
Why Is Obama's Top Antitrust Cop Gunning for Google? - raju
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-08/mf_googlopoly?currentPage=all
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tomjen
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
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...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/06/19/AR2007061902058.html)

It would have been careless for them to avoid this.

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jswinghammer
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
>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
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.

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araneae
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
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
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.

~~~
zacharypinter
Let's not forget their support of <http://www.23andme.com/>, giving them
access to your DNA :)

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

~~~
arghnoname
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.

~~~
TrevorJ
That would be what I am referring to, yes. Companies failing has, and should
remain an important part of the business economy. When a company controls too
many interests to be allowed to fail then this is evidence that the
enforcement of laws that are already on our books has become lax.

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arghnoname
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.

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

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Ardit20
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.

