
CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance - ericzawo
https://www.yelpblog.com/2018/05/cbs-60-minutes-piece-on-googles-abuse-of-dominance
======
greggman
Yelp is crying sour grapes here.

There are so many ways they could have innovated to stay relevant but has
anything changed in years there?

They could have hired professional reviewers. Yelp reviews are notoriously
bad.

They could have let you choose what you prefer, example (quality vs quantity)
and given you custom ratings or only included reviews from people that share
similar tastes.

Following up on the last idea They could have tried to auto cluster reviewers.
(people who rated these 5 places as having good taste also liked ...)

the could have scanned menus so you could ask "where can I get a pepperoni
pizza at 3am" instead of at best being able to look up "pizza" and figure the
rest out yourself.

How about "where can I get a table for 10". How about partner with as many
restaurants as possible so I can ask "who's still got a table for 4 for steak
and win between 7 and 9pm tonight"

And maybe nothing would save them but I at least for me reviews make sense on
Google maps. That yelp couldn't see their audience was going to dry up seems
no different than newspaper classifieds and Craigslist. Their quality
certainly isn't better so ATM there is zero reason to go there.

~~~
camillomiller
You might be right, but a company’s abuse of dominant position isn’t defined
by the quality of their competitor’s offer.

~~~
dalbasal
You are right, at least in the traditional anti-trust-ish legal sense as I
understand it.

In a wider more pedestrian sense, there is a some kettle-pot-black involved
here, at least in my opinion.

Yelp's a little monopolistic middle man. Everyone reads and writes reviews on
Yelp because everyone reads and writes reviews on Yelp. Market dominance today
is the main ingredient for dominance tomorrow. Everyone uses Google search,
maps, phones etc. Google gets all the data & ad revenue. They use this to
maintain their dominance.

Pick your euphemism for this position: momentum, network effects, buffet's
moat, thiel's-monopoly, dominance, viral feedback loops.... Whatever you call
it, a restaurant can't opt out of yelp, just like a website can't opt out of
google. Their rules are the rules. There is no option B.

A downstream company can be harmed when Google competes direct (AKA the terror
of 2006), when they redirect traffic to alternative web pages or disrupts
market dominance downstream, intentionally or otherwise.

This is like Yelp's relationship with restaurants. Yelp can stop sending a
restaurant customers. Google can stop sending Yelp users. There are no "market
dynamics," no "invisible hands," price signals or whatnot. There is no
"market" to impose discipline in the way the laissez-faire idealization does
on paper.

So... I'm kind of torn. I want to see far more complaints, cases & legislation
targeting market dominance, size and monopoly. On the other hand, the
hypocrisy...

~~~
baal232
You're right. This is a kettle-pot issue. So how come so many arguments here
get reduced to "I side with kettle!"

Yelp is bad. Google is bad. Or more precisely, both are amoral, and responding
rationally to the incentives of the internet. The traditional anti-trust sense
you mention doesn't take network effects into account. If you ask me, network
effects cause the landscape of the internet to inevitably trend towards
oligopoly.

This explains why the strategy of most startups amounts to "Growth at all
costs, until you're the only game in town" (The model of Facebook, Google,
Amazon, and every wannabe unicorn running at a huge loss to investors)

~~~
jacksmith21006
How is Google amoral?

------
telltruth
CBS interview leaves out critical details. Initially, Google was scrapping
Yelp reviews to show snippets in their Google Places product. Yelp CEO didn't
liked that and demanded to remove all snippets. Google said it had right to
show snippets like any other websites and if Yelp says their content is
"private" then Google shouldn't be crawling them at all. That's what they did.
This caused Yelp to disappear from Google and their traffic tanked. So after
this some deal was reached. Eventually, Google just decided to do their own
reviews and started showing them in Google Maps. Yelp then started this PR war
that is now going on for years.

Personally, I don't think Google should be obliged to promote all kind of
crappy 2nd rate products out there. I hate Yelp. They are greedy bastards who
have cornered up huge content entirely contributed by volunteers. They are the
ones wanting to monopolize market in this area and avoid having Google as
player here. They are the ones who want big price for their theft from
millions of hours donated by volunteers. Yelp reviews and ratings should be
free and in open domain by vary nature of how it was created (and so should be
Amazon's review - but at least they are not entirely volunteers driven
website). On the top of this, Yelp has remained mostly stagnant waiting for
their big payout day. I don't consider them good for users or internet or
industry. So for me this is pick between the worse evil.

The debate is so very similar to IE on Windows, however. Should Microsoft be
prevented from creating better[1] browser and not allowed to complete with
Netscape? Should they be prevented from putting their integrated polished
experience in front and center that benefits the customers? One can say that
suing Microsoft actually worked out best overall for industry. I'm not too
sure how alternate world would have looked like. History certainly rhymes
here.

[1] You can say whatever about IE's lack of implementing proper standards but
it was the fastest browser in its day. It was truly free no strings attached
(as long as you are on Windows) and it advanced many things, for example, it
was the first browser to implement CSS, XML parsing and tons of functionality
that is now part of HTML5 standards.

~~~
johnnyfaehell
> Personally, I don't think Google should be obliged to promote all kind of
> crappy 2nd rate products out there.

Who is to decide what is a crappy 2nd rate product? To me, Yelp seems to be
the superior product since it has more reviews while having no financial
benefit from manipulating reviews. Can the same be held true for Google?

> They are the ones who want big price for their theft from millions of hours
> donated by volunteers.

If it was donated, how was it theft?

> Should Microsoft be prevented from creating better[1] browser and not
> allowed to complete with Netscape?

They were never prevented from competing, they were prevented from preventing
others competing.

~~~
spyhi
> Yelp seems to be the superior product since it has more reviews while having
> no financial benefit from manipulating reviews.

This is a dubious claim.

There have been periodic blowups about Yelp offering to manipulate how reviews
are presented for money. [1][2] Yelp portrays this as advertising [3], like
putting a "favorite" review "above the fold" so to speak, but many business
owners consistently tell the same story about extortion over negative reviews.

I never paid it much attention before, but recently someone I personally know
mentioned that her boss (at the time) was paying to remove negative Yelp
reviews, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Point is, even if they aren't directly deleting negative reviews, reviews are
their main product and pressure over negative reviews seems to be at the very
least a sales tactic, so don't be so sure they have no financial benefit from
manipulating at least certain aspects of reviews--it's not inconceivable.

[1] [https://thenextweb.com/insider/2009/02/20/yelp-remove-bad-
re...](https://thenextweb.com/insider/2009/02/20/yelp-remove-bad-reviewsfor-
price/) [2] [https://www.searchenginejournal.com/yelp-filter-positive-
rev...](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/yelp-filter-positive-reviews-
business-refuses-pay-advertising/98695/) [3] [https://www.quora.com/Does-Yelp-
remove-negative-reviews-in-e...](https://www.quora.com/Does-Yelp-remove-
negative-reviews-in-exchange-for-advertising-with-them)

------
krn
When I want to buy something, I type "amazon.com", not "google.com".

So, why don't I type "yelp.com", when I want to go somewhere?

There is nothing to complain about, when your product sucks.

~~~
mieseratte
> When I want to buy something, I type "amazon.com", not "google.com".

I do the exact opposite, I either search a specific business' site or Google
something vague like "sturdy cargo pants," find a brand / store that I like
and visit that store.

I've been burned too many times by cheap, fake shit from Amazon. I'm not
willing to deal with the hassle and wasted time.

~~~
jacksmith21006
Same. I start on Google and then usually buy on Amazon. Google has the Amazon
links like they should and it is high on the list even though Amazon is Google
chief competitor.

Reason being Amazon is popular and offers a great service. Versus Yelp is
horrible so not high on the list.

Kind of indicates Google search is working how it should and Yelp just has
sour grapes.

Now if Amazon moved to the second page that would be something to put on 60
minutes.

~~~
mieseratte
> Same. I start on Google and then usually buy on Amazon.

When I said "visit the store" I meant "visit a physical shop." Amazon Basics
aside, purchasing their physical products are fraught with peril. Especially
with easy-to-forge high-margin products like clothing.

I have a few pairs of $40 inauthentic shorts I'd ordered off of Amazon a few
years back. I realized they were fake after venturing into a physical store
and seeing the difference, but I had gone years thinking Billabong had some
seriously shoddy clothes.

I'm surprised we don't see more lawsuits of companies suing Amazon for
peddling fakes goods and damaging their brand.

------
lawrenceyan
It honestly sounds like Yelp is just salty at the fact that their SEO
marketing isn't as effective as it used to be because of Google's improvement
to their search engine algorithms.

Also, it's laughable that of all companies, Yelp is the one complaining about
Google.

~~~
adventured
It's pretty obvious Google has moved against the best interests of consumers,
by their own admission.

They now insert ads into the top of the search flow, commingling results and
ads, something their founders correctly proclaimed in the early days to be
fundamentally anti user experience. When faced with mobile (and no right side
area to allocate ads), they chose to violate their earliest of principles and
decided the money mattered a lot more than providing the best product for the
consumer. It's merely one example of many that Google isn't acting in the best
interest of the consumer with their search monopoly.

Yelp can be salty and simultaneously Google can be an abusive monopoly.

Sun and Oracle were two of the loudest complainers about Microsoft. It doesn't
mean they were wrong, despite their own at times shitty behavior.

~~~
maccard
> hey now insert ads into the top of the search flow, commingling results and
> ad

Google has done this as long as I can recall - the top few results are always
“sponsored”. Yelp also does this, by placing a star on your map instead of a
rating.

~~~
kuschku
Google was created to build an open search engine that doesn't rely on ad
revenue.

Literally, that's what the original paper says:

[http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html)

~~~
efdee
I don't think that is true. It's the first time I've heard about it, anyways.

~~~
kuschku
That’s why I linked the source above.

> This causes search engine technology to remain largely a black art and to be
> advertising oriented (see Appendix A). With Google, we have a strong goal to
> push more development and understanding into the academic realm.

> One of our main goals in designing Google was to set up an environment where
> other researchers can come in quickly, process large chunks of the web, and
> produce interesting results that would have been very difficult to produce
> otherwise. In the short time the system has been up, there have already been
> several papers using databases generated by Google, and many others are
> underway. Another goal we have is to set up a Spacelab-like environment
> where researchers or even students can propose and do interesting
> experiments on our large-scale web data.

From Appendix A

> Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is
> advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always
> correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our
> prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The
> Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains
> in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a
> cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its
> high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of
> citation importance on the web [Page, 98]. It is clear that a search engine
> which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty
> justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For
> this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian
> 83], we expect that _advertising funded search engines will be inherently
> biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers._

[…]

> Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor
> quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would
> not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a
> query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to
> the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required
> this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline
> to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point
> of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will
> be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the
> advertising supported business model of the existing search engines.
> However, there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to
> switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the
> issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that _it is crucial to
> have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic
> realm._

------
ocdtrekkie
60 Minutes didn't reveal anything here a lot of us don't already know, there
wasn't any hard-hitting journalism or incredible revelations. But given 60
Minutes reaches millions of people, it's probably massively raised awareness
of these issues with a significant number of people who don't generally follow
tech explicitly.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _60 Minutes didn 't reveal anything here a lot of us don't already know_

In my experience, 60 Minutes is less about breaking news than competently
explaining it. The tech community, as a whole, is generally bad at
communicating its non-commercial preferences. This issue is no exception.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I don't think it served well as completely explaining it, because Android and
Chrome were only cursory mentions, and I'd argue they're both critical to
Google's ability to control the Internet, while each also being monopolies in
their own right.

~~~
anchpop
In what sense is Chrome a monopoly?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It has an exceedingly dominant market share (FYI: Being a monopoly does not
require "zero alternatives exist". Merely that those alternatives are at the
mercy of the main one), which it uses to direct and control Internet protocols
in the way it finds most beneficial to Google.

All new Internet protocols and 'standards' proposed by Google come with the
implied threat that Google will do it anyways, since often Google implements
it in Chrome before it is a standard, leaving everyone else to accept it or be
rendered incompatible with Google, who has control of most of the Internet.

A significant number of websites now only test against Chrome and only support
Chrome, leaving really only one option, often, when trying to interact with a
given Internet entity.

And Chrome isn't just a monopoly, it's a monopoly they illegally use to
manipulate the market and boost their other products. For instance, while
competing search engines can bid for default placement on Firefox, Google
gives it's own search engine exclusive rights to be default there, the
monopoly search engine on the monopoly browser.

Recently, Google even introduced a method for banning competitors ads into
Chrome, rendering Google ads the only "sure thing" for not having your ads
arbitrarily blocked by Google.

Chrome is one of the clearest examples of why Google _must_ be broken up. It's
Ad/Search business cannot own platforms like Chrome and Android.

~~~
true_religion
Your working definition of what an _illegal_ anti-competitive use of monopoly
power is seems to be the reverse of what I've heard before.

Under your definition, Chrome is supporting the even stronger pre-existing
monopoly Google has on search or ads, and therefore is bad.

Usually anti-competitive actions are seen as a player using its monopoly to
support emergence into a _new_ market, not to build a moat around an existing
market they already are dominant in.

For example, under your framing, Microsoft's usage of Internet Explorer would
have been bad _not_ because it came pre-installed with Windows, but because it
was Windows-only (or worked best on Windows) thus supporting the existing
Windows monopoly.

I don't know if this reasoning can hold legally---merely because I have never
seen it used before.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The general concept of tying relates to connecting unrelated products, and
using control of one to benefit the other. I'm doubtful the claim "the other
product is already also a monopoly" is a usable defense for this practice's
illegality.

------
daanlo
I have run several local marketplaces and what Google is doing to local search
is so anti-competitive that many people have decided not to start new local
marketplaces. You can Imagine what that does to innovation. In the medium term
it will hurt Google. It takes years to build trust and it erodes slowly over
time until one day it's gone.

------
willart4food
Yelp is not that innocent either, their "practices" are just as questionable,
if not more questionable, than Google's.

~~~
seltzered_
Only sharing for reference, you reminded me that someone made a documentary
('billion dollar bully') about this (not released yet, but supposedly being
premiered soon):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Dollar_Bully](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Dollar_Bully)

[http://www.prostfilms.com/](http://www.prostfilms.com/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHEbVh3Yhrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHEbVh3Yhrw)
(recent interview with the film creator)

~~~
annexrichmond
The creator has been saying it will be released "soon" for years. Pretty sure
it flopped.

~~~
seltzered_
FWIW, They talk about the delays at 19m23s in the interview I linked.

From staring at [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1299637435/billion-
doll...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1299637435/billion-dollar-
bully/posts/1873596) I’d guess they’re still looking for or going through a
distributor.

------
kodablah
Mainstream media story about web company? Check. Nothing new? Check. Negative?
Check. Of course Yelp participated...but Yelp angle aside, CBS is just
following the news cycle patterns of their brethren. I'm mentioning this a lot
these days, but feels like watching cattle being herded (albeit willingly).

~~~
KozmoNau7
There is a prevailing "tech can do no wrong" attitude in the tech community,
and it absolutely needs to be challenged hard.

~~~
kodablah
> There is a prevailing "tech can do no wrong" attitude in the tech community

Is there? I see the opposite in communities including the one we're on. The
anti-big-web-company torches seem brightest within compared to the more
accepting yet non-ignorant outside.

~~~
majewsky
I think it's not quite "tech can do no wrong", but "all problems can be solved
with tech" is definitely prevalent. I guess it's because we're all tech guys
here and "if you only have a hammer...".

~~~
jacksmith21006
But you need to use valid examples which the Yelp one is not. Yelp is terrible
so not high on the search results like it should be.

But then do a product search and Amazon a top result returned even though
Amazon banned any company on their market place from selling a bunch of Google
products.

It is just Yelp sour grapes. If going to accuse Google think you might use a
valid example.

------
latenightcoding
Google recently started showing job postings in their search results (at least
here in Canada). I suppose this will affect indeed.com, monster.com, and a
site I had stake in. I love monetizing niche search engines and other data
products, but it looks like Google will eventually get into any industry where
the main source of traffic is organic search, I wonder what is next.

~~~
xapata
They struck deals with a number of job sites to get that data. It's not as
one-sided as it might seem.

~~~
zeusk
Until they no longer need that data because they "harvest" it themselves.

------
dbg31415
In the US, Yelp was the go-to for reviews.

But that's not the case in other markets. Travel to Australia, and you'll find
that basically the only reviews are from Americans. All the Australians use
Google.

Which makes Yelp in Australia GREAT for Americans. A feature I wish they would
build out officially. I like seeing how other people like me rate things. When
someone says, "The pizza ain't like home." I know to trust that person if
they're from NY. Or, how the Texans ranked local brisket, how people who spoke
German rated the schnitzel, or how people from states that grow apples rank
apple pie. A million other examples. Profoundly useful for finding good
reviews.

Anyway neither Google or Yelp offer this feature, and it seems so
fundamentally easy to build out. Just aggregate reviews by reviewer meta-data,
no? Or something as simple as, "Show me where people who rated this place a 5
also ate." Mix in "check-ins" (and tie those to discount tiers, since Yelp
can) and you can start seeing, "Show me places where people rate 5, and
actually return regularly..." This stuff makes for powerful reviews. You don't
need first names, you don't need to worry about fake reviewers... they have my
credit card linked to them, and if that serves as a reward system... anyway
Google and Yelp are both missing the boat on a lot of this stuff.

I really despise how they both make me use a "real" name now. No way I want
friends and family seeing what I write. If a place sucks, I want to be free to
trash it without fear of someone saying, "Hey {person with a fairly unique
first name who is fairly well-known in a relatively small community}, why did
you trash my pizza?" or, "Hey Mr. Regular, why haven't you written me a review
yet?" or, "Hey Grandson, I see that you're reviewing the same BDSM shop your
grandfather and I love!" Ha. Having real IDs on the web... creepy as fuck.

~~~
monksy
That's what I've found about travelling out of the US. Tripadvisor is
good/decent. Although it's gamed a lot.

Yelp is TERRIBLE for food choices. In the Caribbean, you'll see how bad it is.
(There aren't a lot of reviews and the places that are reviewed are really
bad)

------
marban
The whole piece looks & feels like a documentary that could have been aired
during the Dotcom bubble. Looking forward to watching this in twenty years
from now.

------
johnnydoe9
Hasn't Yelp forced businesses to pay or else they'll showcase the negative
reviews more than the positive ones? Pot calling the kettle black when it
comes to abusing dominance.

------
RRL
Yelp has a point. Google, and largely Larry Page's insistence on shortening
the time between query and answer is starting to stumble under the reality
that the source data Google utilizes for its own services isn't the best there
is as Yelp rightly laid out. It may be wise for Google to back off on some
touchy verticals or to integrate 3rd party data sources to stymie any attempts
by regulators to flex. This is the perfect populist opportunity for any public
official to run on. Maybe this will take some of the heat off of Amazon for a
minute.

------
nvr219
I get calls from yelp sales which I would call nothing short of predatory, to
the point where I literally put on my website a notice to yelp staff to stop
calling me.

------
justonepost
Actually, a huge mistake yelp made is forced you in their app. Very very anti
user.

~~~
trumped
it seems like less companies are making this mistake nowadays, but maybe it's
just me.

------
laurex
Using Duck Duck Go, nearly all my top search results are Yelp, and that is at
times enough to make me use Google. (Yes, for every search I could type -yelp
but that gets painful.) It's clear that the way Yelp indexes, that Google is
doing something to push it down. The question is whether that is purely to
squash their competition, or because people don't actually want Yelp results.
I'm not suggesting the former is not the case.

------
jedberg
I use Yelp all the time. I’ve never even considered using Google maps as a
replacement for Yelp.

But I just tried it and you know what? I think I might switch. I just did a
search for “lunch” from my house, and it came up with all my favorite places.
(I know this could be because it’s using what it knows about my location data
to suggest places I’ve been to frequently, which is why I’m not totally sold
yet).

I’ll try using both for a while and see how it goes.

------
__d__
This is ironic. Yelps complaint about Google, is the same I have heard from a
few small business owners I have worked with.

One customer had over 50% of their legitimate reviews that they worked so
incredibly hard for, gone in one day. In trying to appeal, Yelps canned
response was its due to our algorithm and there isn’t anything we can do. My
customer was in tears over this issue.

------
spalt
i thought it was pretty funny during their demonstration of how bad google
was, they googled "san francisco restaurants" (or something like that), and
there on the auto-complete was "san francisco restaurants YELP", like, dude,
this website that is so evil is advertising for you, right there, in the box
where you're typing!

------
marban
Using Google Cache now since the site is down...

~~~
marban
Direct video link: [https://www.cbsnews.com/video/how-did-google-get-so-
big/](https://www.cbsnews.com/video/how-did-google-get-so-big/)

------
pers0n
Google reviews can’t be trusted either. Google reviews can be removed, I
worked for a company that would work to remove all the bad reviews by real
clients then pay people overseas to leave 5 star reviews.

------
jacquesm
They have a point but this really is the best example of the pot calling the
kettle black that I'm aware of. Yelp _and_ Google both abuse their dominance.

~~~
jacksmith21006
How is Google abusing their position?

------
firefoxd
Search results are become a google product. Just as restaurants have turn into
yelp products.

I can't say it was all their secret goal from the beginning, but it now is.

~~~
whoisjuan
Are becoming? ...How else do you think they have been making money all these
years? It’s their oldest and most profitable product and it’s called AdWords.
The foundation of what we know as Google.

~~~
houstoncorridor
Yeah. I consider Google to be first and foremost very much an ad company.
Search is just the vehicle they use to fill their shelves with product, "you"
that they're selling to advertisers.

------
andegre
I didn't see the majority of the piece because the kids were acting up, but I
must be missing something. Why is this a big deal when it's the SAME company's
browser that the user is using that is showing products/services at the top
for the SAME company's products?

Why can't google have their own products'/services' links at the top of all
search results?

~~~
randcraw
For the same reason the courts broke up the stranglehold robber barons had in
railroads and banking back in 1900... it's monopolistic and anticompetitive.

This time, much of the anticompetition will be totally invisible, since nobody
but Google knows how they bias their search results. Do they collude with
Microsoft Bing? Nobody knows but the e-robber barons.

~~~
jacksmith21006
But here there is other choices and Bing is two characters less so less
friction. I think it is very bad policy to penalize someone that creates a
better product.

I see no inherent advantage for Google over say MS. Google search is just a
lot better and why no more Excited or Alta Vista, etc.

------
wnevets
I didn't read the post but the idea of yelp complaining about abuse is pretty
funny.

------
jacksmith21006
I use Google all day long. I start there for pretty much everything.

Looking for a product I start on Google and usually end up buying on
Amazon.com. Amazon is Google's chief competitor yet it is one of the first
couple links that come back.

Reason?

Because Amazon offers a great product and is popular and therefore high on the
list returned.

Versus Yelp is awful and not high on the list. Google search is working how it
should.

Yelp create a better product like Amazon and you get high on the list.

But how in the world did this story even get on 60 minutes? Does Yelp know
someone at CBS?

------
jacksmith21006
Do a search for a product and Amazon is #1 or #2 result and chief competitor
of Google and will not allow Google products to be sold by anyone on their
market place.

This entire thing is ridiculous. Google is obviously not gaming results.

Yelp sucks so lower down. Make it better and be higher like Amazon.

------
modi15
The problem is not Google. The problem is that the government is unable to get
his head around an internet based monopoly. Google shouldnt be allowed to host
more than 50% of searches by law.

In any other industry enjoying a monopoly position in search as google has
enjoyed all these years would have reason enough to break it up into smaller
pieces.

~~~
dragonwriter
> In any other industry enjoying a monopoly position in search as google has
> enjoyed all these years would have reason enough to break it up into smaller
> pieces.

No, it wouldn't. Formation of monopolies is not illegal or grounds for
breakup. Anticompetitively leveraging market power in one market to monopolize
another market is illegal, and a variety of remedies, including breakup, may
be available for that.

~~~
modi15
Firstly, It doesnt have to be illegal. Monopolies decrease choice for the
customer and hamper innovation. That reason should be good enough and has been
good enough in the case of telecom.

Secondly, if there is enough competition than why has Google enjoyed
overwhelming market share for such a long time ? This doesnt happen in any
other industry, not with any other company and definitely not in any industry
as lucrative as search ads.

Thirdly, Search is critical infrastructure. Google is known to hire lobbyist
to supress research unfavourable to it. How do we know that publishers do not
self-censor content critical to Google lest they get bumped from search.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Firstly, It doesnt have to be illegal.

Yes, in the US, for government to break up a company, there must be something
illegal done.

> This doesnt happen in any other industry, not with any other company and
> definitely not in any industry as lucrative as search ads.

Clearly, you are posting from an alternative universe where Microsoft, who has
held overwhelmingly long-term dominance in at least two different markets
significanlty longer than Google has existed (desktop OS and enterprise
productivity suite.)

> Thirdly, Search is critical infrastructure.

If true, that would be a reason for it to be a public utility, not to break a
Google. But if we can't even get a consensus that actual internet _access_
should be a public utility, good luck making the case that search is.

> How do we know that publishers do not self-censor content critical to Google
> lest they get bumped from search.

In systems with due process, punishments aren't based on “how do we know X is
not true”, but instead in “here is the evidence by which we know X is true”.

