Why Is Obama's Top Antitrust Cop Gunning for Google?

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-08/mf_googlopoly?currentPage=all

by raju • 17 years ago

8 16 17 years ago

araneae• 17 years ago

I actually think he has a point. Google's motto may be "don't be evil," but they're extraordinarily powerful. And an evil entity that everyone thinks is good is a lot more dangerous than an evil entity that everything thinks is evil.

This is not to say that Google is evil, but if they were, we could all be quite screwed. I have a security minded friend (re: paranoid) that refuses to use any Google products at all, except for search. (The same friend was POed at YN for offering clickpass for this site. I got yelled at for using it.)

tome• 17 years ago

If Microsoft Word sent information about the documents you were writing directly to Microsoft, or Outlook informed them of whom you were meeting when, there would be a huge outcry.

Google has all this information about people who use Docs and Calendar. It also has access to all the e-mails you've sent and received if you use GMail, and where you're travelling from and to if you use Maps. With search, it's knows which APIs your company is using, who's working on your projects and what you're trying to create.

lucifer• 17 years ago

Ad sense lets them know which page you just viewed.

iPhone voice interface for maps gives them your voice biometrics.

Search history must be a treasure trove for a psychological analysis and profile.

Lets hope Google is not an NSA operation.

transburgh• 17 years ago

Schmidt is in with Obama. Schmidt was an "advisor" during his campaign. They wont be gunning for Google (unless something super monopolistic happens)

jswinghammer• 17 years ago

The notion of antitrust law is fundamentally flawed to begin with. What constitutes a monopoly? Is it having a large share of the marketplace? The government grants monopolies in the form of patents so how is that different than a company serving its customers well and thus reaping the rewards of that service? And what's wrong with that?

Has anyone been forced to use Google? You have options of course and you always will.

I didn't support Netscape's complaint against Microsoft when that happened for the same reason I don't support any complaint against Google now-namely that the whole idea of a free market generated monopoly is absurd. This is just another case of someone wanting to advance their career who understands nothing of free market economics.

I think this time though a lot more people are more supportive of Google and realize that Google improves the quality of their lives tremendously. I'll be interested to see what sort of reaction occurs if a trial ever even happens. My guess is that threats will go on for awhile and if Obama is reelected you might see something happen.

capsid• 17 years ago

>What constitutes a monopoly?

IANAL, but I get the impression that antitrust suits are supposed to stop businesses from being anti-competitive, not from out-competing their opponents.

If the issue at the heart of this case is that PageRank may be unfairly directing traffic to Google services rather than competing services, couldn't the investigators just sign an NDA and examine PageRank?

[edit: formatting]

dantheman• 17 years ago

Antitrust law is fundamentally flawed and was created to fix government granted privilege in the train system. Antitrust law is ill defined and basically puts anyone who is successful at the mercy of washington. An activity can be legal at 50%, 75%, 80% market share and then boom at 81%, or any percentage, they deem you a monopoly and that activity which was formally legal is now illegal. It is unjust and and makes a mockery of the judicial system.

TrevorJ2• 17 years ago

The biggest issue I see here is that we are in the middle of a mess caused by lack of monopoly enforcement in the banking and finance sector by previous administrations, and the Justice Dept. makes no signs of fixing that problem or even admitting it exists. In fact, financial institutions are even more consolidated coming out of this crisis.

jdminhbg• 17 years ago

Monopoly enforcement? Really? Which bank has a monopoly on which industry?

arghnoname2• 17 years ago

I think it's the "too big to fail is too big to exist" theory he's talking about. If a financial company is backed by taxpayer dollars and everyone knows they won't be allowed to fail, as is certainly the case now for the consolidated powers, they can play Russian roulette but with the pistol against our temples.

I'm not sure what percentages of control constitute a monopoly, but if you look at the definition of a trust, I'd say it wouldn't be outlandish to suggest that anti-trust enforcement wouldn't be out of hand. Even if you were so libertarian to be opposed to such things, rescue with breakup as opposed to rescue by free money and consolidation surely would have been preferable.

The perhaps larger issue with the massively consolidated power in finance is regulatory capture.

tomjen• 17 years ago

Simple: They forgot to invest in people who can lobby their side in Washington. Microsoft had the same problem in the 90'ies. If you aren't spending 20% of your income on lobbism as a big company, you are a sitting duck. A startup don't have to, since they are mostly invisible anyway.

Yes, this sucks and I would love a world in which it was not. Being realistic, however this is the way out of it.

drenei• 17 years ago

Google has invested in lobbying - for at least the past few years. You can read a 2007 Washington Post article about it here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06...

It would have been careless for them to avoid this.

arghnoname2• 17 years ago

To the extent that the administration is looking at Google, it's because they are on the same page as a lot of people running around on the Internet. Microsoft is old news, a defanged lion that doesn't know it's dead yet. Google is the new awesome. Ideologically , they think monopolies are more of a problem than the previous administration, so their faith in Google's dominance that is essentially unassailable has a downside there.

Microsoft's issues with Yahoo, and Yahoo coming out looking inept, confused, and powerless, helped cement Google's position as the only provider on the block. Bing at least provides Google with a counter-argument. We'll see if it ever becomes plausible.

Ardit20• 17 years ago

I would like Bing to be a serious competitor to google, it would only be good for us the user, they would be competing on the share they get from publishers advertisement, they would compete on providing better results and it would keep goggle focused on what it does best.

Why Is Obama's Top Antitrust Cop Gunning for Google?

Related Stories