“Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said.” Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
…innovation ?
If Google monopolize the display ads land, competition should try a new innovative way instead to front face Google. ADvid against Googliath ?
It smells like music majors unable to adapt and are pushing hard to protect their old school market shares. Moaning on court to enforce their retard stance.
Google started from little if not nothing (a student MIT project) so why “competition” is asking for regulation ? Cannot compete, then litigate ?
Kochise
Edited 2013-05-24 06:49 UTC
Of course! Don’t you know that one can only be successful by exploiting and trampling those who aren’t? Success is evil, all must be given to the collective. </sarcasm>
This attitude is becoming prevalent in not only the people but the government in what could once be called the land of the free. In short terms: don’t bother to compete, litigate or the collective will go after *you* next. If you compete, you’re an evil bastard who needs to give everything to those who did not think of it themselves.
This is why *all* government protectionism must be eliminated. Patents, anti-trust, etc all need to go. Otherwise, we’ll see this cycle over and over again and true innovation will be quashed beneath a mound of bureaucratic nonsense in the name of “fairness.”
Edited 2013-05-24 13:21 UTC
Yeah, remember how great it was to have a single telephone company, that wouldn’t allow you to purchase your own phone? And how you couldn’t hook up anything to a phone line that they didn’t rent to you, so you had those awesome acoustic phone couplers?
I also know what could have happened if the government hadn’t barged in. We’d have had others making better products. No patents would mean they couldn’t be stopped from doing so, and no anti-trust works both ways. Would it have happened as quickly? Probably not. On the other hand, if it had been done this way, we may not be stuck with the antequated telephone network we now have (8 khz, limited numbers). Make no mistake, the market will always balance itself in time. When enough people get dissatisfied, enough of them will band together to make something they see as better. Whether it takes off depends on the perception of others of course, but if there are significant advantages there will always be competition. Too many people want government quick fixes, but quick fixes always unravel. There are no quick fixes in life, and we’ll be better off once we all understand this. The solution is not to complain that one company’s not being fair, but rather to band together and do better.
Breaking up AT&T was a quick fix. And it was awesome. When competition was allowed back in, prices dropped, innovation came back to life.
Government isn’t always the best answer to every solution, but sometimes it is.
Like many anti-trust cases, its about a monopoly using its market power in the monopoly area to dominate a new field as well.
Too much power naturally leads to the abuse of that power. Its good that the government occasionally steps in to limit the power of large corporations, and kind of sad that it doesn’t do it more often.
Also, Wasn’t it stanford that gave birth to google? Larry and Sergey both got their masters from Stanford.
http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/