigation and now they struggle to let go.

duxup 14y ago

Maybe google bought them self a congressman? I always wanted one myself.

saalweachter 14y ago
I hear they're pretty cheap in the empty states, especially if you're willing to share them with their current owners.

ck2 14y ago

Google may do some questionable things but it certainly is no Microsoft or Facebook or ebay/PayPal. Google contributes to open source software in a very significant manner and completely voluntary - from early in it's history. Not sure I can name more than one or two others at their level who have done that. Google's biggest problem is lack of human beings vs technical automation ratio. When things go horribly wrong with their services (ie. ban) and you need a human, it's pretty much impossible unless you can reach the top of a popular website with the story of your problem.

Steko 14y ago
"Google contributes to open source software in a very significant manner and completely voluntary" So what, that means they can't break the law?
- capo 14y ago
  Who said they broke the law? I'm no expert on antitrust law but as I understand the FTC will basically try to argue a theory in front of a judge, and if it's indeed concerning which results rank where it's not a particularly strong theory. At this point it's really inertia that is keeping the FTC on track towards a lawsuit.
  - Steko 14y ago
    "Who said they broke the law?" Stop moving goalposts, grandparent was clearly peddling what amounts to an "upstanding member of the community" defense. I'm not claiming Google broke any law, but they're not above the law, they can get investigated like anyone else.
    - capo 14y ago
      Not sure if you've noticed but they are being investigated. Investigations however do not imply guilt, and this is not a criminal investigation so it's not analogous to your example. There is no clear and shut case here, no evidence of cartel-like behaviour or raising prices on consumers. The FTC will hire an economist who will argue that exists "market failure", Google will in turn hire several economists, scholars, and law firms to prove them wrong.
redm 14y ago
The notion that competition is a click away is ridiculous when you look at all the infrastructure Google builds to make any algorithm work at scale. Its no different then saying, "Building a better Operating System is just a program away." Google is the de-facto standard and that gives it a huge amount of power, just like Microsoft on the desktop.

hiddenstage 14y ago

I never understood the FTC's position on this anti-competitive case. Google is promoting their own services on their own website.. how is that anti-competitive? They should be able to make their products the number one result of every search if they wanted to but they obviously wouldn't do that. Microsoft was anti-competitive because there was a significant roadblock to use competitor's services. With Google, all you have to do is type in bing.com/yahoo.com/duckduckgo.com instead of google.com.

nivla 14y ago
>Google is promoting their own services on their own website. Microsoft was doing the same thing by promoting Internet Explorer within their OS. >all you have to do is type in bing.com/yahoo.com/duckduckgo.com instead of google.com. The same way you could type getfirefox.com and chrome.google.com and get those browsers in Windows. If you want to see the real anti-trust violations, look at the mobile market. All three Apple, Google and Microsoft can be held responsible for violations.
- Retric 14y ago
  Microsoft was actively creating patches that broke other browsers, and offering discounts to prevent companies like Dell from selling competing operating systems. That's a little more than some advertising. Just picture it, run Microsoft update Chrome and Firefox break now what?
  - nivla 14y ago
    >Microsoft was actively creating patches that broke other browsers Do you realize there wasn't a official specs set at that time? Different browsers came up with "patches"/features own there own. From the blink tag to Ajax, all were proprietary to each browser. >offering discounts to prevent companies like Dell from selling competing operating systems. Isn't that what Google is doing with android too? >Just picture it, run Microsoft update Chrome and Firefox break now what? I don't believe it ever happened or ever will. If Microsoft had to go that route, they would have done it before losing the biggest chunk of the browser share.

programminggeek 14y ago

I realize that we are pro-tech around here, but Google really has close to a real monopoly power in many forms of online advertising: search, display, mobile, affiliate, they are pretty much bigger than most of the competition. That doesn't mean they are a monopoly, but they certain can and do set their own rules about how business should be done on the internet. For example, Google artificially inflates their AdWords ad rates using the quality score algorithm. It's an ingenious little black box that they can turn up the dial periodically as needed without looking like they are raising their rates, they're just "adjusting the algorithm". Or, Google has many times changed their organic listings that hurt businesses traffic enough to push them to AdWords. For example, selling links as advertising can get you banned from Google, and Google aggressively pursues link networks because they can be a cost effective way of advertising on Google that is cheaper than AdWords. Google does open source and a lot of amazing things for the tech community, but it's also a business out to protect its core business - online advertising and search. Sure, it has a right to do these things on its own network, but when you own 60, 70, 80% of the internet search volume, it's a fine line between reasonable business decision and anti-competitive behavior.

voodoomagicman 14y ago
The reason that google punishes paid links and link networks is that incoming links are a huge component of pagerank - if these weren't punished, it would lower the quality of their search results.