Trust laws have been a fragment of the government of the United States for over a century when they were first put in place during the Reconstruction times post-Civil War. They helped to protect economic competition between industrial giants (some would say "robber barons") that would use vertical and horizontal integration to defeat their competitors -- taking advantage of the manufacturing process and absorbing rival companies to become their own.
On Tuesday, Google was attacked for their position as a possible trust, given their history of a wide range of market products, from GMail to their consolidation of YouTube and now the takeover of the ISP market with Google Fiber. The Federal Trade Commission decided in a trial that Google was ultimately beneficial to competition rather than detrimental, and that they would not press charges against the company.
Google was "quick to claim victory."
However, Google has been criticized in the past for its practices, which many believe are harmful to the state of the industry. It tends to favor its own search results in its search engine, which is criticized by its rivals and even the United States Congress. Regardless, the search results tend to be beneficial rather than harmful to its customers, and therefore it does not violate any anti-trust laws. In order to stage a lawsuit on the company, the plaintiff would have to prove that Google has compromised its potency as a search engine and a communications network for its customers, of which there is little evidence of insofar.
Even if such a lawsuit were claimed, it would be difficult to file simply due to the vast complications of Google's operations. Google's search engine algorithm is constantly changing and therefore difficult or outright impossible to stage evidence for.
Even then, Google has a great variety of rivals, including Microsoft's Bing, who are constantly staging legal wars against the company. The company has dodged anti-trust lawsuits for now but in the future it will be difficult to say.
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/03/technology/google-ftc/index.html
No comments:
Post a Comment