Texas Opens Antitrust Case Against Google

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Uh oh, it looks like Google is about to learn what the phrase "you don’t mess with Texas" means first hand.

As Search Engine Land first reported, we've recently been approached by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office, which is conducting an antitrust review of Google. We look forward to answering their questions because we’re confident that Google operates in the best interests of our users.
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What are the bad things Google has done?

They did the Wi-Fi leeching thing, which was very nasty.
They spit on net neutrality for cellular carriers, which they should have left their nose out of until our wireless networks had matured. That was nasty.
They... um... I can't think of anything else.

They provide excellent services to the public free of charge, in exchange for allowing your browsing habits to be tracked. They provide extraordinarily affordable and easy to configure alternatives to office and outlook for businesses without the loss of privacy. They aren't driving the cost of advertising through the roof, they're being very fair with that. They treat their employees exceptionally well. They bring a lot of money into the US and keep most of it here. They came out of the blue, challenged and defeated Yahoo, provide the only competition for Apple's iOS (I wouldn't say it competes with BlackBerry, just yet), and out innovate any company worth more than one billion dollars. I wouldn't say Google has a monopolistic bone in it's... body.

As far as I'm concerned, monopoly = prices go up, quality goes down. Buzz off, Mr. Attorney General.
 
"As far as I'm concerned, monopoly = prices go up, quality goes down. Buzz off, Mr. Attorney General."

Well, I agree with you about this particular case. In fact, I think antitrust law in general is there so that crappy inefficient companies can compete against their more efficient competitors.

Just look at the recent Intel antitrust garbage. Is anyone honestly saying that CPU prices are too high? But the government, knowing nothing and being able only to look at market share without realizing that Intel drives their share up by offering better service sees only the complainers over at AMD.

(This isn't to say AMD has never been competitive. When Athlon 64 came out they actually did a good job and made some gains. Unfortunately, they couldn't stay up there.)

The fact is, true monopolies and oligopolies (absent government intervention like mandating a monopoly such as AT&T before the government broke it up) cannot maintain monopoly prices in a true free market. The reason is obvious. When they do this they encourage competitors, they encourage short sellers, resellers, etc to come in.

Only in the rare case of resource monopolies (diamonds) is there power to enforce a cartel like that, and even with diamonds both the Russian, South African, and various other governments are heavily involved in keeping those rocks "scarce."
 
xanas3712 said:
Just look at the recent Intel antitrust garbage. Is anyone honestly saying that CPU prices are too high? But the government, knowing nothing and being able only to look at market share without realizing that Intel drives their share up by offering better service sees only the complainers over at AMD.
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lol what? Did you even read what that was about? Intel *punished* companies that bought AMD products. That isn't competition, that is strong-arming people into doing what you want. AMD isn't a bunch of "complainers", they had a *far* superior product that was cheaper but they couldn't sell it because companies were afraid to offend Intel. The antitrust against Intel was about the Athlon64 days, by the way. Intel fully deserved the shitstorm they got for their bullshit.
 
Why doesn't Texas start with ISPs that abuse their monopoly statuses first? I bet the Texas citizens would much rather see their ISPs investigated that google.
 
fattypants said:
Why doesn't Texas start with ISPs that abuse their monopoly statuses first? I bet the Texas citizens would much rather see their ISPs investigated that google.
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This. While I can get time warner cable (and I have 30/5) my only alternative is crappy ATT DSL..

Well when I upgraded from 15/2 to 30/5.. my speeds did increase.. but they're not consistent at all and I'm forced to use their bullshit router. Which the wifi likes to die on all the time, not to mention the internet randomly cuts out.
 
fattypants said:
Why doesn't Texas start with ISPs that abuse their monopoly statuses first? I bet the Texas citizens would much rather see their ISPs investigated that google.
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WHOA! Stop that talk! That would serve the public's interest far too well. If we had investigations like that, where would politicians get their campaign funding?

Seriously, this is my personal hot issue. In my area, the big players are Comcast and Time Warner. Comcast doesn't touch Time Warner's service areas and vice versa. It IS criminal. It IS coordinated. It IS done to prevent customer's from raising their expectations and allow the cable companies to get away with poor service.

This would hurt a lot less if I lived in a Comcast area, as they offer 50mbps and 100mbps lines. Instead, I'm limited to Time Warner who has 18mbps down and a measly 1mbps up. It's so bad, I have to buy two internet connections. I have two 18mbps/1mbps lines and instead of paying a very reasonable $30/mo for 18/1 service, I have to pay $60/mo for the second connections resulting a total charge of $90/mo.

/rage

Now that I think about it, I'm going to cancel one of those connections and go out and buy something with WiMAX. I hate giving Time Warner money.
 
so much for texas being friendly to big businesses....

guess that only applies to oil and gas companies......
 
Google doesn't do enough.....I'll be happy when I can google where I left my damn car keys.
 
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