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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."
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.
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This is a non-issue. People use google.com's website of their own volition.
That has little or nothing to do with it. If Google is ruled to have sufficient market share for selling advertising based on search, then that gives Google a lot of power, including power to distort other markets. The law says, if they do have that power, it's illegal for them to use it to gain, including by harming competitors in other markets. Legally speaking Google cannot rank search results any way they please. They can do it according to impartial rules, but if they have large enough share, they cannot rank certain companies lower as way to gain in other markets.
I seriously doubt, it is the case tat Google is breaking the law here. Likely this is just empty legal harassment, but hopefully the courts will determine that.
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
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?
UK version of Google : "Bing" shows me the UK version of Bing first then bing.com
UK Version of Bing : "Google" shows me google.com then google.co.uk ....
This seems to be a trend with all my bing searches, the strictly correct but irrelevant answer first, then somewhere down the page what I actually asked for, whereas google tends to give the the relevant answer first more often than not ....
This is probably just the way I look for things ... your experience may vary ....
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