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USDOJ Sniffing Google Antitrust Suit, Hires Ex-Disney Lawyer
Van Cutter Romney was one of several to write with the story that "The Justice department has secretly hired former Walt Disney lawyer Sanford Litvack for a possible antitrust suit against Google. As reported earlier, the Justice Department is investigating the deal between Google and Yahoo which accounts for 80% of online search advertising. The Wall Street Journal writes today that Justice Department lawyers have been deposing witnesses and issuing document subpoenas for weeks — but that doesn't necessarily mean a case will be brought."
1) Google proposes deal with Yahoo.
2) Federal Trade Commission, the government entity charged with regulating business activities vis a vis anti-trust regulations, gives the OK.
3) Google goes through with deal
4) Justice department investigates for anti-trust violations.
Why does this remind me of when the Big Three were getting sued for the type of airbags that the Feds REQUIRED they install, and not having switches to turn them off which they were prohibited from installing by the same regulations?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Could it be that other are having trouble competing with Google because everyone else has lost touch with their user base but google? The only reason I use google search is because how fast it loads, their main page isnt bogged down with crap that takes time to load, it just loads. If one of the big three had been smart enough to know that the hard core among us just want efficiency and we are the ones that provide word of mouth then they would be a lot better of. Google doesn't prevent competition, it just does things better then the competition.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
I get the part that Google is monopolizing the online advertising space. But that is no reason to sue them. It's true that they set a high bar for entry into the market and they will continue to do so as long as customers flock to them.
The only reason for an antitrust suit would be when the company stifles innovation. But if it does customers will automatically move away from them and move to others who have better services. That's simple economics. DOJ doesn't help the process in any way by suing Google.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Is it just me, or does everything in the US start with secret allegations that are insane, completely disproven before they're even made public, and yet still acted upon fiercly only to suffer humilation in the end?
Be it military, with imminent threats of destruction from a nation that has no way to harm anyone but themselves, yet turning a blind eye to nations that could (Iraq vs. North Korea for example?)... or be it corporate, where anti-trust is thrown around at google, yet there isn't anything substantial while other companies like microsoft are clearly doing it and are ignored.
It's an upsetting pattern to watch unfold.
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
This was inevitable. Eventually, Google was going to take some steps forward in some area, and somebody was going to panic that it was a "monopolistic" move. Any sufficiently huge company has to deal with that (even Disney had that problem years ago). It will be interesting how it plays out, however. Antitrust suits usually hinge on making sure that the customer is not ripped off. In this case, the customer is not the end-user who surfs the web. The customer is actually the advertiser, since that is where these guys make their money. And the advertisers can still advertise on both Google and Yahoo equally and increase visitor coverage, so it will be hard to prove that the customer has suffered damages.
How about they fix the M$ problem first? How many companies were destroyed before Linux got a foothold back in the late 90's?
My first reaction was that this has Microsoft written all over it (being that Yahoo refused to sell itself to them).
Microsoft learned a lesson about the DOJ when it went toe-to-toe with it: it's a tool to be used like any other.
A Mickey Mouse case if ever I heard of one.
Or at least a Goofy one.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
Yea, Google has a stranglehold on Internet search and therefore is in touch with their user base.
MS on the other hand has a stranglehold on the desktop OS and therefore is an evil monopoly.
Let's face it folks here's the only difference:
* Google's monopoly will hurt businesses wanting to buy web ads.
* Microsoft's monopoly will hurt individuals who use desktop products.
It just depends on whether you are a business or an individual as to which monopoly you'll feel stung by.
Google became the dominant search engine for a couple of reasons - not only is it really fast and uncluttered, compared to some of its early competitors (remember Hotbot?), but PageRank did a good job of guessing what pages would be the most relevant and most interesting and displaying them first, and nobody's really caught up with them. On the other hand, they've still only got a bit more than 50% of the market - their two main competitors are staying in business.
In advertising, which is how Google makes most of their money, Google ads are uncluttered and fast, so they're not as annoying as other ads, making web site authors more willing to carry them, and apparently advertisers think Google does a good enough job of targeting ads to readers that they're more effective than their competitors or have a better price per result or something.
And unlike Microsoft, where the tight integration between the OS, device drivers, the mail system, the calendar, and Office makes it difficult to leave once you're addicted, it's easy for anybody to use another search engine instead of Google, or for an advertiser to use a different ad agency, and the reason Google stays on top is because they invest enough development money to keep their quality high.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Actually, it changed the world a lot.. The world used to believe that the US actually had shreds of decency and fairness left in its legal system, and hoped that perhaps the people had a say in their Government, rather than it being owned by the Corporates.