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Google Says Microsoft Is Driving Antitrust Review
GovTechGuy writes "On Friday we discussed news that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott opened a probe into whether Google ranks its search listings with an eye toward nicking the competition. Google suggested the concerns have a major sponsor: Microsoft. In question is whether the world's biggest search engine could be unfairly disadvantaging some companies by giving them a low ranking in free search listings and in paid ads that appear at the top of the page. That could make it tough for users to find those sites and might violate antitrust laws. Abbott's office asked for information about three companies who have publicly complained about Google, according to blog post by Don Harrison, the company's deputy general counsel. Harrison linked each of the companies to Microsoft."
This is obviously just a clever way to try to get the courts to force Google to reveal their search algorithm so Microsoft can try to do the same in their crap search engine.
Google has its hand in anti-trust proceedings against Microsoft as well. What goes around comes around.
When I Google "Bing" - you're first in the list of results. And second, and fourth....
Of course that unfairly disadvantages Bing Crosby. But he's dead. Just like Windows Live Search.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Um .. it's a free service - if you don't like it use something else!
Once again Microsoft chooses to litigate instead of innovate. I guess Bing didn't crush Google quite as firmly as Microsoft hoped so they had to find proxies to launch baseless legal attacks until they think of something else. The technology landscape would be vastly improved if Microsoft would just dissolve and go away.
MicroSoft would never stoop to such a dirty trick. They have a long history of being open and above board in all business dealings. Just look how well they've treated the open source community over the years.
* Foundem -- the British price comparison site that is backed by ICOMP, an organization funded largely by Microsoft. They claim that Google’s algorithms demote their site because they are a direct competitor to our search engine. The reality is that we don’t discriminate against competitors. Indeed, companies like Amazon, Shopping.com and Expedia typically rank very high in our results because of the quality of the service they offer users. Various experts have taken a closer look at the quality of Foundem’s website, and New York Law School professor James Grimmelmann concluded, “I want Google to be able to rank them poorly.”
* SourceTool/TradeComet - SourceTool is a website run by parent company TradeComet, whose private antitrust lawsuit against Google was dismissed by a federal judge earlier this year. The media have noted that TradeComet is represented by longtime Microsoft antitrust attorneys, and independent search experts have called SourceTool a “click arbitrage” site with little original content.
* myTriggers - Another site represented by Microsoft’s antitrust attorneys, myTriggers alleges that they suffered a drop in traffic because Google reduced their ad quality ratings. But recent filings have revealed that the company’s own servers overheated, explaining their reduced traffic.
Can someone please explain this to me? What company or website am I searching for on google.com where searching for them does not bring up their website?
I've dealt with Greg Abbott and the rest of the Texas legal system. The Texas court system is so obviously "Justice for those who can pay for it" and Greg Abbott personally only responds to things that will give him good PR or more money flowing to him that I'm surprised there hasn't been a probe. Google is the financial jackpot.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
This is a non-issue. People use google.com's website of their own volition. The search results come from Google's database, there is no hindering of businesses or anti-trust issue here at all since all of the information gleaned on the internet is already present. Google merely presents it how they deem necessary to match the search keywords.
TL;DR: Fuck off.
user@host$ diff
Try finding three major tech companies that aren't linked with Microsoft in some way.
And when the link is "the lawyers hired by TradeComet include some of the same lawyers Microsoft hired to do similar work in the past" and you're getting pretty close to playing "six degrees of Kevin Bacon".
If there's a smoking gun somewhere, this ain't it. If this is the best Google's general counsel can do, maybe there isn't a smoking gun anywhere.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I think you are ignoring the fact that Microsoft is actually flamingly guilty of such antitrust. What you are saying is equivalent to saying that if someone accuses a person of rape, who actually in fact commited said rape, then it is a case of "fair is fair" if the rapist then accuses you of raping them.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
...we stab it with our steely knives but we just can't kill The Beast.
Decades have passed and not even anti-trust threats have changed Microsoft's behaviour. Nothing. Welcome to Hotel Microsoftia.
The lesson they took away from the antitrust trial was "Antitrust is a way for competitors to use the government to interfere with your business." not "We were being evil and wrong and got into trouble for it.". The wrong lesson. They got off way too lightly and too many people were sympathetic.
Since they took that lesson away, now they think they can do the same thing to Google. They might be right, but I hope not. Though if their allegation has merit (which I strongly suspect it doesn't) I will stop trusting Google and be pretty angry at them.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Dave Heiner, Microsoft Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. You're looking for Paragraph 6 if the whole thing is TL;DR. Completely admits they've been behind some of these hijinks at the DOJ and the European Commission, and so on.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
No phone lock-in, Android is by far the most open of the popular Smartphone OSes beating both Windows Mobile and iOS.
Right, that's why Skype is limited to WiFi on Verizon. Or why you can't root some phones. Or the fact you HAVE to root phones to do some things.
I don't think they're any worse than the other platforms listed mind you. But to call them "by far" the most open is simply not correct.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wow, you really need to go to school or at least read up on the subject. Government antitrust laws are the only reason why we have any free market left. Adam Smith himself was very clear that antitrust regulation was necessary for a free market to exist. In a free market without such regulation you ultimately end up with a single source monopoly over absolutely every item you can buy or sell. It takes a while, but it does eventually happen as it's not in any suppliers interest to have to compete with anybody else. It's usually more profitable to sell out for a hefty fee and a percentage than to see the profits going down the drain as buyers get to haggle.
wow, you really need to stop eating gov't propaganda that much and stop assuming things about people you don't know.
Gov't is the actual reasons for having monopolies, except for DeBeers diamond cartel all monopolies outside of niche markets are gov't creations and are supported by gov't taxes, subsidies, regulations, bailouts, etc.
Event the actual antitrust law itself was first created and used for reasons that had nothing to do with monopoly power in the market and was a retaliation against a company wielding political power. Standard Oil wasn't a monopoly by the time it was broken up and even Standard Oil was helped by gov't ties to become what it was, though it was providing services at acceptable to then market prices. When it stopped, multiple competitors appeared.
cheers.
You can't handle the truth.
Nobody can dictate to you what the output should be when someone connects a browser to your server (or cloud) to retrieve a form, types something into a field and hits submit.
End of story.
Sorry man but you can't have it both ways. You can't say "It would be ok for Google to become a monopoly and throw their weight around as such, but not for MS." The law has to apply to everyone.
Please remember that the people who complained about MS being a monopoly were MS's competitors in various market. Netscape whined and cried that it was unfair they couldn't sell their browser for $50 anymore. Real complained that MS wouldn't include and make their player the default, even though it played only Realmedia files, and so on. None of the parties were disinterested, none of them were companies saying "You know we are on the sidelines here but looks to us like MS is being jerks." They were ALL people who had a competitive interest in things.
So why would it be any different with Google?
To me, this seems like attempted PR spin on Google's part. The merit of the claims is independent from who makes them. Seems to me like they are trying to deflect away form the substance by saying "Look! Look! MS is behind it! You all hate MS right?" Ignore the message, go after the messenger and all that.
Please remember Google isn't the poor little underdog here. They are a massively powerful company, one that probably controls more of the world's data than any other. I'm not saying that it bad, but don't buy in to the "Ahh the big meany MS is beating us up!" crap.
The lesson they took away from the antitrust trial was "Antitrust is a way for competitors to use the government to interfere with your business." not "We were being evil and wrong and got into trouble for it.". The wrong lesson. They got off way too lightly and too many people were sympathetic.
Or maybe...the reason they learned that lesson was because of how it seemed to them, the accuracy of which will be debated, but it should be obvious why it's applicable. You see that's the problem with punishment, if the party being punished is convinced they are being singled out, or mistreated, you do not induce feelings of guilt, but rather outrage, and a desire to strike back, and even use those same tools against your oppressors.
Harsher punishment wouldn't make a difference, if anything, it might have made people even more sympathetic to them since you'd seem even more oppressive, not more just.
If you want to convince people as to their guilt, it requires substantially more effort than just throwing more of the book at them. That's the easy way out.
Since they took that lesson away, now they think they can do the same thing to Google. They might be right, but I hope not. Though if their allegation has merit (which I strongly suspect it doesn't) I will stop trusting Google and be pretty angry at them.
I'm sure the allegation does have some merit, and even if it doesn't, you shouldn't trust Google or anybody else. Trust when it comes to multi-billion dollars corporations is an unaffordable luxury.
Anger is something I'd just advise avoiding anyway. It's just bad policy. It leads to dumb things like thinking you can punish somebody into feeling guilty. That's not how you teach a good lesson.
If the supposed link is just the attorneys then that is beyond stupid. It has to be something more than that.
You have to remember that for major issues, companies almost always retain outside council. There are a few reasons for this:
1) In house council often has little to no courtroom experience. Their job is mainly to advise you, look over contracts, that kind of thing. Fine, but that is real different form the skills needed in a courtroom. So when something is going to court, you retain a firm that regularly litigates in the courtroom. Failing to do so can get you having really stupid motions being filed and things being said (like you see when the RIAA sends their in house people to court) that could lose you the case.
2) The law is complex and nobody is good at everything. Lawyers specialize, just like doctors. If the issue is somethign your in house council isn't good at, and it usually is, you want to hire someone that specializes in that kind of law, so they get it right. This is the same reason why your family doctor isn't going to perform surgery on you. That's not his/her specialty. Likewise the surgeon who might operate on your heart is not the same one who'd operate on your brain. Law is no different.
3) You probably don't have the absolute top notch lawyers in house anyhow. Since their main job is simple stuff, you don't have to go and pay the hefty salaries to get the top of the top. In a trial, you want that.
So that the same company is being retained just says that the company is good at what they do and specializes in this area of law. That is all.
When I was in a car accident and was sued, my insurance company represented me as required by our contract because they'd have to pay out any damages instead of me. However they didn't send any of their corporate lawyers, rather they retained outside council. There was a local firm here who does this sort of thing, and the insurance company hired them. They represented me, and thus the insurance company, in the matter. They weren't employees of the insurance company, they worked for whoever would pay and wanted a case of the kind they did. Other insurance companies, private citizens, whatever. They were just specialized in to traffic accident defense. That was what you could hire them for, and the insurance company thought they were good people to do so.
Link to Groklaw:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100904101642564
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100904101642564
Or did they break the story?
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
The DeclaratioN of Independence was of marginal importance? Jefferson's influence on post-American revolutions was of marginal importance? His belief in inalienable rights, the cornerstone concept of the founding of this nation, was of marginal importance?
Linux was influenced by Minix and Unix, so by your reasoning is only marginally important. You are the reason why homeschooling is a bad idea.
It's *ONE* degree of Kevin Bacon. Doesn't that strike you as unusual? Out of all the law firms available, these firms can't find someone to represent them other than the one that's on retainer by Microsoft? 1's maybe a low probability, but all three are connected to Microsoft via the law firm. You don't think that's highly improbable?
The following two aspects of Bing are superior:
Its ability to find porn in the video search is better than Google.
The way the roads are drawn on maps are a bit easier to read than Google (but Yahoo is better still).
Honorable mention: the new version of Google Images brings it almost down to Bing's level.
Standard Oil was a monopoly because it was not better than its competition but rather relied on the government to fuel its practices
Petroleum derivatives had a well-earned reputation for being both unpredictable and lethal.
Rockefeller delivered a retail product based on standard formulations and sold in honest weights and measures. "Standard Oil" was trusted.
"Standard Oil" was cheap.
The kerosene that cost 58 cents in 1865 cost 26 cents in 1870. Standard Oil
None too surprisingly, perhaps, the Standard's customers tended to remain loyal to the Standard's operating companies after the break-up. They pospered as would Rockefeller himself.
There would be opportunities for others, but only for the big boys, vertically integrated like the Standard itself.
All those searches from Microsoft.com for "Google Anti-trust violations"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Assuming this is true, so what? Google has tried to get regulator's onto Microsoft's ass. What's wrong with Microsoft returning the favor?
Does anyone else use use Google to search for something thats on a MS website? I mean, their search on their own site is so horrible in finding what I'm looking for that I use google. I can't be the only person that does this.
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I wish people would have more self esteem than to call themselves "cat butt" (the grandparent poster).
Oh, and: Bing is Noxiously Greedy is one of my entries in the Bing acronym contest. The other is Bing is Not Google.
Also, Microsoft's lawyers are completely out of their league.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Hey, don't knock homeschooling. Homeschooling by mothers with phDs works GREAT. It's homeschooling by dumb people we have to watch out for. In this case, I think "homeschool" is used as a codeword for stupid people who also happen to be fundamentalist loonies. If you're saying that stupid people who also happen to be fundamentalist loonies are a bad idea, then I'm in complete agreement. Let's make them illegal.
Do you mean it is possible to Google something using Bing? Who would have guessed?
BING stands for "But... It's Not Google!"
Search 'search engines' on Bing. Google doesn't even make the first page. Although it's picture is used to define what a search engine is. lol Yeah that's an unbiased search. Search the same on Google and Bing is listed second.
Even more obvious is the fact that Google doesn't have a monopoly on search engines. Obviously, Microsoft has a search engine of their own, which they have invested a lot of money into. Don't like Google, for any reason? Just use another engine: http://www.thesearchenginelist.com/ There is little reason for you to believe that list is truly "comprehensive", either. What does China have? Badu? It's not on that list. Seems ALL those search engines are English language, North American engines, so if you are fluent in some other language, you probably have even MORE choices. The fact that Google is the best for MY needs shouldn't influence people who dislike or distrust Google. They are NOT the only game in town. For Google to violate anti-trust and/or anti-monopoly laws, I believe that it must be established that they ARE a monopoly. I just can't see that. Of course, we are all aware that trials and judges can be bought, I think. Witness all the patent trolls, as well as actions brought by RIAA, MPAA, and others.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Proof that microsoft has changed for the better. Now they've finally joined the whiner table like everybody else.
No, it doesn't. Quick, off the top of your head, how many legal firms can you name that list their speciality as antitrust law?
According to your logic, it would be ok for a site to serve up kiddie porn because nobody should dictate what the server returns when someone connects a browser to it.
If something is illegal, then it is illegal regardless of whether it is on a computer server or in a brick and mortar store.
MS is just upset that when they used the desktop monopoly to gain an advantage in search by making Bing the default search engine in IE it didn't work so now they're just going to try and use the courts to give their shitty search an advantage.
I am Shocked! Shocked I tell you! .... well, maybe not so much.
I note with interest that Google seems to have developed a template defense when it's caught out.
It always seems to ignore the actual issue and instead starts pointing fingers at others for "being behind it". With China it was the Chinese government (ignoring that Apple has managed to keep secrets for years in the same country), with Streetview it was the respective governments instead of Google quite simply breaking the law, and now this.
Here's news: it ain't working. Get rid of the 10 year old who appears to do your crisis management and start dealing with the problem, because problems blow up if you let them be, stick your fingers in your ears and sing "la la la, I can't hear you". It is 100% irrelevant who is behind something - if the facts are correct you do something about it, if they aren't you prove them wrong. Just stop whining.
Pathetic.
Insert
The reason that all monopolies outside of niche markets are government creations is that monopolies are usually illegal without government permission. This is because monopolies were shown over the course of centuries to be an economic evil. They are allowed to exist only when they appear to create significantly more economic efficiency than breaking up the monopoly would. And even then, the monopoly is kept under strict control and monitoring.
In other words, you're seeing few non-government-allowed monopolies because the government stamps out monopolies it doesn't explicitly allow for the purposes of societal good (electric monopolies, for instance). Unregulated markets tend to create monopolies unless government intervention stops it from happening.
You've put the cart before the horse, and then argued that carts don't actually NEED horses because the yoke and traces in the front are empty and the horse is in back.
....of dealing in the dark arts (i.e the hidden hand behind a case like this). I guess Google are too big to be that scared.
You should probably actually read what Adam Smith had to say about monopoly. You should also understand that monopoly is not an absolute term. Standard certainly DID have a monopoly (90% of the market is enough).
Yes they can. For example if the browser connects to www.picturesofponeysforkids.com and it returns bestiality porn without even a warning screen first, there will be legal trouble and there should be.
Who cares? They all play this legal games. Microsoft got an huge anti-trust case in both the US and EU and the result is that they can't tie the browser with the OS. Meanwhile competitors like Google do tie their OS to their browser (Chrome OS).
I'm a big user of Google services like gmail, picasa and so on. I got a Nexus One Android phone so that should give you an idea.
But I've also been trying the latest Windows Live Essentials and the US version of Bing. And to tell you the truth its showing some vastly superior features then Google services.
Stuff like aggregating TV shows from multiple source (Hulu, ABC, NBC, Dailymotion, Youtube) and so on in a single very gorgeous page. Showing previews of every video with sound and all that. Bing Maps has so many new and better features than Google Maps. Stuff like Worldwide telescope, or layering all types of third party information straight in Bing maps site (yelp, foursquare, discovery channel, and so much more. If you use Microsoft live services, they integrate pretty well with Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, My Space and so many others.
Microsoft is trying to integrate their platform with pretty much any web services and investing big time in the quality of their cloud services and what they have in place right now has nothing to do with what they had a couple of years ago. In my opinion many of the services are already better than Google ones.
They are all competing for domination of the cloud and they'll BOTH resort to legal actions if needed.
Google may not be operating a monopoly in the strictest sense, but they do clearly dominate the search market. If you run a website and Google decides to downgrade your rank or even drop you from their index altogether, then your site effectively drops off the Internet. This can ruin an online business.
Standard Oil had six competitors by the time it was broken up, their numbers and size was growing, however you should look at all the monopolies that gov't DID create, all of them starting from phone and energy companies, proceeding to food and banks and insurance and transportation. Bailing out monopolies with borrowed/printed/SS money, stimulating monopolies with 0% interest rates, creating monopolies in military industrial complex.
Gov't has done more harm to economy than any other entity ever, and now the economy is suffering because of gov't intervention. I know it's not the 'wisdom' here, it's unpopular and considered to be a troll etc.etc.etc. Good.
When the US gov't collapses the dollar after printing it to buy back all the t-bills that creditors will be dumping, and then US economy will be destroyed because nobody will be trading with US and US has no production capacity to maintain its own standard of living and there will be riots and shortages, and gov't will implement a policy that is any dictator's wet dream and any human right activist's worst nightmare, the point made here just may be finally understood, or maybe not, people are not really that bright at figuring out what has just happened, less so figuring out what is happening and what is about to happen.
You can't handle the truth.
...can be at the top. or even on the first page, or even on the first 10 pages. You want a higher rank? Get a better site and better tagging.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Well there are a few lessons here
1) whether Microsoft raised the complaints or not, that doesn't matter - they are free to raise complaint just as anybody is. Google just like to raise this to make Microsoft look more evil, because "google is NOT evil" (???)
2) any successful company is eventually going to get hit by Anti-Trust regulations. If they are, and their competitors get away without being hit by Anti-Trust, they will end up losing competitive edge (unfairly?)
Anti-Trust regulations did nothing to help improve Microsoft products or competition, in fact it only helped limit Microsoft products and prevented them from becoming as complete as they could be, while freely available products / other competitive commercial products with smaller market shares could follow similar practices that Microsoft couldn't.
In the end the winners are not consumers or business but Anti-Trust regulators and lawyers
In the end if consumers feel "forced to buy Microsoft" or "force to search using google" well .... that is a problem for a psychiatrist to deal with, no need for 10-year long anti-trust cases...
What results here are illegal, though?
Prohibitions on child porn and such are not stating what the content should be. They are proscribing what it can be. It can't be kiddie porn. It can't be a Ponzi scheme or fraud. It can't be credible death threats. Those are forbidden and illegal.
Outside of those proscriptions, it could be anything. You can't tell me what to return, just what not to. This is not Roman law. What is not forbidden under the common law is allowed.
As for Google ranking someone higher or lower because their site is great or their site sucks, that's editorial decision. That's covered under the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Child porn and Ponzi schemes are not protected speech. Search rankings are.
I think the plaintiffs have to prove their sites deserve those ranking positions they want and are being denied them maliciously. Being a competitor and getting a low search result ranking are correlative data points. They need to prove motive here, that one caused the other.
Those are going to be difficult things to prove when Amazon, Dogpile, Altavista, Bing, eBay, NewEgg, and Pricewatch and such show up well in different categories and they are much bigger competitors to Google's search than these companies nobody knows.
Hell, if you type "search engine" into Google right now, the unpaid search results on the first page are:
The only "search engine" sponsored ad I got (these rotate, so YMMV) was Bing. Then I got two SEO companies for the "related search engine ranking" section for extra ads to fill the column up a bit.
That's not prescriptive. It's proscriptive. You can make things illegal, but you can't control what people do when it's otherwise legal. Welcome to the common law.
Actually I'd say it's irrelevant. _If_ Google actually can be proven to manipulate the search results to hide competition, then it _is_ an antitrust violation too, regardless of who accuses them or for what reason.
What Google seems to be doing is basically an ad hominem circumstantial fallacy, likely in an attempt to hint at the appeal to motive fallacy variety of it.
You seem to add a tu quoque fallacy, a derivative of the larger two wrongs make a right fallacy, as if anything Microsoft did actually made Google less guilty. (Assuming again that actual guilt can be proven.)
Even in your example with the rape, if someone can actually be proven to have committed rape, it doesn't matter if one of the witnesses against him was himself in the past convicted for rape.
Basically as you probably heard it from your mom in school, "but X does it too" is not actually an excuse. Someone else doing a wrong too, doesn't make a right.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"If the word "Microsoft" is involved, Groklaw should always be disregarded as a credible source. Groklaw is on a bigger smear campaign against Microsoft than any Microsoft have ever been accused of
Do you have any hard factual evidence for the above remark ?
While I don't believe google does this (besides their marked sponsored results), is there a law against having paid results showing up up top? I thought many search engines gave priority to companies that paid and don't even have a "sponsored results" section or marking. As long as the company doesn't claim an unbiased search engine, is there any legal problem with sponsored results?
It's not a matter of mis-representing anything. The original rape analogy was just that piss-poor, in that it implied that someone convicted for rape is somehow forbidden to in turn file rape charges against someone else.
If you want less debatable examples for what's wrong with that analogy, try:
Joe Horny rapes a woman, gets rightfully sent to jail for it. On the first night he gets raped by his cell mate, let's call him Bubba Big. The original analogy implied that basically Mr Horny can't file rape charges against Mr Big. And, really, why? While you may or may not chuckle at the poetic justice in being given a taste of his own medicine, or even take the OT "an eye for an eye" view, the fact is that it wasn't a part of his sentence, and Mr Big broke the law. Why would he be above prosecution, just because the victim had once been guilty of the same crime? Two wrongs don't make a right.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That may well be so, but it's irrelevant for whether it's an ad hominem or not. The key is that what's being attacked is the one saying X, instead of attacking X. While traditionally that did involve attacking a human, technically any other entity that can express an opinion or be stereotyped as holding it, can be attacked via an ad hominem. Even if technically no human is expressly attacked.
E.g., if I were to say, "our IT department is always complaining about users with too many rights breaking their servers, but that's exactly the kind of self-serving rationalization for having more power that I'd expect a corporate IT department to say", it would be an ad-hominem. Because it tries to shift the focus on who or why might say that, instead of whether their claim is true or false. Even if I'm not saying it about any particular human being, but about an entity like the IT department.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
1. I just re-read your message, no, you haven't "explicitly stated" anything of the kind. And while the original may have been a simple omission, and thus excusable, trying to basically rewrite history now is kinda lame.
2. Which in turn is basically just postulating that Google is innocent. As support for Google's innocence -- after all, that's what they're hinting at when they accuse Microsoft of being behind it -- it just becomes a case of the begging the question fallacy, a.k.a., circular logic.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
War of the Sociopaths.
Watch warring Titans destroy all in their headlong quest for the Ark of the Covenant - The Monopoly.
You are still free to use Bing, Yahoo! or any of the 100+ search engines out there. There is nothing stopping you or me from doing so, and Google knows that.
Yes, Google is huge and they are the best to use for search. When they started, I was still using Alta Vista. I only heard about them through word of mouth. I never saw an ad on TV, in the newspaper, anywhere. Google grew by word of mouth despite all the MS lemmings out there pontificating about how great MS was (just adding emphasis here, not to imply that you're a lemming, too). On the other hand, on a daily basis, I can skip the commercials beseeching me to Bing! and decide. (Google tells us not to use their name as a verb, Microsoft wants us to Bing! everywhere.)
I don't see Google pushing closed standards or operating systems like MS was and still does. That's because Google is OS agnostic and they really have no vested interest in which operating system you choose to use to the extent that Microsoft does. Their mission statement says it all. They want to be the best organizer of information available and to a very large extent, they are. And they have a 1st Amendment right to do so. Therefore, I don't think that the sort of scrutiny applied to Microsoft should be applied to Google. We still have a choice.
The implications of the lawsuits are worth considering from the point of discovery. In discovery, Google may be required to reveal the algorithms used for search. Microsoft may very well be interested in seeing Google divested of it's own hard work, for competitive gain.
The difference between Microsoft and Google is a matter of goodwill, and I would prefer Google as an ally rather than Microsoft for now.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
ok, I'll bite. What government taxes, subsidies, regulations, or bailouts helped establish the Windows monopoly?
Easy, exclusive contract with IBM, which was even sued by USA for a decade before the suit was dropped. IBM always benefited from gov't subsidies and taxes and regulations and contracts, it even started as a census counting firm with US gov't and it benefited greatly during the WWII by selling hardware and business skills to the fascists to help manage the concentration camp prisoners, weapons, trains, army troops, everything.
You can't handle the truth.
Oh, and I forgot to mention: copyright and patent laws. Patents helped IBM and eventually MS as well, copyright was the principle that Gates used to lock others out from redistributing code, so the entire gov't system is set up to create monopolistic behaviors.
You can't handle the truth.
In the past it seemed like you always got better results searching MSDN with Google than their old search. If I just wanted to just see the objects in "namespace System.Net" where using the site token on Google the first result was the MSDN doc page on the System.Net namespce. If you used their old search you were just as likely to get a Tech Net or random discussion that was mentioned "namespace" and "System" and "Net".
I'm pretty sure these days things have gotten better (I suspect it is now powered by Bing!) but those days it Microsoft own search of their own live docs was as primitive than using "man -k" .
Right, a contract between IBM and Microsoft really helped establish window's market share as the OS to use on IBM's computers.
... And since IBM was helped by "gov't subsidies and taxes and regulations and contracts", it's obviously the government's fault that Windows dominates the OS market?
This isn't exactly on topic so if mods want to mod me down I have no objection. But before the environment was regulated, you could not drive past a Monsanto plant without the air burning your lungs, and you could not swim in a lake or stream because they were all POISONED.
Some industries and activities are overregulated, some are underregulated, but to say government ruins everything it touches is just ignorant. You really need to stop listening to Rush and Glenn, and find some better sources for your "information."
As to antitrust regs, hedwards gets it in his answer to your comment.
You were modded "troll" not because it was a troll, but because thre's no "-1, fucking stupid, get off my lawn kid" mod.
Free Martian Whores!
IBM may have benefitted fro subsidies and contracts, but IBM had far more power than just that. Industry's mantra when the IBM-PC came out was "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". The IBM-PC didn't become dominant because of government, it was dominant because industry trusted it. before the IBM-PC, no PCs (or "microcomputers" as they were called then) were compatible at all. Most PCs used CP/M, but each had its own different, incompatible CP/M.
When Compaq clean-room reverse-engineered the IBM-PC's BIOS, MS's dominance was cemented and IBM's influence in the microcomputer market failed. Yes, government bought a lot of IBM iron, but sodid everyone else.
Free Martian Whores!
He asked how the gov't helped make MS a monopoly not IBM. Way to play six degrees of separation and wind up talking about concentration camps. You must love Glen Beck.
So they asked for 3 complaining countries... and the truth is that there are thousands of companies complaining about the the biggest ever Internet scam. If you are a bottom feeder who likes revenue from showing Adwords on your site, of course you will disagree so go away to ponder about 80 million web sites polluting the Internet with unwanted ads, each promoting and supporting a search engine that is no longer a search engine but just another ad scammer with zero tolerance for privacy or intellectual property. Their use by date expired long before they boasted about their monopoly.
No, I don't watch Beck, maybe that's because I don't live in the US. However my point is still valid, no matter your ad-hominem, yet I can add another one easily: copyright law.
Yes, copyright and patent law created by gov't is what allows monopolies to appear. Of-course MS also actively lobbied the US gov't, and it got quite a few privileges doing that, and it is the main problem:
If you want to be a monopoly, pay money to politicians.
Gov't must not be a participant in economy, by being a participant it presents a way to gain unfair advantage over competition and destroy it.
You can't handle the truth.
Adwords are free for Google, so they can always be at the top. Check it out, search anything to do with email, calendar, webmail, apps, etc.