Poor Google? FTC Going After Google+...

The problem is when a company obtains an effectively monopoly for X - which may be perfect legal - but then leverages that to unfairly compete for Y.

Here is a silly example to illustrate:

If your online business relies on Google Adwords for 90% of your revenue, what if Google says your Adwords account will be canceled unless you also buy your milk from Google?

Needless to say, the local grocery store you normally buy milk from might be a tad upset.

That is the problem caused when Google starts leveraging it position in search to gain a competitive advantage over companies wanting to appear in search.

For example, your business is making airline reservations and because your business is so great you are #1 in Google's search.

Suddenly, Google decides it wants to offer airline reservations, puts its offer in the top couple search slots, and you immediately lose a third of your income.

The only reason Google is in a position to compete in the airline reservations business is because of its control over the search market.

.

"Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)" --> epic name :-)

Yupp, Google will get the same problems as Microsoft did some years ago. Now they even want to launch "Search plus your World". Personalized search results, where Google+ is prefered to the disfavor to Twitter and Facebook. That will be funny

Here's the thing..if those laws weren't set in place, we wouldn't even be talking about Google. Some other company would have a monopoly and not allow companies like Google to offer competition.

Ford or some other company would probably be ruling the world and a conversation about a search engine probably wouldn't even be happening.

I agree with you Dexx, you start a company, build it big, then the govt. then wants to tell you how to run it...very strange.
People have a choice whether or not to use a company or not.
Takes all sorts i suppose.


kevin

They don't want any company to be "too successful", which rates right up there in lunacy with people telling you that $xxx,xxxx is "too much money." Perhaps it is their own envy/fear of success? Hey Kevin...Canada94...but you're in the UK....?

No love lost between Google & I so I LOVE IT!

I could see this coming and quite shortly I expect the EU will start investigating too.


Here's a novel outcome - Google wrecks their core product by spamming their own search page to much with there other product lines and stuff your auntie and grandma 'plus one'd'. Another new bright eyed start up goes into search and takes them from behind.

I don't know about all you guys, but what I loved about google from the start was a lightweight simple search page with unadulterated results, it was pure search, that is now going out of the window as they are intent on dominating every other market and slapping it on the front page.

Google is a search engine, but the websites that people end up on are not theirs. So, Google does NOT deserve to treat those people's businesses any way they choose. Google would be NOTHING without the people who create the websites in the first place. Of course they will run their company how they see fit, but there is also a consequence for the decisions they make. Therefore, is it not common sense to have somebody to oversea "fair play" to some extent.

I think they should be investigated, Google is a great company..they created the greatest product! but once you reach a position where you own the market then you cannot play with it to and effect other businesses that depend on your service.

It is their service but it has a huge impact on the market so for them to show their results then that might cause a big loss for others.

Imagine there is one gas supplier in the world and they decided to change the gas type, imagine that all the cars engines and systems need to be changed to use the new gas to be able to work, it is the same idea, the gov won't allow them to do that, I am not saying that the gov is great but imagine if other businesses suffer then the gov has to bail them out ?

IMO Google are being nasty lately , they are trying to force results from their Google+ network ,I don't want to signout each time I search for something! or turn it off.. I am actually using Bing since Google announced their new changes few days ago.

Google is trying to take Amazon out of the game by forcing their ads to show in an aggressive way, but nobody can do anything since they have the right to put ads as much as they want..

What goes around comes around. Google has a lot coming back around. But seeing as how they are cozy and comfy in bed with the gov. they will likely come out smelling like a rose.

I personally don't see the issue with the new update. All it amounts to is having a better branding and social presense than you already do.

The only thing that changes is your friends on G+ will see a few results from yourself, it's blended in 100% with the rest of the search engine results and you can EASILY change to include ONLY personal or ONLY natural results with the click of a button.

What's the issue? Aren't we, as marketers, always praising "building a relationship with your customer"? Now that we have to do it in terms of SEO it's the "end of the world".

Seriously.. Some people need to make up there mind.. Do you want a relationship with your customers or not?

If you do, then stop complaining about the new update and utilize and profit from it. If not then change your settings to exclude personal results. Simple as that.

they said, fair games right?

Hey Alan!
Feel free to make some WSO's and sticky them in the WSO section!

Some interesting comments...

It's not that they are saying they are "too" successful, it is checking to make sure that they aren't 'abusing' their power, which is totally different.

If google provided fantastic search, and then provided a fantastic social site, then that would be one thing. But... If google say noticed Mark Zuckerberg was looking for porn through google through their search logs, then blackmailed him telling him that unless he included google search (or "gave up" facebook) they would make it public, that is something totally different.

It is fine if you become the best at something, or many things -- they are many large companies with many different brands (i.e., proctor & gamble, g&e, etc, etc) -- it's just making sure that there is not an 'abuse' of power.

John

Big Companies like Google when they do something that may affect the market FTC have to be involved.

When AT&T bought T-Mobile last year, FTC was involved to make sure, that it will not kill other competitors.

Increase your market is one thing, but you shouldn't abuse the power you have.

Look at it in a bigger scale, if there is only one company can provide internet in USA, and they decided to the service for $10,000 for home line, will that be okay ? or do you want to see FTC involved to prevent such a situation ?!

Yes they may just be scrutinized for up and leaving the web. If Att decided to close it's door without selling and wanted to take down there towers, what do you think would happen.

I am a firm believer in total free enterprise and I say if it happens it happens but the American Government wants to control everything for the good of the people and its just going to get worse.

LOL, this reminds me of the time I sent out a mailing, Subject was something like, Government has neighborhood monitors to make sure all neighbors exersize.

In the email I explained; We are giving the American Government so much leeway that pretty soon we will have a street monitor, we will be required to get up at 6 a.m. and exersize if we do not, the street monitor turns us in.

Don't think it can't happen, how about the laws that are blocking certain foods, the counties in CA that have adopted no toys in happy meals. Oh it will happen, When I do not know but it will happen.

I see both sides of the argument, but at the end of the day Google does whatever they want to their website.

Wouldnt the new search my world be beneficial to the monopoly situation as more people will use alternative search engines?

The problem I'm seeing with a lot of people is that they don't understand why we have antitrust laws in place. Because of this the perception is that businesses can do whatever they like or want to do. Sorry but this isn't the case and it isn't reality by any sense of the imagination.

The reason why Google seems to be under scrutiny at almost every turn is because they have become synonymous with search. They deliver so much information to the extent that they can in a single move create an anti competitive environment that can not only hurt other businesses unrelated to being a search engine but also hurt consumers as well.

Saying people can use another search engine isn't a valid excuse to justify what Google may or may not be doing.


Some of you might have read the above, but I want to add to this in order to give an example.

I was an insurance restoration contractor for many years and as such I dealt in areas where thousands of homes and businesses required repairs due to severe weather related events. In these circumstances all the insurance companies are required to pay for these repairs 100% minus the deductible.

If an insurance company decided it was going to dictate to contractors the pricing it was going to pay for line items to affect repairs and it wasn't going to budge a single penny over those prices that would be antitrust and unfair business practices not to mention unfair claims practices, bad faith and possibly tort. An even worse situation would be if a group of insurance companies decided together that they were only going to pay X for line items. right?

Why is this antitrust and unfair business practice you may ask?

Because its the policy holders right to choose whatever contractor they want to affect repairs and some contractors have very VALID reasons for charging more or less then the next contractor, however by taking the position I mentioned in the previous paragraph the insurance company as effectively limited the choices the policy holder has when choosing a repair contractor, and in some cases some insurance companies try to limit their policy holders choice to a preferred contractor who has colluded with the insurance company to only charge X amount. This always relates to sub standard workmanship and materials yet the policy terms state that policy holders are entitled to like kind and quality as a part of indemnification.

However, it isn't this way because on a whole because this would be a form of antitrust. If any of you have ever had a home owners insurance claim it says on your paperwork that this is an ESTIMATE for the repairs. An estimate is just that, its not the final price for repairs.

Apply this example to Google and its easy to see why they seem to be under the microscope at almost every turn.

Corporate regulation is not a bad thing at all - in my country we have avoided recession because we have a strong but highly regulated banking and finance sector. (Not the only reason, but an important one.) Although we all desperately depend on Google for search, and to provide our information to the searchers, Google also needs to be good corporate citizen (do no evil), mindful of the market dominance they have. As much as I admire the creativity and relentless expansion, Google needs to have someone keep them in check or else all e-commerce, all information provision will be totally reliant on a single company.

Nice post! Thanks for keeping people up to date on the intrusion of governement (by Dems & Rep!) on private businesses. It always proves to be worse for the consumer, and never has any positive effects . . . except for the government.

Government is the referee or umpire in situations like
this. Government wants to make sure that the lion and
the goat live on the planet earth.

Otherwise, sharp practices will stiffle the minnows and
we will have no choice.

In the book publishing world, there is some debate about Amazon being the #1 retailer for books.

Here's a blog post about it: A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: Presumed Inane

You might find it interesting.

The thing is they have a monopoly, and when you have that type of power, the rules change. For instance Microsoft currently has a monopoly on the desktop, and years back Google, opera, etc...cryed to the EU to force Microsoft to include a "browser choice" feature for versions that were shipped there, because they felt IE being in Windows wasn't fair...because it's not like you can't download another browser with IE? Of course EU being EU agreed and Microsoft who spends hundreds of millions of dollars promoting windows now had to give their competitors completely free advertisement. Is it fair? Absolutely not, but that's what money can do and the wrong kind of people in power. Also the irony is if you visit google.com with any browser than chrome, it advertises chrome with a download link and"A faster way to browse the web" which is misleading and false advertisement. They should be forced to list other top search engines on their front page in the EU...just like Microsoft was forced to do with win.

Also I think it's good they're keeping an eye on google, no one wants any single company to gain the power they have, trust me, that's not a good thing. Checks and balances are needed, and a single corporate giant is a scary thought. Imagine if they didn't break up the big telecoms back in the day(was at&t and I believe) there'd be no real mobile service providers today, competitive wise. So prices would be even worse and most likely so would the quality

To even further my example of why big business is not good, I read stories about walmart moving into a lot of small towns, and since their prices are so cheap everyone would flock to them, and the local mom and pop shops who were around for decades couldn't compete and had to go out of business. One particular instance I read where a local tire shop wouldn't go out of business, so Walmart started selling tires extremely cheap(at a loss) until the tire shop had no choice but to close their doors. The second they did, Walmart skyrocketed the tire prices...and since they had no competition now... everyone now loses but them. How do you beat a corp that has essentially unlimited resources? Take that poor fellow named Nissan who has been sued by Nissan automotive for like 10 years... See they know, having deep pockets that they never needed to win their cases, they just need to keep this guy in court until he went bankrupt....I think he did finally win, but he lost a great deal of money, and most wouldn't be able to fight as long as he did.

That is exactly what they would do . Look into it as the form of keyword research or IM . They would research there competitors and then they wouldnt set shop next door. They setup shop in the "middle" of four competing markets. Then they would drive the competitors business to them. So it hurt not only the store owners but the actual town and community walmart might not be in the town they drove that small business away from and well doesnt have to pay taxes to that town either. Of course let me guess? Whats wrong with beating your competitors. Well when you have enough money as walmart does. What if they just paid a top seo company to put up sites in all of the niche markets we all love? And now its all walmart sites displaying there products. That would surely make the internet fun. And they dont care if the internet is ruined they will still strive. Another thing they did some years back "with there deep pockets" was if a company wouldnt give them a price they thought was fair on the products they were buying. They would do two tihings. 1) Stop selling that product which is a BIG hit for that manufacturer 2) They would literally buy the company out through there stocks and own enough where they now had a say in how they sold there products! Ahh I could rant forever why big business control isnt good for us or the economy but I will save you guys the boring read

Good if they have a monopoly it is because they deserve it. This is a free market and that is why this country is great. If I don't like googles service I will use another service.

I am not a google Fanboy. Just a believer in the free market.

I Think this is just a warning for Google from the FTC.

Google is just improving the performance of their search engine and find if it compatible by their visitors by putting Google+ in it.

Google have more geniuses this is why have more features that help us more.