Congressman Warns FTC: Leave Google Alone

concealment writes with this selection from Ars Technica: "A Democratic congressman who played a leading role in the fight against the Stop Online Piracy Act earlier this year has taken up a new cause: shielding Google from antitrust scrutiny. In a strongly worded letter to Federal Trade Commission chairman Jon Leibowitz, Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) praised Google's contribution to the nation's economy. He warned Leibowitz that if the FTC does choose to initiate an antitrust case against Google, Congress might react by curtailing its regulatory authority."

Comments

The congressman stuck his head out.

[lcam]

And now it's going to get hammered.

The FTC will double their resolve, they get to help Apple while defying congress.

What could be better.

Re:Leave Google Alone!

[Kuroji]

You are one hundred percent right. Google is a corporation, and corporations are people, my friend.

Re:ATTN: Jared Polis

[Ziggitz]

I wish Liberterarians would get some real friends so they'd stop posting their drivel on the internet for attention. You guys should arrange a meetup or something, get it all out of your system and stop shoehorning your idiotic philosophy into every single god damn slashdot submission.

As much as I like Jared, I differ here

[WindBourne]

If there is real proof that Google has a monopoly (i.e. they control the market) and that they have acted illegally by manipulating results wrongly or have forced tied products to their search engine, they SHOULD be investigated. The real issue here is that Google has a LARGE share, but does not have a monopoly. In addition, does anybody have any real proof that Google has manipulated results or forced other products to be tied to their search engine?

Good examples are ATT, IBM and MS. Is there any proof that Google has acted like these companies did? I have not seen it.

Re:As much as I like Jared, I differ here

[StormReaver]

Is there any proof that Google has acted like these companies did? I have not seen it.

Nor has anyone else.

There is a witch hunt against Google because it provides a set of services that provides better value than any of its competitors. There is absolutely nothing preventing anyone else from getting into search, except the need to provide a better product. This isn't like AT&T, IBM, or Microsoft (as you rightly pointed out), where there were insurmountable barriers (ability to install competing phone lines, incompatibilities causing vendor lock-in, and [what should have been illegal] exclusivity agreements with the entire supply chain).

The only thing keeping someone from competing with Google is that people like Google. Using a competing search engine is trivially easy (you just need to go there), but Google just provides a better service.

This witch hunt is just a desperate attempt by failed competitors to get the Government to make Google less useful, because the competitors know they can't compete on their merits.

Re:As much as I like Jared, I differ here

[WindBourne]

Skyhook, or even MS, are free to take Android and create their OWN version of it. What Google is doing is saying that we sell a package that includes our services with a set interface. There is NOTHING like MS who had closed source and actively changed it to make it impossible to switch off them without loads of pain for the seller AND customers.

Re:ATTN: Jared Polis

[NatasRevol]

Not all sides.

Lobbyists only work on the money sides.

Re:Jared Polis is one of the few..

[bmo]

>Are you even familiar with the Unites States versus Microsoft.

I am. And David Boies was famous for prosecuting it. a

But then what actually happened?

The went under "observation."

Big deal. They should have been broken up. It would have been better for the company and for the investors as the pieces of Microsoft were worth more than the whole.

They weren't taken seriously. QED.

--
BMO

Re:ATTN: Jared Polis

[RazorSharp]

Jim Taggart and his railroad were already chummy with Washington in the beginning of the book

Yeah, this point was conveniently overlooked. They've already been given tax breaks, handouts, protections, etc from the gov't. But the did it 'all on their own' and not at all at the cost of others.

I thought this was the biggest fallacy of Atlas Shrugged: Railroads aren't economically sustainable in a laissez-faire system, or even possible to build without eminent domain, so Rand's point about Nat Taggart building his railroad with nothing but his brains and braun was a bunch of bullshit. History especially proved Rand wrong: just compare the European and Asian railroads to American ones. Not only are the 'socialist' rail systems of Europe and Asia much more modern, but they're also utilized much more and provide immense opportunities not available in the States. Outside a couple large metropolises (which have 'socialist' subways and trains), in the States a person is screwed without a car. It's a Catch-22 for many: can't get a job without a car, can't get a car without a job. The U.S. has Amtrak and freight trains and that's it.

Re:Leave Google Alone!

[miltonw]

If Google is innocent, then no harm no foul.

"No harm"? You haven't ever been investigated, have you? You might be completely and totally innocent and still be ruined, financially and personally by an "investigation".

While Google won't actually be ruined by this, to claim that there would be "no harm" is extremely naive.

This is just like those people who say, "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from government spying."