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What an Anti-Google Antitrust Case By the FTC May Look Like
hessian writes "It's not certain that Google will face a federal antitrust lawsuit by year's end. But if that happens, it seems likely to follow an outline sketched by Thomas Barnett, a Washington, D.C., lawyer on the payroll of Google's competitors. Barnett laid out his arguments during a presentation here last night: Google is unfairly prioritizing its own services such as flight search over those offered by rivals such as Expedia, and it's unfairly incorporating reviews from Yelp without asking for permission. 'They systematically reinforce their dominance in search and search advertising,' Barnett said during a debate on search engines and antitrust organized by the Federalist Society. 'Google's case ought to have been brought a year or two ago.'"
Just pointing out, you have the easy option of typing www.bing.com in your address bar if you don't like their results.
There is a historical pattern where mediocre competitors all gang up on the best producer(in terms of customers picking a company's market share) by using anti trust legal action. The pattern always starts with mock trials where politicians, bureaucrats, judges and lawyers all get together and work out how they can best attack the leading company. While reading this article, the similarity was so strong to historic precedent that I had a strong feeling of deja vu.
That isn't to say that the courts are definitely going to attack google and prevent it from offering its services to voluntary users, but this is a common first step that leads up to it.
Why *wouldn't* they prioritize their services and the services of their partners? It's NOT a public service agency, it's a private business, of which there are several significant competitors.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The horror! Are we also going to demand that Ford dealerships be forced to sell Chevys and Chryslers?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Are they guilty of anti-trust issues if the algorithms put their results first, not due to manipulation, but due to popularity?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Break up Google and make them a small player without the funding to continue development on 'side projects' such as android and there non-advertisement/search based cloud products.
More important of a story would be 'what will internet life be after google', as its not a matter of if, but when they get beat down by the Feds, pushed along by Google's competition.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Maybe Google should just delist any companies complaining about Google unfairly prioritizing their own products over their competitors. It is their search engine, their advertising platform, and so on.
Liberty in your lifetime
This is nothing except a wish expressed by Google's competitors.
They systematically reinforce their dominance in search and search advertising
A.K.A. They make their product easier to use and better, and that's bad because MS and Apple don't like it!
I smell rotten apple behind that...
How come no one goes after Apple? They downright refuse anything that competes with their equivalent app. How is that not antitrust?
I'm not trying to troll or start a flame war. I really am just curious.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Doesn't Google now own Yelp? Why would they have to ask for permission? Here is Yelps' Privacy policy. It looks ok to me.
Or does Microsoft want Google to ask permission from the business owners actually being reviewed? Allowing only positive reviews would make the entire point of having reviews completely useless if you ask me, but then, may be that's Microsoft's aim, to make the web more difficult to search and more difficult to filter for everyone.
Are they guilty of anti-trust issues if the algorithms put their results first, not due to manipulation, but due to popularity?
Irrelevant.
Google, being an obscenely rich corporation, will just use their political clout to ....get at most a slap on the wrist and fined a few weeks of their toilet paper budget.
Liv'in in the United States of Corporate America - USCA. ,p/>So, let us Slashdotters use our posting time for something we actually have a say in. Linux ....
If this is a bad thing, why is it that when I go to one big grocery store, they sell their own made stuff for cheaper? Then when I go to another big grocery store, they sell their own stuff for cheaper. And oddly enough, the stores don't sell their own lines in the other stores. But the big name foods have no problem selling in both stores, even though their stuff is usually sold for more money.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it doesn't seem like any anti-trust here, but normal business practice. You are free to make your own search engine and your own ad service. In fact, other people have done that. In fact, it doesn't make sense that google wouldn't push their services first, since that is what every company does to begin with.
Don't think this will ever happen.
Be seeing you...
I use it because it has a clean, austere look and it loads fast. Something that no competitor has bothered with yet, as far as I can tell.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
What is wrong with Google advertising their own products, or services?
It's their services. They can do whatever that want with it.
Thomas Barnett is the "Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust" and also a former lawyer for Microsoft.
Thomas is pushing for antitrust legislation against Google, right now. Thomas has previously Thom rejected Google's claims against Microsoft.
Looks a little suspecious to me.
Whut? You don't have to link your account to your device, and OEMs actually have to pay Google to install Google's apps on their devices. If you don't - you get phone without any Google services and have to replace them with your own. There were pre-Google Motorola AT&T phones that replaced Google Search with Bing and bunch of other apps with AT&T's own stuff, but still had Android Market.
basically snored through lycos and yahoo while they presided over the supremacy of search, totally disregarded the fact that microsofts bing engine routinely omits and enhances results in its favor, and quietly turned a blind eye to the fact that the Apple App store wont allow competing services it already provides. Yet google, nearly 10 years after achieving search dominance, is an unacceptable demon to the marketplace that must be stopped at all cost. makes total sense if you're a pork sucking kickback crook looking to be auctioned to the highest bidder.
my advice is dont. Google would have to do very little arm twisting to convince your "coalition" to essentially stop what theyre doing. they can blacklist any advertiser they like, for any reason. im actually rather surprised thomas barnett's lawfirm still shows up in the search results.
Good people go to bed earlier.
So wait, which is it? Google is unfairly prioritizing their own services, or unfairly indexing others? Yelp is their competitor. They have their own competing service in Google Places.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say on the one hand that they're "stealing" when they index other people's content and you can't argue that they're being anti-competitive if they don't have enough of other people's content, or other people's content not highly enough ranked. And, bottom line, Google has flatly denied that they do this. They have been explicit in stating that they do not tinker with their algorithm to make their services show up higher than others--so unless you have some evidence they're lying, then what's your case going to be?
Thomas Barnett is the "Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust" and also a former lawyer for Microsoft.
Thomas is pushing for antitrust legislation against Google, right now. Thomas has previously Thom rejected Google's claims against Microsoft.
Looks a little suspecious to me.
I think it's fairly clear that Microsoft is behind this. This has Microsoft's M.O. all over it. Remember MS execs going to work for Acacia just before Acacia sued Redhat?
(Google): "Nice digital snapshot collection you got there . . . be a shame if someone was to wave an electromagnet over your JPEG's there, buddy."
Comcast pushes their own pay-per-view shows, and not the shows on other premium channels.
Thomas Barnett is the "Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust" and also a former lawyer for Microsoft. That looks a little suspecious to me.
What these companies are complaining about are not the search results. The search results are the blocks of links and text with 10 entries to a page. Above the search results Google sometimes displays a Web 2.0 data. It will show a Google maps if it thinks your looking for directions. It will show Google shopping if it thinks your shopping. It will show flight times if it thinks your searching for flights. This contextual data Google pulls from its own services. Google is limited by copyright law what it can do with Expedia and Yelps data. They always show this at the top. It never is shown below a competotors service.
No reason they shouldn't. Unless someone points a gun at them and tells them to do things differently or else.
And that is what is being considered. Antitrust is based on the idea that sometimes things will be more competitive is certain parties are less free. Welcome to the blurry and subjective edges of what "free market" means.
Google's foundation is their search, but it isn't a search company it is an advertising company. They give away search functionality to the general public but what they SELL are ads. You are not a customer of Google because you use their search. The customers of Google are all of the corporations and small business that want to advertise. And Google dominates that market, even more severly than you think. Sure they have 66% or whatever number of the search market but they have a much higher percentage of the online advertising market. Their ad service is spread out throughout millions and maybe billions of websites with trillions of page views. If someone wants to make a profit selling advertising, they have absolutely no way to compete with the prices google offers unless they already are a giant. Google will sell 1 billion views of an advertisement for your company so cheaply it is impossible to even find a competitor. Lets say your website gets 1 million views a day, well the advertising money you will make is practically NOTHING, thanks to google's cheap prices. I'm not saying Google is a monopoly legally speaking but I don't think we should just look at their search feature to make the determination.
I just searched for "airline reservations" in www.google.ca and Expedia is 3rd from the top under Air Canada and Westjet, the two largest airlines in Canada. It certainly doesn't look like Expedia is being discriminated against in Canada unless they use a different algorithm in Canada eh?
Hessian, "on the the payroll of Google's competitors" what kind of bullshit writing is that? How about using some journalistic integrity and say that he's lawyer "representing the interest of Google's competitors." It says in the FIRST line of the article that they are his clients.
Who the hell else would raise and anti trust case against a company, but that company's competitors?
Editorializing like this only causes harm to people. You do slashdot a disservice. Keep it factual, and let the comments be the opinions.
Google is a good service from a userland perspective - but from a customer (business with internet presence of *any* form = potential adword buyer) perspective they're potentially a source of friction now. Mainly from three complaints I've seen, and one I've been on (mercifully) the positive side of.
First, if Google decides to "integrate" a subproduct for a vertical that you're in: they may inline your content on said product. (News, Places in particular - but everyone fears a repeat of this misbehaviour.) At least summarizing and/or linkthrough would be ok, but wholesale reproduction? That's just scraping by another name. Yelp, Tripadvisor, and Newspapers are within rights to press the issue.
Second, the increased weight given to brand has further stacked the deck against smaller or newer businesses. The great democratizing power of eliminating (some) geographic / infrastructural advantage is now negated by established institutions casting shadows across entire namespaces, including ones new to them. Great if you're an established brand, as you don't have to worry about someone with the same name (in any segment) distracting searchers from you, but terrible if you are that smaller user of a name. I directly benefited from this change at my last job - over a (admittedly neglected) Disney property of the same name even - but had they decided to revive said brand, I am keenly aware of the price war just for a having a particular name that could have resulted.
- Some cynics have argued that this is to drive ad bids, but I remain cautiously optimistic that it is merely another iteration of the Great Algorithm.
Third, and most frighteningly, the big G has claimed to be penalizing "bad" links now - opening the door for competitive "negative" SEO. If Google really is negging low-PR links, it allows for some serious mayhem, and may capital-A anonymous never figure out how to do it, please dear lord. I'm assuming the statements aren't G-FUD, but no conclusive analysis has been published AFAIK. A few anecdotes have emerged, but given the tight-lipped nature of both SEOs and Google's dispute resolution, I haven't seen hard data yet. (please link if you have definitive proof! positive or negative!)
- I'm not particularly confident about the Link Disavow tool, considering how long the Search Result blocker lasted. (It was yanked faster than the first version of Buzz!)
- It could all just be a clever psy-op, but inevitably some portion of the black hats would call that bluff.
Unlike the Microsoft case, there is no entry bar for another competitor. They don't have ties into browsers and markets any more than anyone else. The sole reason they dominate the market is because they do it the best. One only has to type in another search engine site and/or change the homepage to use another serach engine. There is no consumer restriction here, thus no antitrust. All it takes is for someone to have a better search and Google is history. Of course competitors seem to more inclined to bring a case against them rather than try to improve their own sites There is probably a better case against Microsoft for forcing all IE users to use Bing to start. Google is not using another market to muscle its way into search, they ARE the market due to constant innovation.
What ever happened to fair trade?
Google, like any normal operating company, promotes its own services! They would be silly not too!
Google offers its Google search engine, and google advertising and al the other Google services, yet has to promote everybody elses over their own?
Going by these antitrust laws, if you spend millions and billions on a successful enterprise then you are not permitted to promote it over the rivals?
Why then is Apple not being sued as they promote their own app store over competitions! They do not allow any competition to their own products.
Going by these rules, Apple should be forced to promote android, and windows 8 etc on their products, and should allow rival competitors for their applications, and rival markets etc etc
Do I need to put my rivals promotional material on display on my site? Even if they says I'll give you a dollar or two? No!
Its amazing how the regulations seem to vary immensely, depending on who you are!
Just look at the source from the summary:
Thomas Barnett, a Washington, D.C., lawyer on the payroll of Google's competitors.
Microsoft got stung for far more egregious anti-trust issues, and responded by hiring a bunch of lobbyists. I'm sure Google spend a bunch of money on lobbyists too. SOPA wasn't killed because of public outrage. SOPA was killed because the tech industry didn't like it, and wielded their political power against the content industry, a much smaller (but extremely vocal) business concern.
Companies like Google have serious firepower in Washington DC now, and the FTC would need substantial evidence of a monopoly to act. Google aren't going to give them that.
MS forced their windows licensees like Dell, HP et al to agree NEVER to install a browser other than IE.
That was their monopoly abuse.
Rather than split the company up, they were ruled to never force users to install or have installed IE and to put competing browsers up for choice.
Normal criminals don't get to choose their punishment.
...... they say it so it must be true. ..... dream gone :|
Whenever did they do something wrong, lied about something they should not lie about, they always had the most respect for their users and will always defend their privacy......... and
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In 1995, Microsoft licensed Mosaic from Spyglass as the basis of Internet Explorer 1.0, which was released as an add-on to Windows 95 in the Microsoft Plus! software package. The deal stipulated that Spyglass would receive a base quarterly fee for the Mosaic license plus a royalty from Microsoft's Internet Explorer revenue.
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And that's the other screwing by bundling / unbundling / re-arranging revenues and expenses so as to maximise one's own profit and minimize giving any money to others. If you're shaking hands with microsofties, count your fingers afterwards! (and check for your watch, too!)
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re :
2 - MS creates IE, and charges for it, but no one buys it because it sucked.
3 - MS, still wanting browser market share, starts giving away IE for free. People continue to use Netscape.
4 - MS bundles IE with Windows and forbids OEMs from adding an alternative browser. Some people switch to IE because it saves them the download step.
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re 2: MS ``created'' IE by licensing it from Spyglass Software which had license the NCSA Mosaic code from NCSA. Microsoft did not charge for it; in fact, Microsoft specifically gave IE away in order to screw Spyglass. Their contract with Spyglass called for MS to pay royalties of a percentage of revenue earned for Internet Explorer. MS screwed them by bundling and giving away IE with the OS, thus making it possible to say that IE earned NO revenue and thus MS owed Spyglass NO royalty payments. Spyglass had to take them to court to ultimately settle for just $8M(us dollars). MSIE continued to acknowledge Spyglass as its code base right up to IE-7.
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re 3 MS always gave IE away for free.
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re 4 You are correct about that, and about your following items too.
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It's too easy to forget all of the things that Microsoft has done in the past.
Burger King files antitrust complaint against McDonald's for not offering Whoppers in McDonald's stores or commercials.
ATT Files antitrust complaint against Verizon for not selling ATT phones at Verizon stores.
Apple files antitrust complaint against Google for taking their market share.
The biggest problem for those other Web Sites.. is Dynamic web pages.. I.E.. There is nothing to link too.. by Google or 3rd parties, thus the site gets a lower ranking.
I ran into this problem in Federal lawsuit filed in 2004, where a Large MNC was suing one of it's former manufacturing reps/distributor. One of claims of it's lawsuit was than the former rep was ranked higher (for TM product name), than the manufacturer.. Mind you the rep had removed nearly all references to the products on it's web site in question several years prior.
The manufacturers use of dynamic pages.. was one of it's downfalls. The other downfall was the lack of synergistic linking from other sites. Thus an old dead 3rd party links(& descriptions) were still out ranking the MNC's live, (but extremely flawed), product web site.
We had to contact each of the referencing web sites and get them to remove those old links, plus delete google's caches(nocache directive for at least six months) in order to depress the former manufacturer rep's rankings for those TM keywords.
Needless to say.. the procedure (plus some other nasties), under cut the MNC's case significantly, and they settled out of court for a pittance.
The FTC & complain-tees are making the same mistake, since those competing web sites are build upon the same flawed unpredictable dynamic web pages.
Ahh, you are correct. I was going off of memory, and I thought MS had the same nag screen that Netscape had.
As I recall, Microsoft used thier API's to maintain control and break compatibility with many competing products, Netscape included.
http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm#va
Intentionally making competing software crash due to platform control is monopolistic indeed.