Is Google Antitrust Investigation Simply A Repeat Of Wasteful Microsoft Antitrust Effort?
from the seems-like-it dept
I haven't written anything about the ongoing FTC investigation of Google, because the details are still a bit iffy, but Charlotte Kiang points us to a piece she wrote up comparing the investigation of Google to the similar antitrust legal fight against Microsoft a little over a decade ago. In that case, the evidence of Microsoft's "predatory" practices seemed a hell of a lot stronger than anything against Google, but the key point that the article makes is that in the rapidly changing tech world, what may seem like a dominant position is pretty difficult to keep in the marketplace. For example, the crux of the government's argument against Microsoft was in how it offered up Internet Explorer bundled with Windows, and that was somehow unfair. And yet, the failure of Microsoft to invest much in IE for years resulted in Firefox, Chrome and Safari taking away significant market share, simply by competing. While I understand the political pressure against Google, I'm at a loss to see how its actions have harmed consumers, and it's nice to see some others pointing that out.
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Relevant
The odds are, the rules brought against Microsoft for its position in the 90s are going to be rules against Google now. But what purpose does the regulation serve? It exposes a problem, but if anything, it never gets fixed. And that's with all branches of government.
Look at the Bilski patent issue for the Judicial branch.
Look at the growing number of laws enacted against people and corporations (DMCA, PIPA, S978) for the Legislative.
Look at Operation In Our Sites for the Executive.
The better thing from a governmental perspective would be to compete, which is what a majority of voters actually want anyway. While the report has a paywall, Reason.com has the stats. The sad part is, we know about competition needing to be increased. It's our very government with the belief in regulation on all fronts (FCC, Obama's Czar program, etc) that continues to get in the way.
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And Barney Frank endorsed it.
It's only a matter of time before they do the same thing yet again.
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Huh?
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Re: Huh?
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If MS killed Netscape then why is it that firefox and chrome have done so well when they operate under the same market conditions?
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Re: Re: Re: Huh?
First, you should be aware of Micrisoft's expand, extend, extinguish strategy.
First, they expand their operations into a new area that already has competition. They integrate all their products with said area, and welcome everyone to help expand further.
Then they use that to extend. They outright steal innovation & code to extend that area and create new business; And prevent the extensions from working anywhere but on their product.
Then they extinguish, and stop the extensions from working with anything but base microsoft product, killing off all the devs and apps that microsoft needed to expand into the territory to begin with.
So, with netscape, it wasn't just the install time, but every click you made to open a link or anything, would open IE. Even clicking on links in netscape. And of course, IE is on every windows computer.
Once that was established, they extended past the standards and encouraged everyone to build on them to create new stuff. Then they locked down the libraries needed to do so, and built them straight into IE. They also locked down a ton of other things related to it in the windows API, so that if you wanted to do the same things, you had to use crappy workarounds and inefficient methods.
As a result, key functions of the system were completely within the IE structure, so you can't even uninstall the damn thing without crashing windows.
At that point, you can't just go back to the old standards. Consumers and webmasters expect all the stuff that everyone used to be able to provide, and now only IE can.
In order to provide those functions, netscape had to take on a lot of crappy workarounds. And so yes, it became slow and crappy. On windows.
I believe the result was IE 5 or IE 6? I'm sure pretty much everyone here who has ever made a webpage can verify that if you make a page for IE5/6, it will work for no other browser.
And IE6 is still in use today, because microsoft was rolling out corporate licenses and anti-viruses, and other tolls and stuff to promote IE6, and a lot of those companies still haven't changed. After they sold all that, they didn't really care to capture the consumer market, and stop developing IE at all until more competition came along.
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I'm not really sure what I think of it, other than everything I've heard has been from an interested party/fanboy and almost certainly 100% reality-free.
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As for a general statement, Anti-trust is just trying to even the marketplace so that each product is a stand alone from the others, so for this case the consumer can make the choice of internet browser independent of what operating system they have. What Microsoft did was tie their IE onto their browser which created an advantage due to their market power, and not due to the actual superiority of their product.
As for what the feds are looking at, I have no clue. Google seems to be relatively benevolent right now and is content to compete with everyone else without using underhanded tactics. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this.
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AOHell... Is there anything they can't mess up?
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Free coasters, and bird-scarers, and fun in the microwave. Oh, scratch that...they do mess up the microwave.
I still have some AOL coasters at home. They haven't messed anything up there yet...in a matter of fact, they have prevented messes. Just wish I could get one that holds my coffee cup from spilling in my car.
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Tall poppy syndrome
I love Google, and would happily pay for their products if I had to...it saddens me that they might be distracted by this sort of action. (like Microsoft and IBM before them).
It also surprises me that the American people let their government subsidize and bail-out broken industries (banks, GM, etc), while at the same time undermining the businesses that are successful. Up until now America has been lucky that they have been able to come up with the "next big thing" - I am not sure that this will always be the case.
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Re: Tall poppy syndrome
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Government love other people's money
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Re: Tall poppy syndrome
I am confused...how has Google used its marketshare to hurt its competitors, vs. Apple, which is currently suing Amazon for using Appstore, and has sued competitors who have come up with generic platforms which use Apple software. As far as I have seen, Apple is using its marketshare to hurt competitors while Google is just offering platforms that work better than their competitors for little or no cost to the user.
I think the government has done what it always does...a body without a head...flailing at anything that it thinks needs to be flailed at (or what Microsoft wants them to flail at.)
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Re: Re: Tall poppy syndrome
You probably use Google search to find most of the information you read on the internet; you're saying you don't know how Google has hurt its competitors; are you really unable to connect the dots?
If Google controls the search indexing they can pretty much ensure that any stories about them they really don't like don't stay highly ranked for long.
They've done all kinds of evil stuff; the problem is that nobody knows about it because . . . they search for all their news and info via Google.
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Google anti-trust
Now if the pols ever figure out how monetize the patent wars, the cash will really pour like tidal wave.
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Comparing two very different things
I) Buying a PC with another OS than MSWin
Scenario : you already own a Windows Licence, or are under a MSDN program, or want to use another OS, or a million other reasons for which you wouldn't like to pay the extra "windows tax" on a PC.
Method :
- Look in stores and on the Internet : oh, you can buy no PC without the Windows OS bundled.
- Bad solution : ask whether you can at least have the licence refunded after buying and paying for it : impossible.
- Worse solution : with some rare manufacturers (like Acer in some cases), you can send your PC back to the manufacturer (yes, your brand new PC, you stil cant use it. Pack it, pay shipping and send it back to them). This supposes you already restricted your manufacturer choice (and then your consumer's choice) to some manufacturer(s) only, because of effing imposed software. Then they will uninstall the OS and send it back to you after two weeks. And will grant you a wonderful check of something like $20 (although they billed you a lot more for the OS when you bought the PC, as hardware margins are very small). That was supposed to be the "best-case scenario"...
II) Want to use another search engine on the web
Scenario : You want to use another search engine, not Google
Method : open your browser, type "ixquick.com" instead of "google.com" in the adress bar and you're good to go!
Can you see the difference, guys from the FTC?
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In the past I've always been able to build cheaper than you could buy, but I'm not talking about the dirt cheap low end, more the middle tier (Machines with discrete graphics, faster memory and middle tier amd processors)
These days, to me its not even about price anymore, but control, I have a 1tb hd and upper middle end PSU and decent case, so I don't need to spend on that stuff, and I should be able to upgrade to an 8 core bulldozer for around $600. (Or less) Not sure that when zambezi comes out you will even be able to buy a complete amd 8 core for less. (Figuring up to $300 per processor up to $200 for mobo and $100 for memory, and that's the high end)
I can't beat the $300 pc anymore, though. But those machines aren't it for me.
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Re: Re: Comparing two very different things
I tend to use more laptops than PCs, and except Clevo, no big name will sell you a laptop without win.
And anyway, I don't want to have my hardware choice restricted just because those manufacturers can't understand how hardware and software are different.
I wish buying any PC without windows was as easy as "do not check the $100 windows option", because avoiding Google is as easy as this : typing a different adress in your browser.
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Assuming you're in a country in which they do it, you have to choose the product (usually there's only one you can buy with Ubuntu, for example in France it was the studio 10", shortly). And once you agreed to move to the right country and choose that very specific PC, you will be charged a higher price than the same product with Windows.
Again, compare that with using another search engine, and you'll see where the antitrust case is.
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OTOH, the option where I picked no hard drive and purchased one separately worked out to $120 less.
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It's Google the mail program, google the ad program, google the social network, google the browser, google the os, google the maps, google network transit, google wireless, and so on. There is so much Google that if you tried to intentionally avoid them, you would have a very hard time. All the while, they are tracking your movements and tailoring the ad results and such you will get even if you don't want them to.
Google is pretty much unavoidable now online, they are a dominant force. It's how Google+ has reached at least 5% of the facebook market in a short period of time, and growing fast. It is very likely that at some time in the future, Google+ may be a serious rival in size to FB, and at the same time challenge twitter in some ways as well.
Also, because of their cash rich situation, Google is going down the same road as Microsoft, buying up whatever they don't create that might be useful to them.
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Being very good at something is not illegal. Using your market power from other products to influence the buying of consumers is.
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True, but actually, it wasn't using the market power to influence, but force. You install Windows, you used Internet Explorer. You couldn't uninstall Internet Explorer and use Netscape. So in a way, they were forcing you to use Internet Explorer (especially when they imbedded Internet Explorer into other tools which didn't really need Internet Explorer, like Help and MMC.)
Google makes good stuff, which influences folks to use their stuff, but last time I checked, they didn't force anyone to use google docs if they used gmail or gtalk. I was influenced by their quality products to install and use everything I had, but at no time did they enforce me to install and use any of their products.
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Meanwhile, yes, it's hard to avoid them, but that means they have good products?
I can use hotmail & google search, I can use myspace and google maps, and if I wanted to stop them tracking me, I only have to block one URL from loading, (urchin tracker).
Heck, I can open a google account and click on the options button: "Don't track me".
This is entirely unlike the microsoft/IE situation, (Didn't microsoft win that anyways?), in that it is perfectly possible, in fact, convenient, to use any other service.
Even the parts that are convenient between google services; Did you know that you can use your openID from your google account to log into anything that accepts openID? Give said 3rd party permission, and it can grab your address book, your preferences & settings, your google docs . . .
Personally, I use a 3rd party tool to archive everything I have with google onto my hard drive. I trust google, but only a fool goes without backups.
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Even if you click the "don't track me" button, you are tracked, like it or not.
Want to have some fun? Make some really weird google searches (like very specific types of networking gear, model name and number) and then close your browser, delete cookies, whatever. Then go out and surf any sites with google ads and see what you get. Shockingly, you will get ads for networking gear.
You have been tracked. All of your searches. All of your youtube videos, everything. tracked, kept, and noted, logged in or not.
You can't avoid Google now any more than you could avoid Microsoft in the past.
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End of Google?
Gov't goes after MS (with Netscape urging) for anti trust in browsers. Finally gives up/settles as MS becomes basically irrelevant in browsers. And they're on the way out in the OS business - surviving only on inertia.
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Cause and Effect?
It's very nice to say that "the free market" eliminated Microsoft IE's near-monopoly on browsers - but it's a misreading of history. No real "free market" existed, either before or after the change.
*Before* the change, Microsoft made a number of monopolistic moves. Windows represented virtually the entire PC market, and was impossible to attack: The deal offered to hardware vendors by Microsoft was "If you want a reasonable price for Windows, you have to agree to pay *per unit shipped*, whether a unit has Windows on it or not." Windows itself had IE6 embedded. You could, if you were technically adept, install another browser - but IE6 had to stay, because various other pieces of Windows (deliberately) relied on it.
*After* the change, Microsoft was under government scrutiny and regulation. They were forced to modify Windows to yank out dependencies on IE. More important, they were forced to offer users a choice of browsers during installation. There was no user demand for any of this, because the majority of users never even knew there was an issue.
If you look at things strictly from the point of government regulation, the market was "free" before the anti-trusts moves, and what Microsoft did was simply sharp-elbowed competition. That's a principled position, if one not shared by most people. You can argue, purely on market theory grounds, that Microsoft's moves were, in the long run, going to leave an opening for competitors to take the market from them. What you *can't* argue is that IE6's decline *proves* that pure market competition would have been sufficient - because it wasn't pure market competition that did the trick.
-- Jerry
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Once again, Mike's, corporatist premises burst out.
Antitrust Investigation Is Never Wasteful.
Here's Google creeping toward INVASIVE MONOPOLY.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/28/google-page-speed-service/
And don't forget that Google's true purpose is SPY AGENCY.
WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE FOR GOOGLE, MIKE? And how with today's corporatized gov't would you do it IF you did think it became a problem?
Only way is to STOP MONOPOLY EARLY AND OFTEN.
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Re: Once again, Mike's, corporatist premises burst out.
Just paraphrasing you there, blue. We all know your schtick by now, so might as well drop it. You're not accomplishing anything.
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"If you use anything Google, you are tracked. Google is involved in so many different projects, in so many different things, and appears on so many websites in so many ways that it is all but impossible to keep from doing business with them, even if you don't want to."
So you think nobody else is tracking your movements?
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Google Investigation
To say they were successful in SPITE of Microsoft's actions is to rewrite history in a very naive way.
Microsoft being able to lock out everyone else caused them to stop investing in IE (why should they? They were telling everyone they had to use it!); and their inability to react quickly to the government's actions did open the gates for their competitors, but fluffing off the effect of the government's actions is (politely) extremely naive.
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