Does the US care about these antitrust restraint of trade allegations?

[cnvi]

[cbsnews.com...]

[MrSavage]

I mean think about it. They own what exactly? Search, both desktop and mobile. Share of that? High 90% and higher in mobile. They own online advertising. They own online video (YouTube). They own Android. They own maps to a large extent. They know more about audiences and habits than any company on planet earth. It's a great American success story so why would the US care? None of the things stated in my comment have caused me to avoid Google or Google services. Having said that, I just say that anything related to online must go through the Google filter or Google tax. They get in on pretty much anything and everything and branch out into other money making ventures. They are just doing what any good 'ol corporation would do. I tend to ask myself what they don't control rather than what they don't control. Not sure about whether the US cares, but certainly old timers around here don't much care. I think that's called "I'm getting my pockets filled so things are all good out there". I just have my popcorn nearby. Just keep on rollin, that's what I say. Let's see how idiotic things get before the dummies figure it all out.

[Shepherd]

I have always been slightly torn on this subject. google moved into my niche in 2012 and google has made significant efforts to keep their visitors from finding us ever since. google's actions have cost us millions. That's what they are supposed to do, they are our competition, they are not supposed to help us.

Who is harmed? google's competition is harmed. It's could be said that google's users are harmed. google's customers are likely harmed.

Competition: that's just business.

Users: two problems here, first it is rare that the user (searcher) notices they are harmed (if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it), second, what duty/obligation does google owe the user, likely none.

Customers: Well now, here's a pickle the government could and probably should use to beat google with: adwords. google's customer's are the advertisers, google owes a duty to the customer. I don't think it would take much digging at all to find out that google oppresses competition in the adwords "auction" in favor of it's own products/services/investments.


Would it be fun to see the government force google to show us to their visitors, sure, in the short term. Until the government came around to tell me I had to start promoting my competition on my website, then not so much.

If I were to discuss google with my representatives and/or attorneys I would be discussing how google is harming it's customers via their adwords product.

[MrSavage]

Can we just consider something very basic? The Adsense or webmaster guidelines that Google says we must follow. Remember that thing about ads above the fold? These are a big no no. We can't do it, they clearly do it. That's not manipulation of competition? We also can't run many affiliate links, or at least there is a Google threshold where they will sink your site because of having too many. Yet, are there Adsense limitations? I guess to an extent there were, but certainly affiliate sites/links were treated differently. Affiliate links are competition to Adsense. It's not a great example, but they sure put the fear of god into people about affiliate links and there was no clear criteria about what they considered too many, but Adsense had a clear limit. They could have easily made actual affiliate link limits per page and then people could have made better use of affiliate programs. But they didn't. Instead they just threatened people by saying your site could tank into nothingness. Again, very anti competitive but NOBODY said S about it.

[MrSavage]

A very well done segment by 60 minutes but I don't think Google should be allowed to release a "statement" in defense and have that read unchallenged. That's weak on 60 minutes part.

The story doesn't even touch on the answer box and the use of other peoples images and content that is used on Google pages now.

The story doesn't touch on YouTube being listed in the SERPS when it's their own property and there is a specific "video" section of search you can use if you so choose to want video search results.

The story didn't talk about the effect Google has on the newspaper industry as they are forced to the online model. A legit study was done in Canada about the portion % Google gets and the portion % left for the newspaper. It's astonishing. So this dominance goes far deeper than a couple of whiners out there who lost a couple ranking positions.

The story doesn't touch on Google main page providing a link under the search box to their latest product. People want to talk about Super Bowl ads and what those are worth? Well, how much is a line of text with a link to buy one of the Google products on the main Google homepage under the search box worth? I mean how many million (billion) views/eyeballs is that getting? Fair? Maybe if other people, like say Amazon could advertise there. But they can't. I went to Google homepage to search, not to buy that product so in essence, they are abusing their position. No other company can put their shopping link there before the real ads show up on the SERPS. Again though, not talked about on the story because most of these guys don't get it.