Comment by pdkl95 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdkl95 | Hacker News Reader

Why is it that so many people misunderstand monopoly/anti-trust? This isn't about search or pagerank, because having a monopoly is generally not illegal. It doesn't matter what the future of the search market might be or the ease in which customers can switch to a different search service. The complaint, according to the article, is:

    "...accusation being that it uses this closed code
    to promote its own products ahead of rivals.“

Search only matters in how it might be a tool that can be abused to gain influence in other, not-search markets.

Being a monopoly is usually legal. Monopoly status simply means new laws apply relating to how that power is used. Google is patently a search monopoly right now, so France is well within their right to accuse them of abusing that power to take over other markets. Some sort of trial will determine if those charges are true or not.

What is obvious - regardless of the outcome or politics surrounding France's legal action - is that the exact nature of how Google's search algorithms work is the exact evidence needed to properly judge how Google's search service (via the algorithm it relies upon) is unfairly interfering with the markets that Google may also be participating in.

> Google is patently a search monopoly right now

No. Bing is a click away and provides comparable results. A monopoly occurs when the consumer has no choice but the monopolist. That's clearly not the case here.

This is exactly the misunderstanding of antitrust laws that I was talking about. Contrary to popular belief, this is not about how much of the market a given business.

Monopoly starts to be covered by the antitrust acts when "the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market"[1]. Controlling a very large percentage of the market is merely one of the easier ways to demonstrate the existence of that power.

[1] United States v. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.

Please explain. The suggestion that Google has "the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market" in the search market is clearly false. Google's search product is free. Are you suggesting Google could start charging for search without a significant loss of market share?

Advertisements. It's no use advertising on other search engines if nearly no one uses that. The market is probably changing now that Facebook is now also interesting for ads, but there was definitely a period where internet advertising meant Google Ads.

Of course, asking to disclose Google's search algorithm borderlines insanity.

Why is it insanity? Is that France's problem? (Asking for argument sake)

But there are certainly plenty of non-Google places and means to advertise. Google could raise prices on AdWords across the board and advertisers would have plenty of alternative means through which to hawk their wares.

Wouldn't you agree that the ad market via search is much different than the overall web ad market, especially when 90% of users (in some markets) go through search to find things?

No, I don't really think I would. Search is a great place to capture consumer intent, but it's hardly the only one. Advertising dollars are finite, and Google absolutely competes against non-search advertising publishers for its piece of that pie. Why do you think they run the AdSense program?

Even if it were a different market, Google doesn't hold a monopoly on it by a long shot. Bing is over 20% of search volume in the US, and Yahoo holds another 13%. Searching for products on either of those will return results for relevant advertisers; the simple fact that they have paid ads to run is an empirical contradiction to claims of a search advertising monopoly (or is empirical proof that a large number of very successful companies are economically irrational and are throwing money down a money hole, but that seems highly improbable).

Google had a super majority of the search market, but not really of the ad market.

Google gets paid by advertisers, not the people who use their services for free.

The problem is you're still thinking only about search. Again, antitrust regulations are about using a monopoly position in one market to affe4ct a different market.

A hypothetical situation would Google using their monopoly position in the search market to manipulate the results of anybody searching about domain names so Googles registry service is show instead of the various other registries. By abusing their position in the search market, Google would be able to raise their price for a domain name registration. Their search services would remain untouched, or possibly subsidized with the new DNS-registry profits.

You are forgetting that Google effectively has two groups of "consumers". Ordinary users who use their products, and companies that advertise using Google's products.

Even if ordinary users can switch to Bing the advertisers can't shift so easily as they aren't concerned about accuracy of search results but about the potential market size.

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