Is Google the next target of the government’s antitrust police? It is possible. It is no longer just a search engine. It offers premium email, instant messageing with voice, online books and media, maps and directions, web-use analytics, advertising programs, among a hundred other fast-changing, super-innovative ideas. Google innovates but it is the market that renders the verdict. But the law might think differently. FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/4433/target-google/
Target: Google
Previous post: A Chicken In Every Pot And A Minting Press On Every Desk
Next post: What War?
{ 22 comments }
Great stuff, thanks!
Are the prosecutions political or not? Microsoft was and is a supporter of Democrats and their causes, but were prosecuted under a democrat administration.
The laws were and are there. IBM takes pains to comply (and was derided by Microsoft, at least before they were hit with an anti-trust suit).
Any law will not be uniformly applied – speeders are rarely caught, but some use radar detectors, and others other methods. But that doesn’t make the law itself wise or foolish.
Microsoft gets a monopoly by virtue of contract and copyright (and now patent) law. They were leveraging that to expand their monopoly.
Fine, get rid of anti-trust, but then also let me compete with Windows by expanding fair use so that I can clone their products.
Government may want to have lots of East India companies so they can control and tax the tea, or whatever the contemporary equivalent is, but that is a codependent and abusive situation. If that is Microsoft – getting a grant of monopoly from one hand of government, it should accept the slaps of the other hand with more grace. Or divorce itself entirely. According to recent reports, they now are paying for congressmen and have become part of the corruption.
I don’t know what Martha Stewart or Ken Lay have to do with anti-trust. If the point is that the system is so corrupt that no law can be just because of the enforcement, I could agree, but then it proves nothing about anti-trust.
Lest you think copyright unimportant, Google can more easily and quickly be shut down by patent (consider blackberry/rim) or copyright (charge them with piracy and treat them like napster or grokster) than anti-trust. If it is going to be political, they should look out for the more immediate threats.
Great article prof. Anderson. The only question is just how low will some politicians and politicians-to-be go to enhance their public image. If an anti-Google anti-trust suit developes, the US Attorney leading the charge against Google would more that likely aspire to higher political office.
Google: “Arrest Bush 41″
I can remember when Hotbot and Altavista were the most important search engines. Where are they now? And don’t forget the dotcom craze.
This is an area where there are few barriers to entry and a lot of hungry and well-healed competitors. True, there are real problems with the Google search engine. E.g., the latest iteration is poor at figuring out which site is the “authority” and which are just scraping. So it often bans the original source site for “duplicate content”.
But such problems will soon cause Google to loose customers to its hungry competition. They are not solvable by gummit intervention.
DrP
Why can’t this anti-trust law be used against the Democratic and Republican parties? I know the government can’t be sued because of sovereign immunity but I don’t believe this should apply to the two parties who obviously conspire to keep third parties/independents out of the political process.
Could this possibly be used to force a change in election laws that would allow a truly even playing field for all candidates that are interested in holding office? The two parties clearly have a monopoly on the political process in this country which reduces competition and hurts the consumers.
Our so-called democracy looks more like dictatorship-by-committee.
Antonios asks;
“Why can’t this anti-trust law be used against the Democratic and Republican parties?”
Surely the smartest question I have heard today!
Antitrust law is indeed bad law and should be eliminated from any capitalist country’s law books, but this article creates the illusion that there is a conspiracy to start a lawsuit against Google by the “Bushies”. It makes a good straw man to knock down but it’s still not true. What nonsense. Take them to task for their failures they have enough of them.
What next, an essay about the conspiracy by the Bush administration to annex Canada?
Walmart is the principal target of the collectivists, not Google. Other than that demonstrable error, an excellent article.
What if Atlas simply shrugs and Google shuts down? Will the same people that are complaining about Google being too big and good then start screaming that they have a right to use Google and it should be forced to remain on-line, or would the looters be happy that they got rid of a big bad monster? No, they’re counting on the fact that Google will stay on-line because they want to remain in business, provide a good service, and make money too.
This is just another small nail in the coffin. What if major corporations start to shut down one by one? Time seems right for a wake up call for America – has anyone noticed that a huge number of American prodution capability has simply disappeared or is crashing (e.g. GM)? Oh, it’s off shore… in communist countries. Hmm. Has anyone noticed that the USD is worthless? Did you notice that the guy who made it worthless was in Ayn Rand’s ‘inner sanctum’? Hmm. Is it possible that all the off shore US companies could be nationalized by the communist countries thay have moved to? What might be the possible triggers that cause that to happen? Where will that leave America and the anti-trust laws? How will America compete as a great industrial nation? (What industry?) Oh, but we have a powerful service economy… Hmm. Can you see what’s happening?
tz — Spooner and you apparently have substantial disagreement in regard to IP. Check out: http://www.lysanderspooner.org/intellect/ch2s1-s5.html
As far as anti-trust: Every person could be sued as having a “monopoly” on the supply of their own own labor – especially those with an “essential irreproducible good”. Sounds like the start of a good movement to soak the left-leaning Hollywood stars …
I don’t know if this has necessarily any bearing on the issue – but I sort of cringe when I listen to various talk programs when they say “Google floor tile” or whatever topic they are talking about. Certainly Google is a search engine, but one could also say “Mamma” of “DogPile” or any one of many. You might wonder what if any connections the program might have with the company.
Well that was unexpected, who would have thought that even with a Nixon like administration that they would consider anti-trust as a way to get money from Google stock holders.
Well it failed with IBM and IBM fell off the top, it failed with Apple and Apple fell off the top, it failed with Microsoft and Microsoft will fall from the top, it is a work in progress. Now Google is on its way to the top and it will fall off as well.
I agree entirely… Additionally, the low barriers to entry and the feasibility and ease of choice on the Internet (as opposed to driving across town to a different store, or even walking to the next aisle at Wal-Mart) entirely demolishes any intellectual, ethical or legal argument against “monopolistic” behaviour by companies with an expansive online presence.
Neil Block has it in one: There is no barrier, nothing that “Google” can do to prevent someone from typing “Yahoo” instead. In fact, Yahoo.com is in the last month #1 for hits, Google is #2.
Altavista, Ask Jeeves, MSN and several others round out the top 10, which no one will be surprised comprise a remarkably high percentage of all the web pages viewed at all.
It is that very competition that has made a Google a target, because in order for their business model to work well they have to be hit hard and often so their customers ads are displayed. That means they have to advertise, and by doing so they LOOK big. Those idiots who consider them monopolistic may do so simply because they don’t know about any of the other search engines.
Is successful advertising now a “monopolistic” practice?
BTW, I’m using the Konqueror browser on Linux. There is a quick-search field in the upper right corner, where I can type a query and access a search engine with one click. And, right now, it’s pointed toward Google because that is the one that is pre-set by the choice of the package developers. However, the default configuration has a dozen or so alternatives to choose from, including such useful things as the Miriam Webster online dictionary and WikiPedia. I can add or delete from the list at will, or put anything I want as the default.
This is not an environment of “monopoly” by any stretch of the imagination. But then, I’m an engineer not a politician. Maybe my imagination just isn’t good enough.
I wonder if the same applies to European anti-trust laws , which appear on the surface to be less politically motivated; or the recent ruling against Microsoft in Korea. Professor Anderson writes that:”it was politics, not law that drove the indictments and prosecution of Lay and others with Enron;” correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember lots of accounting irregularities with that case. that appears more legal than political to me.
I do not think that the feds targeting Google and MS were seeking to run them out of business. Quite the contrary, IMO. They are seeking to leverage them for their own power.
These actions are nothing more than the feds acknowledging their ascendancy to the major leagues of business. What comes next? Why, education of the rules of the game, of course.
Sure, you can become a player without political connections via the loopholes known as the free market. Problem is, given the reality of political jurisdiction, one cannot remain in the game for long without a sponsor.
A few threats and a little arm-twisting is the setup for the offer that is too good to be refused. I remember when Bill Gates went to DC for his “deposition,” all the politicos were tripping over one another in an effort to treat him like royalty. The only thing missing was a red carpet.
So instead of being legislated into obscurity, MS is now a “partner” with government, going so far as to give some gov. agencies their crown jewel, the Windows source code.
This isn’t an attack on Google, but merely fedgov’s method of getting them to Play Ball!
A word on monopoly–
Those who study the law, interpret the law, adjudicate the law, exempt themselves from the law, profit from the law etc should not be allowed to make the law.
Do us all a big favor and dont vote for anyone that has ever attended law school outside of the judiciary.
“The politics of Google, its CEO, and its employees are irrelevant in the larger scheme of things and are private matters.”
I have to disagree with this outright. Why are the politics of Google and its CEO private matters? If they want to loot my paycheck and give ‘mandates’ to social engineers who want to control my life, why should they get to do this in privacy?
I think the concept of this privacy with regards to politics is outrageous. The idea of ‘secret’ ballots is the idea that one should be allowed to exercise threats of force indirectly in almost complete secrecy.
The present situation with Google is the exact opposite of “monopoly”. There are two other major well-capitalized competitors, Yahoo and MSN. Google is moving away from its original search engine algorythm because it is too expensive to run the computors. This leaves the door open for competitors.
Likewise, according to a recent article by a Google engineer, computing power (i.e., the “capital investment” for entry) is now not the limiting factor. Rather this is the very cost of maintaining the system, an incremental cost. I.e., as a practical matter, capital investment is not the barrier to entry.
Most tellingly, on MSN, Cramer is now touting Google as an investment. In the past, this has been a fore-runner of company collapse.
I boycott Google both because I don’t want to assist them in their attempt to monitor everyone’s internet activity and because they have pro-statist political beliefs, for example not allowing websites that promote gun rights to be part of their ad network. To boycott Google takes more than just avoiding their search engine. You need to add the following lines to your hosts file (in Windows), or whichever adblocking software you use.
127.0.0.1 images.google.com
127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com
That will prevent them from using their ad network to track your activity. Google has no data retention policy. They can retain any information they gather forever, and use it any way they see fit. And their entire database is one sealed warrant away from falling into the hands of the Department of Homeland Security, who might one day decide to round up people who read anti-government websites.
Why is Google worse than your own internet provider? Because your internet provider usually discards old logs after a few months in order to avoid being dragged into lawsuits. Google, with their goal of indexing and making usable all information, has no such policy.
Comments on this entry are closed.