Senators Recommend FTC Perform Antitrust Investigation Of Google

SharkLaser writes "U.S. Senators have written to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission about their concerns over Google's Internet monopoly. Google executives did themselves no favors when the Senators looked at Google's business practices in September. When asked if Google has monopoly in online search, Google chairman Eric Schmidt is quoted as saying 'I would agree, Senator, that we are in that area.' Another worrying quote is from Marissa Meyer, Google's VP of location services, who said that it was 'only fair' that Google put its own sites on higher placements than competitors. The Senators are also warning that Google is only facing one real competitor (PDF), Microsoft's Bing. Almost all other metasearch engines use either Google or Bing technology to deliver search results, including DuckDuckGo which uses Bing. In Europe Google is currently under investigation of monopoly abuse and the EU has also delayed Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility."

Comments

monopoly on free service...

[swinferno]

is a monopoly on something that is free, against the law?

Re:monopoly on free service...

[MozeeToby]

Furthermore, just being a monopoly isn't, generally, enough to get in trouble. Using your monopoly status illegally, generally to force customers to use your other products, is illegal. You'd have to make an argument that Google is unfairly forcing their search users to also use their other services, which is an argument that can probably be made but is going to be hard to sell when nearly all their services are provided for free.

Too Big to Ignore

[Doc Ruby]

Any company that gets as big as Google should be investigated for being a monopoly, trust or anchor of a cartel. By "big" I mean both market share and sheer size in either revenue, profit, market cap or assets. Because when a corporation is that big, it probably is distorting the market substantially in those ways. All the other businesses, and of course the people, are paying taxes and expecting as citizens their government protect them from such abuses.

There's plenty of research the FTC could do automatically on any company that gets that big without causing any costs beyond routine compliance processing all its competitors also do. They should, and any substantial evidence of something more serious should automatically trigger a fuller investigation. The government should not have people whose discretion protects favored corporations from these compulsory reviews, who are obviously going to be corrupted by companies too big to stop. They should not get too big to stop before the government starts stopping them.

FWIW every president should have an impeachment committee fired up and researching impeachable offenses starting the day they're elected. These various executives have far too much power to corrupt, delay and stop investigations that are the people's only defense from their crimes.