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.'"

Comments

Still Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Just pointing out, you have the easy option of typing www.bing.com in your address bar if you don't like their results.

Re:Still Free

[CanHasDIY]

you've always been able to go online and download the browser you prefer through Windows

Only after starting Internet Explorer then... wait, I already have a web browser? Why would I want to download another one?

Your laziness != anti-trust behavior on the part of Microsoft. Now, if Windows somehow tried to prevent you from downloading/installing an alternate browser, I would understand, but that's just not the case.

Not to mention, if Windows didn't come with any browser whatsoever - how would you go about downloading a new one?

This is pretty much how IE6 became the behemoth that it is. IE has an unbreakable advantage over every other browser: it's owned by the vendor whose OS is a monopoly in its market. That's why.

Does OSX come, by default, with any alternate to Safari? No? Then why is MS treated like some kind of James Bond villain, but Apple isn't?

Re:Still Free

[compro01]

Now, if Windows somehow tried to prevent you from downloading/installing an alternate browser, I would understand, but that's just not the case.

Which is somewhat what they did in preventing OEMs from bundling alternative browsers, which is what got them sued.

Re:Still Free

[erroneus]

No. I disagree. The landscape for the internet was damaged horribly by Microsoft's defacto dominance and their tying the browser with the operating system. In fact, Microsoft has even managed to harm MS Windows by taking this route. (By tying the browser to the OS, they have made having multiple versions of MSIE impossible as far as I can tell.. please link me to proof if I am wrong.) And by tying the browser to the OS, a vulnerability in the browser is a vulnerability in the OS and everything hosted by and accessible to the OS. Additionally, they used their OS dominance to affect other markets via their browser and its Microsoft-only compliance. It threatened the very framework of the web at large.

As a result of all the suits against Microsoft, the landscape has changed to favor a standards compliant direction. This is a huge improvement which would never have happened unless Microsoft was discouraged from their intended path.

I don't have an opinion about Google's tactics as to whether or not they are unfair. Users have never been locked into Google. Users choose which search engine they want to use. Bing is the default for "most default desktops" out there anyway. Google doesn't force users to decide which search engine they will use or lock them into anything. Their level of lock-in with Android is a little disturbing but even that's quite a bit of a choice... I could go without access to the Play store... there are alternatives but I can't imagine trusting any of them just yet. Or I could simply go without using any of those services at all.

I don't think what Google does even compares with what Microsoft has done. Google has created a very popular service. I see it as rather similar to TV channels. We all know, for example, that the news on Fox is slanted in a particular way and favors particular parties over others. If Google should be sued for not being 100% neutral, then perhaps Fox should be sued under the same requirements.

Re:Still Free

[poetmatt]

which is why bing (microsoft, oracle, and apple - all in concert) wants to shut down google. The reality is that this is going to either invalidate antitrust altogether, or encourage more antitrust investigation from the EU and the US onto all three of them. They're literally creating evidence by pushing for this.

Re:Still Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, yes, pre-loading the browser is a great idea. Did you know that one of the biggest things microsoft got in trouble for was forcing companies to not allow them to bundle other browsers with computers they sold?

If you sold a PC with windows, you could not ship it with Netscape

You're either a kid, or are suffering from selective amnesia.

Personally, I worked for a small ISP during the bad old days. I remember quite vividly how microsoft strong-armed IE's marketshare in to existance.

Re:Still Free

[GoogleShill]

It's funny how quickly people forget history. It wasn't just that they bundled a browser; it went something like this:

- Netscape creates what becomes the standard internet browser and publicly states that they believe it will make the desktop OS irrelevant. MS is afraid of this. Netscape was freely downloadable, but they nagged you to pay them $25 or so to license it.
- MS creates IE, and charges for it, but no one buys it because it sucked.
- MS, still wanting browser market share, starts giving away IE for free. People continue to use Netscape.
- 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.
- MS creates Front Page, a WYSIWYG HTML editor which was bundled with Office, the already dominant office suite.
- MS creates IIS and ASP, technologies which only worked on Windows.
- With Java applets gaining popularity, MS makes applets created with Visual Studio only runnable on Windows.
- MS starts adding features to Front Page which make the generated HTML non standards-compliant, only viewable by IE and only servable by IIS.
- MS add features to Word to allow it to export to HTML which could only be viewed in IE.
- MS adds ActiveX control integration, making IE the only browser which supports it.
- MS muscles ISPs like Earthlink to place ActiveX controls on their main web pages so that they are only viewable by Windows machines running IE.
- People start switching to IE because Netscape doesn't render Front Page pages properly, so they think IE is a better browser.
- Netscape can't make any money and folds, opening the source to their browser, blaming MS's antitrust behavior for their demise.
- Netscape source code is picked up by the community, but can't support things like ActiveX due to wanting cross-platform feature parity.
- With Netscape dead and IE5/6 being used by nearly every web surfer on the planet, MS stops development on it, hindering web innovation.

As you can see, MS did a very good job of making sure that the web was only viewable by machines running IE on Windows and servable only by NT machines running IIS. That is what the antitrust suit was about, browser integration was just one key point in the whole mess.

That was just the browser side of things, they were also found guilty of using private, unpublished Windows APIs in Office so that it was impossible for a 3rd party software developer to compete at the same level as MS. This was why the original ruling was to split MS into an OS company and a software company.

Read http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm for full details.

Re:Still Free

[Gadget_Guy]

Did you know that one of the biggest things microsoft got in trouble for was forcing companies to not allow them to bundle other browsers with computers they sold?

You and your other Anonymous Coward friend are wrong. Microsoft never forced companies not to install other browsers. If you look at the judgement against Microsoft, you see that:

"Microsoft did manage to bundle Internet Explorer 1.0 with the first version of Windows 95 licensed to OEMs in July 1995. It also included a term in its OEM licenses that prohibited the OEMs from modifying or deleting any part of Windows 95, including Internet Explorer, prior to shipment. The OEMs accepted this restriction despite their interest in meeting consumer demand for PC operating systems without Internet Explorer.
...
Microsoft knew that the inability to remove Internet Explorer made OEMs less disposed to pre-install Navigator onto Windows 95. OEMs bear essentially all of the consumer support costs for the Windows PC systems they sell. These include the cost of handling consumer complaints and questions generated by Microsoft's software. Pre-installing more than one product in a given category, such as word processors or browsers, onto its PC systems can significantly increase an OEM's support costs, for the redundancy can lead to confusion among novice users. In addition, pre-installing a second product in a given software category can increase an OEM's product testing costs. Finally, many OEMs see pre-installing a second application in a given software category as a questionable use of the scarce and valuable space on a PC's hard drive."

And later, when discussing Window's use of IE in some cases despite the user selecting another browser as a default (eg. Windows Update), the ruling states:

"By increasing the likelihood that using Navigator on Windows 98 would have unpleasant consequences for users, Microsoft further diminished the inclination of OEMs to pre-install Navigator onto Windows."

So you can see, there was no ban on other browsers for OEMs. They were not allowed to delete portions of Windows (including IE), but they could add their own browser if they wished. Microsoft added IE in the hope that OEMs would be disinclined to bundle Netscape Navigator.

Sour Grapes

[Frosty Piss]

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.

Re:Sour Grapes

[NinjaTekNeeks]

Exactly. Search brings in no money, however related goods, services and ads do. So you give out the free search and encourage the user to utilize a related service related to the search to bring in the money, simple and effective business plan.

Also it's not like bing, yahoo and msn search don't do the exact same thing. Bing pimps its services just like google does, hotmail on the front page and a host of other offerings once you actually search.

Just Horseshit legal wrangling try to slow Google down.

Re:Sour Grapes

[ThatsMyNick]

Because they are leveraging their monopoly to unfairly compete with similar services (as it clearly states in the summary).

Re:Sour Grapes

[miltonw]

Ah, but that is not the proven fact you pretend it is. There is no proof at all that Google tweaks its results to put its own services at the top of the list. You have assumed guilt that has never been established in order to "prove" that Google is guilty.

Even companies are assumed innocent until proven guilty. That's called "justice" and if you don't like it, tough.

Re:Sour Grapes

[msauve]

"They are leveraging it to promote Google Finance, Maps, Flighs, so on."

You really don't understand how this works. It's exactly the opposite. They promote Search, Finance, Maps (what's Flighs?) so they can sell ads.

"The search engine ad market" is not something subject to a monopoly, anymore than "the market for Chevrolets" is, which was my original point. It's the advertising market, which is very much bigger than just Google. Google doesn't even have an ad presence on Bing or Yahoo or Yandex or Baidu (as a seller - they appear to actually pay for ads on those sites), so a claim that they've "cornered the search engine ad market" is simply laughable. They've cornered the Google search ad market, just as GM has cornered the Chevrolet market. That in no way gives them a monopoly, of any sort.

Beyond that, they certainly haven't cornered the advertising market, even if you limit it to the Internet - there a lots of "free" services paid for with advertising - Facebook is an example, as is craigslist. But, I suppose you'd just say that Facebook has a monopoly over "the social media advertising market."

Meh.

Hold on.

[Jeng]

Are they guilty of anti-trust issues if the algorithms put their results first, not due to manipulation, but due to popularity?

Re:Hold on.

[girlintraining]

Are they guilty of anti-trust issues if the algorithms put their results first, not due to manipulation, but due to popularity?

Not exactly. The entire premise of Google originally was to put results at the top that had the most links to pages which matched keywords and phrases the user entered. But as people started gaming the system by adding links to their site in forums like Slashdot, Reddit, etc., spamming the web to inflate their index rating, Google had to start tweaking the algorithms and making manual changes to attempt to exclude such attempts. In the process of doing this, the manual ranking of certain websites based on other factors (like traffic rankings on Alexis, etc.), became very complicated. In an attempt to monetize their search results as well as provide a way for monied interests to promote their websites without spamming the indexes, they introduced sponsored links, then google ad words, etc. But the spam continues, and so Google finally opted to manually tweak rankings of many vendors, including their own, to put them on the first 10 results consistently.

So yes, they are manipulating the results, but then... every search engine has to thanks to spammers trying to inflate their ranking.

I don't get it

[Andrio]

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.

Google corrupt? How about Microsoft?

[walterbyrd]

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.

Make up your mind FTC

[Cyberllama]

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?