Folks in the tech industry have for the most part been conspicuously silent, at least publicly, about the Federal Trade Commission’s lengthy investigation of and apparent intention — perhaps as soon as year end — to file an antitrust case against Google for monopolization.
The Wall Street Journal reinforces my earlier posts about the threat to innovation posed by premature government intervention into the technology marketplace.
One year ago, the Wall Street Journal and other business publications reported that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had launched an investigation into “Twitter and the way it deals with the companies building applications and services for its platform.” Let’s hope the FTC’s 2011 Twitter investigation is mothballed in 2012.
Google doesn’t act like a monopolist and shares none of the characteristics sheltering classic monopolists from competition. Its astounding success in Internet search is universally regarded as a consequence of better design, superior code, better products and plain old hard work. Like Lewis Carroll’s other queen, the Queen of Hearts, Google really has no power at all.
While telephone subscribership has now become ubiquitous, increasingly many citizens — especially twenty-somethings — no longer use landline telephones, instead going completely wireless. Pollsters, however, still base their surveys on landline phone subscribers
According to the New York Times, Texas attorney general Greg Abbott has launched an antitrust investigation of Google, based on the concept that deviations from “search neutrality” are anticompetitive and unlawful. Texas Attorney General Investigates Google Search | NYTimes.com. The examination involves the fairness of Google search results, a concept called search neutrality. Some companies worry Google […]
This is a video clip from the panel on Law and Policy for Social Media which I moderated at last week’s 140 Characters Conference in Los Angeles.
Wrangling over the proposed Google-Yahoo advertising deal makes one wonder whether scale, a virtue in Silicon Valley, can also be a vice. With apologies to economist E.F. Schumacher, big isn’t bad anymore, it’s good.