The People vs. Google

[Big War Bird]

Google is being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission, the tech titan said Friday morning.

But just what the FTC is investigating, Google said, isn't yet clear to the maker of both the world's leading search engine and smart-phone operating system, Android.

"It's still unclear exactly what the FTC's concerns are, but we're clear about where we stand," Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow, said in a company blog post.

The FTC isn't the only government agency looking into Google's business practices. According to Reuters, the attorneys general of California, Ohio and New York are in the early stages of probing whether Google has used its leading share in the search and online-advertising markets to fight off rivals.

Reports of the FTC considering a deeper look into Google's business have been out as far back as April.

Singhal, in his post, said Google will keep running itself amid the investigations.

"We aim to provide relevant answers as quickly as possible -- and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away," he said. "Still, we recognize that our success has led to greater scrutiny.

"Yesterday, we received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it has begun a review of our business. We respect the FTC's process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services."

Singhal also emphasized that Google, despite its dominance, is not forcing anyone to use its products and services.

"Search helps you go anywhere and discover anything, on an open Internet," he said. "Using Google is a choice -- and there are lots of other choices available to you for getting information: other general-interest search engines, specialized search engines, direct navigation to websites, mobile applications, social networks, and more."

Source

Apparently the US government suspects that company whose unofficial is "don't be evil," is doing evil just by being so gosh darn good.

I guess the challenge is for the government to show how the consumers have been harmed by Google's dominance.

Discuss

[NotYetRegistered]

I always thought of Google as a friendly company.

[Shneckie]

Google is certainly one of the most extrospective tech companies. Looking at Apple compared to Google in the smartphone industry, they are so paradoxically different in their ethos and approach, it is literally a case of black versus white. Apple is so much more restrictive and hands on with their services and products. Google on the other hand supports open source technology allowing other companies and 3rd party users to build upon and change Google's own software and gives users much more control over what they purchase with Google's services.

It seems that Google's own agenda in the industry has been a victim of ignorance by the FTC or corporate bias. Google is not forcing it's software and services unto others, it is providing an open source for other parties to use and build upon at their will.

[xcorps]

The thing that bothers me is that when you google Google you get the Google search page. This is obviously a cover up. Except it's weird, like holding a mirror in front of a mirror.

[Yosemite]

maybe they thought "they are forcing "open souce", they must have ill intentions"

[xcorps]

The FTC isn't the only government agency looking into Google's business practices. According to Reuters, the attorneys general of California, Ohio and New York are in the early stages of probing whether Google has used its leading share in the search and online-advertising markets to fight off rivals.

This is the really funny part. Yahoo...a bunch of crap on the page I don't want to look at with a bunch of irrelevant results, MSN is the same thing...all the other crawlers, bots and search engines I've tried over the years..same thing. How does Google being the best automatically mean they used some nefarious methods to put up a nice clean web search that gets the best results?

[Torment]

i hate people. Go Google!

[Captain Jin]

Five Reasons you should be afraid of goooooooooogle.

[Prosaic Visitant]

I trust Google, it has made my life much, much happier.

[EmperorBatman999]

I don't like how Google took over Youtube and ruined it with ads and such.
I think Google is really-
[This post has been censored and corrected by Google]

I think Google are the best people ever and helping make the world a great place by making life easier by allowing me to have the world's information at my fingertips.

[the_mango55]

Thread title makes it sound like there's a court case, when really it's just an investigation. Doesn't seem like a big deal.

[lordoftheT]

Do they want us to start a monthly yahoo and bing quota or what?

[DimeBagHo]

There is a Presidential election coming up and someone wants to make sure that Google pays the protection money it owes.

[removeduser_487563287433]

It's a pretty basic monopoly case as far as I can see.

[chilon]

It's a pretty basic monopoly case as far as I can see.

What is the monopoly on in your opinion?

[removeduser_487563287433]

What is the monopoly on in your opinion?

The search engine market.

[chilon]

The search engine market.

This is a tough argument to make if you break it down, especially legally.

The search engine "market" is not the same type of beast as a market for commodities. Search has always been a free service (from when AOL and Yahoo had crappy, ineffective search engines in the mid-1990s that always took you to porn to today). Providing a free service better than others provided a free service is not really the same thing as cornering a market the way Railroads or even Microsoft cornered the market. Google made a technological innovation in their search engine algorithm. They also made a huge innovation in figuring out a way to profit by selling ad space. Because Google has been both the most effective search engine (and most commonly trusted) for 10 years they now have dominant market share (but there are plenty of relevant competitors).

Also the reality that Google simply provides the best free service is relevant. There is nothing keeping competitors out of the market but Google simply innovating in a such a leap over competitors (like Yahoo) that no one could really produce a viable competing free service. Its like someone innovated the old school shoe shine industry as a free service and became the best shoe shiner in the city. Everyone decided this shoe shine innovator was the best at providing the service so people decided to go to him rather than other shoe shiners. Can the other shoe shiners sue for monopoly because everyone wants the best free service and thus ignores them? Nope.

The other problem is what in world is a government supposed to do with Google? Break it up? How? Breaking up Google the way Standard Oil and Ma Bell telecom were broken up is simply impossible. You can't "break up Google" and its hard to impose some Microsoft like penalties in this case. And what is the point anyway? To make worse search engine results for the public by letting incompetent competitors gain market share? To not allow a company to hold a patent on their 'secret sauce'? If Google has to give up their algorithm to competitors simply because it works best should KFC also have to publish their secret recipe to every cook as well? Google has the greatest market share simply because they provide the best free service due to their "secret sauce". I don't see this as a monopoly in any traditional sense, especially not legally.

This is very different dynamics than any sort of 'classic monopoly' case both in the "product" itself (free service) and in how they obtained their market dominant position. Additionally there is no logical move for the government to make that could improve the situation for the public. Any intervention of government on this level is simply going to screw with the tech industry and probably just makes things worse for the greater public. This is not like "classic" monopoly cases at all.

[spartan117]

Also the reality that Google simply provides the best free service is relevant. There is nothing keeping competitors out of the market but Google simply innovating in a such a leap over competitors (like Yahoo) that no one could really produce a viable competing free service. Its like someone innovated the old school shoe shine industry as a free service and became the best shoe shiner in the city. Everyone decided this shoe shine innovator was the best at providing the service so people decided to go to him rather than other shoe shiners. Can the other shoe shiners sue for monopoly because everyone wants the best free service and thus ignores them? Nope.

Actually the google investigation is related to them allegedly drowning out sites in the search results and other google related stuffs in favor of sites with connections with google.

Your analogy is flawed and rather disingenuous. Did you really just compare a multi-billion dollar multi-national company to a free shoe shining business in a city?

[Exarch]

i like google apps and products and their freeware but i am still concerned about the amount of privacy google hq is privy to; not to mention their relationship with the NSA would make sam fisher jealous.

also, keep in mind that google is still a corporate entity meaning they're solely concerned about profit$$$$
ever noticed why youtube is full of ing annoying ads and DCMAs? yeah, that's the corporate thing right there

[Admiral Piett]

I still blame them for their takeover of Youtube causing it to go to with way too many ads in unnecessary places. And then extra enforcing 'copyright' standards and removing even 30 second clips from movies.