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."

Comments

Legitimate Scrutiny

[MightyMartian]

While I think constant vigilance is needed with Google, this looks like nothing more than Microsoft once again using other groups to legitimize it's attacks on a competitor that has with consistent success kicked it in the ass at every turn.

Re:Legitimate Scrutiny

[ScrewMaster]

HAH! It's funny that when Microsoft has a so called monopoly, it's the end of the world but when Google has a monopoly... it must be Microsoft.

Microsoft does have a monopoly, an illegal monopoly that was acquired via a number of seriously dirty moves, deliberately violating the law in order to remove consumer choice. Or do you believe that that our choosing to use Google's services more than any other company is a sign of inherent illegal monopolism? Well, if we do, that's not bad: it's because Google does a better job at delivering the services we want than anyone else.

Do you understand what the term monopoly means, and that having a monopoly in a particular area is not, in and of itself, against the law? It's the manner in which you achieve your monopoly status, and what you do with it once you have it that counts. I don't see Google suing competitors out of existence, although they've certainly snapped up a number of startups, generally for technologies that they need for their own products. Sure ... they're damn serious competition to anyone wanting to enter the search and online advertising business, but it's because millions upon millions of people have decided that Google does what they want. It's not because of backroom deals with hardware manufacturers to only ship Google's products. That's Microsoft's way.

Re:Legitimate Scrutiny

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Google has made several companies like Microsoft change from their evil ways.
Remember the time when Microsoft and other search engines used to include paid results in the search result without informing the user?
Remember the time when you had pay for POP3 and SMTP at Hotmail, Yahoo and other email providers?
Remember the time when your Sent mail folder was periodically emptied?
Remember the time when you had a limited size mailbox?
Remember the time you had to pay for high quality satellite imagery for personal on time use?

Google changed the game when it introduced several services for free and without the limitations that people took for granted.

The only thing I do not like is the huge collection of web user behaviour that Google collects without consent or knowledge of users on its own site and other sites.

Breaking up companies

[JoshuaZ]

Breaking up companies always bugs me when the companies has grown primarily based on outright success. This sort of amounts to punishing Google for succeeding. And I have a lot of trouble understanding how there could be a substantial anti-trust issue. They aren't bundling goods in a bad way. The ads are clearly kept separate from searches in that advertisements don't alter Google rankings and you can tell at a glance if something is an advertisement or a search result. So there's no problem here. This is in contrast to some other search engines which specifically allowed companies to pay for higher ranking in search results. The authors of the complaint claim that Google has manipulated its search results to harm potential competitors. Frankly, that sounds more like sour grapes at not having done as well as Google.

Re:Breaking up companies

[Bigjeff5]

Anti-trust is not about bundling goods, it's about restricting access to a limited resource. For example, the Microsoft case - they were not hit with an anti-trust suit because they held 95% of the computer market, they were hit with the anti-trust lawsuit because they were using their 95% share of the computer market to force alternative web browsers out of the browser market. The bundling was illegal because they were using their position in the computer market to keep OEMs from bundling third party browsers with the Windows computers they sold.

I simply cannot see how the same thing is true with Google - the only key resources regarding internet search that Google has access to are their database and mechanism for crawling web pages, and their search algorithm. Anybody can crawl web pages, I could do it right now if I wanted to, Google is in no way restricting that, and the key elements of Google's search algorithm are well known.

There is absolutely nothing stopping anybody from creating an alternative to Google using the exact same resources that Google uses, and in fact there are several. However, if your service is not better, don't expect anybody to use it. Breaking the company up won't help anything. You'll just have four Googles dominating the market instead of just one.

If they are trying to say that Google's search results are the limited resource, they are full of shit. Google is selling ad space on their web pages, which all web sites have been doing since the beginning of time. If that is their beef, they need to be looking at Google compared to the entire fucking internet when making their claims, because that is the internet ad market Google is competing with. They are also not forcing anybody to do anybody, they aren't doing anything unfair at all. They are just "winning". Unfortunately, to some losers "winning" is unfair.

And the Mobile Carriers?

[ExploHD]

When are the mobile carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and so forth are going to be held to these anti-trust laws? They have a majority share in markets, have limited competition, and we're paying high costs for things as simple as texting.

Google gives their stuff away for free and I can go anywhere else to search for what I need. People need to figure out their priorities.

Re:Pot Kettle Black?

[Lehk228]

it's not fair to bet when the answer is known to be YES

The Business of Google

[_Sprocket_]

So the first reaction is obvious: who's behind this? From the linked article:

Consumer Watchdog sent a letter to the DOJ Wednesday asking that the agency investigate Google for antitrust violations. "For most Americans -- indeed, for most people in the world -- Google is the gateway to the Internet," the letter said. "How it tweaks its proprietary search algorithms can ensure a business' success or doom it to failure."

...

Google has manipulated search and advertisement placement results to shut out potential competitors who counted on Google results to drive traffic to their sites, said Joseph Bial, a lawyer at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft who represents myTriggers.com and TradeComet.com. Both companies have filed antitrust lawsuits against Google alleging that the search giant shut out their attempts to advertise on Google.com.

Apparently, people who make a business out of gaming Google's algorithm. The very folks that muddy up searches with crap links to various questionable "offers", link farms, and johnny-come-lately web apps. And they're claiming Google has a bias in their search results? Do tell.

Granted - conspiracy theorists might find the possibility of other actors bing involved too hard to pass up. It does look intriguing. But I'm reminded of the whole Occam's Razor thing.

Re:Apple behind this?

[MrHanky]

What? You have to use Youtube, Gmail and Wave when you use Google Search? That's actually what you're saying. Sopssa, you're an idiot.

Re:Apple behind this?

[Grishnakh]

Bullshit.

How is Google "anti-competitive"? And what is with all this whining about privacy?

If you don't want to use Google services, then don't. There's tons of alternatives.

Google Search -> Bing, Yahoo, etc.
YouTube -> dozens of different sites, or just don't use it.
Book Search -> your local library, Amazon.com, etc.
Gmail -> Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, your ISP-provided email, various non-free email services, etc.
Google Maps -> Mapquest, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, etc.

Furthermore, exactly how much does it cost to use Google services anyway?

I calculate that, aside from Google AdWords (for a small business I have on the side), I have spent exactly $0.00 on Google Search, YouTube, Book Search, Gmail, Google Earth, Google Maps, and every other Google service. I'm not about to start complaining about them until I feel like I'm being coerced somehow into opening my wallet for them.

Separating Windows from other MS services made tons of sense, because Windows is a monopoly, and it's nearly impossible to buy a non-Apple desktop or laptop computer without it. There's nothing forcing you to use Google. In fact, it should be easier to type "bing.com" at your address bar instead of "google.com", since it has two fewer letters.

Criticizing the dashboard

[sandyjensen]

The article criticizing the dashboard has already been slashdotted but (oh irony) it was in my chrome cache.

The group also said that the Dashboard, though useful, is not easy to find.

“If they want people to use this, why isn’t there a direct link from the home page?” asked Simpson. “In other contexts Google likes to say competition is one click away. They’ve buried the Dashboard. The extra password verification is a good security measure, but why can’t you get there with one click from a Dashboard link on the home page?”

The google dashboard is cleverly "buried" at google.com/dashboard

Navigating to it requires the user to select the "Settings => Google Account settings" dropdown at the top right of the page when you're logged in. Maybe I've been around computers for more than a few minutes and that gives me an advantage, but that felt like a pretty natural way to find this.

I agree that Google needs to take more steps to make user behavior anonymous, but at least they're honest about that and have a means for providing dashboard feedback.

And FWIW I don't see anything in the Microsoft Online Privacy Statement about giving users a way to control their data. Nor in the Yahoo Privacy Center.

Maybe it's just too hard to find.

Re:Apple behind this?

[jasonwc]

Except of course you're ignoring the fact that a monopoly created on the basis of customer preference/superior service is not a violation of the Antitrust Laws. Maintaining their search monopoly by continually adding features and increasing the quality of their product, thus preventing competitors from gaining a large enough market share to compete effectively, simply isn't a violation of the Sherman or Clayton Acts.

And I don't see them using their monopoly unfairly to expand into other markets. They do link to their other services, but often the top hit for most of my searches is Wikipedia. The top hit is almost always the most relevant, or at the least, a highly relevant, source.

Why shouldn't they provide trailers on Youtube. It was the most popular provider of online video clips when it was purchased, and continues to be so today. Would you force them to link to another site, even where that site is inferior? Customers want links to Youtube. Also, they do provide links to other popular video sites, if there are relevant hits. Obviously, there will be more Youtube hits, on average, because of the site's popularity. I just don't see any attempt by Google to suppress their competitors.

Being big + better than your competitors =! Antitrust violation

Re:Lawyers and whiny babies

[TheRecklessWanderer]

You know as soon as you see a group, then you read into it a bit more and you find out that a lot of the group is composed of competitors. so then it goes from being a group with a legitimate complaint to a group of cry babies who can't compete and are trying to get the government to help them because they are weak.

Re:Apple behind this?

[Daengbo]

You know what? Screw this. I was defending MS and Apple in other posts, but let's actually compare:

Google bought ON2. Why? Apparently so that it can release VP8 as open source for everyone to use so that the <video> debate can be done and we can move on.

Apple? Supposedly, they're going to buy ARM. Why? So they can shut down all the competing ARM devices.

I'm through being reasonable. Google's big, but it definitely doesn't suck.