Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Re: Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Carl E. Person — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:06:13 -0000

I am suing Google for monopolization, claiming that Google has a monopoly (a share of 66% or more)in search advertising, and that Google is using its monopoly to monopolize the monetizing of traffic for social networking websites, through its various deals with YouTube, MySpace and others.

You are invited to read my appellant's brief on appeal to the 9th Circuit filed on November 1, 2007, the very day that the New York Post, in its financial pages, features an article about Google stating that Google was expanding into social networking websites.

Links to my brief, the record, the NYP article and other information is located at www.lawmall.com/google

Carl E. Person
212-307-4444

Re: Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Mathew Ingram — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 20:56:35 -0000

You are quite right, Ari. A monopoly is not illegal -- but using that monopoly to distort the market, harm competitors or reduce customer choice is. As I said, I don't think a case against Google would succeed, but when it does things like putting its own products above other competitors in search results or AdWords, I think it comes closer and closer to attracting such a case.

Re: Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Ari Paparo — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 20:52:00 -0000

Being a monopoly is not illegal. Google could have 100% of search share and do nothing illegal. It is only the abuse of monopoly through pricing or tying that can cause problems. For example, if they required publishers to accept CheckOut in order to appear in search results, or if they required advertisers to buy display advertising with search.

Re: Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Mathew Ingram — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 20:05:48 -0000

I assume those percentages are so low because people don't tend to search for the bank, but rather go to the site directly from bookmarks or from other links, yes?

Re: Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Andrew — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:43:52 -0000

I agree, those two wouldn't be geekspots, but it's important to note that this is a terribly difficult question to frame and answer properly

For kicks, here's some statistics from the website of a regional bank with about 90 locations. These are the percent of all referrals by month for February-October.

Just an anecdote...

Google Yahoo MSN
1.4% 1.1% 1.1%
2.7% 2.3% 2.1%
2.8% 2.2% 2.0%
3.0% 2.1% 2.0%
3.1% 2.0% 2.0%
3.2% 2.2% 1.9%
3.3% 2.3% 2.0%
2.7% 1.7% 1.3%
3.1% 2.1% 1.8%

For a conflicting anecdote, my blog gets nearly 100% of its searches from Google: iwtiwil.blogspot.com

Most of my search referrals come from Wii Tennis terms.

Re: Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Mathew Ingram — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:33:09 -0000

A fair point, Andrew. That said, however, Rich's data for the New York Times and USA Today -- unlikely to be geek hotspots -- are still well over the 60-per-cent mark.

Re: Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Andrew — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 18:48:51 -0000

You need to make sure that the corpus of site you are examining isn't demographically skewed. If you look at tech sites (or even smart people sites :) ) then you will find a lot of people using Google (and Firefox).

Re: Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Mathew Ingram — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 16:44:42 -0000

:-)

Re: Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Rob Hyndman — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 16:40:13 -0000

Wot's this then? Internetlawyering without a license? Next thing you know we'll all play internetjournalist!

Oh ...

Re: Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Mathew Ingram — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 16:23:44 -0000

Mine show about 60 per cent of referrals coming from Google, last time I looked. And I would agree that share of search overall and share of search referrals are two different things -- but when it comes to questions of monopoly power, which is what an anti-trust case (assuming there was one) would look at, I think referrals would be more important than simple search itself. Of course, I'm not a lawyer -- I just play one on the Internet :-)

Re: Google: Anti-trust case waiting to happen?

Don Dodge — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 16:12:13 -0000

Mathew, Just curious...what do your traffic logs show? Mine showed 70% of referrals came from Google, which mirrors exactly what Skrenta found.

However, I just noticed that his link to WeBsideStory was from March of 2004...almost 3 years ago. A more recent press release from them says that Google accounts for 75% of referrals in the UK...more in line with what we are seeing. Here is the more recent link. http://www.websidestory.com/company/news-events...

In any case, there is a big difference between share of referral traffic versus market share of total searches. Either way Google is #1 so it is just academic.

Don Dodge