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Group Calls For Google Antitrust Probe
CWmike writes "Advocacy group Consumer Watchdog called on the DOJ to launch a broad antitrust investigation into Google's search and advertising practices and consider a wide array of penalties, including possibly breaking the company up (PDF). The watchdog, along with a mobile entrepreneur and two lawyers representing Google rivals, called for an investigation focusing on a number of issues, including Google's marriage of search results to advertising and its book search service. '...We think all remedies should be on the table, including, we think, the possible breakup of the Internet giant,' said John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog. Adam Kovacevich, senior manager for global communications and public affairs at Google, discounted the criticisms, saying Consumer Watchdog has been 'relentlessly negative' about Google. The group recently questioned the reasons why Google stopped censoring search results in China, and criticized Google's privacy Dashboard as inadequate, Kovacevich said."
There were talks that Microsoft needed to separate Windows from their main corporation too. It didn't even make much sense, but this one does.
Google is being anti-competitive. All the datamining and lose of privacy is done so that Google has always more and more data about you. Then they can use this data across all their services, from YouTube to Gmail to Book Search. They can promote their other products freely. Just like if you wanted to use Windows, you had to take IE too. If you use Google Search, you have to take all of their other services too.
The massive amount of datamining and gluing all the services together also makes sure no one is even able to compete with Google. There's anti-competitive laws against such.
If you search for a trailer of some movie or a game, what result comes as first? YouTube, complete with a thumbnail of the trailer to distinct from the other results.
Same for Book Search and other services.
But that's not even the point. The point is that because of the amount of datamining Google does, no one can even compete with them. Bing can't get enough long-tail keyword data so they can improve their service. No one else can either.
The outcome is that no other company can compete in Google's area. That's pure anti-competition. Technology changes and laws regarding it should too. Before Google no one could gain anti-competitive position by datamining just because there wasn't any technology to do so.
What's plenty of competition? Bing? Baidu in China? There's no other independent search engines, all the others are using either Google or Bing. If MS decided to end Bing, western users would have exactly one search engine - Google.
No one can also start competing with them. They just don't have the amount of data Google gets from leveraging all their services together and because of the monopoly they have in search. Even Bing has said they have problems with their engine because the amount of data (especially long-tail keywords) they get is so much less than Google.
Noted anonymous Intartubes nobody Rogerborg today called for the Department of National Federal Executive Bureaucracy to investigate the funding and steering of alleged "advocacy group" Consumer Watchdog for possible Unclean Hands manipulation by Microsoft, the Gnomes of Zurich, and/or the Saucer People.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Wow. Just... wow.
Nobody is talking about Google having a monopoly with G-Mail or Maps, or whatever freebie online application you are fond of. Google has an effective monopoly on web search and online advertising, and to some extent, access to online content in general, and are commingling these in a manner that may violate anti-trust legislation. This is in essence the same that Microsoft did in the 1990s: leverage their dominant position in one market to brute-force their control on another. Only Microsoft was doing it in order to own all markets, while Google's desires are mainly to extend and preserve their advertising business model.
Google distracts the general public with pseudo-open and free applications which are no more than just fluff, most of them fly-by-night operations or just developer pet-projects that eventually get shutdown unceremoniously. All the while fully concentrating their efforts on maintaining their online advertising dominance. This is their biggest revenue stream so far, and they understand that it may be their only one in the future. In order to preserve it, they are trying to exert control on the access to all valuable properties on the Web. Moreover, they understand that a huge amount of property does not even exist on the Web, and therefore it is outside their control (or more to the point, outside their ability to profit from advertising with it). This is part of their drive to move everything online: online, it is perceived, the rules are different, plus access can be controlled and commoditised. It is basically the same that Microsoft intended to do with their failed "Hailstorm" strategy, only that coming from a transparent monopoly, everyone understood the implications. Somehow, Google being a pretty and cool company, it all seems different now.
Only a naive fool would consider Google, a large commercial enterprise geared towards maximizing their shareholders' profits, a "white knight."
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
And, by definition, you are a waste of resources and should be torn in half. And fed to the dogs.
Even if Google has a monopoly in some market, they are doing nothing illegal by merely existing. Since you can't grasp this point, you really are too deficient to bother with.