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