diberry - 3:06 pm on Nov 2, 2012 (gmt 0)

The governments take a very different view of Google's responsibility than most webmasters do. The US Congress demanded that Google somehow just not index pirate sites - sounded simple enough to them! We webmasters know it's not. Google tried to explain to them there's no way to do that within the algorithm, but Congress' responses indicated they either didn't believe 'em, didn't get it or didn't care.

And the reason for that is you're through the looking glass once you're a monopoly. It's not illegal/bad to be a monopoly, but the tradeoff is that the government holds you to different standards than smaller businesses. What's fair to you is no longer considered; what's fair to consumers is all that matters. If Google faces a US DoJ trial like MSN did, they could well get a ruling which demands something they can't provide without entirely changing their business model. They might even decide it's better to just drop search entirely rather than try to comply (highly unlikely, I'm just saying it can get weird).