If Google's rivals are being unfairly treated by Google's search results, then they should make their own search engines that are fair. Yes, I understand Google has an advantage by having a head start, but that hasn't stopped for example Facebook from overthrowing MySpace for social networking. A rival company with a better idea or better results could challenge or even defeat Google without getting even more government involvement in the internet.
People voluntarily choose to use Google, at least on deskt
google doesn't just have a head start, they have a monopoly position, once you are a monopoly the rules of fairness change and it isn't enough to simply say someone can start their own business.
Yes, but unlike traditional monopoly, there's no cost of switching and no cost of entry. If you are the only person selling burgers in the world, you can bully your suppliers not to sell to anyone else, you can price your competition out of business, you can buy up sites and not use.
None of those things apply on the internet. If I found another search engine that worked better than Google, I'd switch tomorrow. So far, no dice.
There is a massive cost of entry and a massive cost of switching, we aren't talking about web users who can switch search engines, we are talking about businesses that need to advertise their services, switching to another service means they don't get the exposure and advertising they need to survive as google has a monopoly on the advertising industry, building your own service would cost billions as you need to gain a foothold to make your advertising have some value, to do so would likely cost 10's of billions in free advertising to attract enough customers to make your advertising business viable.
Again? (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
google doesn't just have a head start, they have a monopoly position, once you are a monopoly the rules of fairness change and it isn't enough to simply say someone can start their own business.
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None of those things apply on the internet. If I found another search engine that worked better than Google, I'd switch tomorrow. So far, no dice.
Re:Again? (Score:2)
There is a massive cost of entry and a massive cost of switching, we aren't talking about web users who can switch search engines, we are talking about businesses that need to advertise their services, switching to another service means they don't get the exposure and advertising they need to survive as google has a monopoly on the advertising industry, building your own service would cost billions as you need to gain a foothold to make your advertising have some value, to do so would likely cost 10's of billions in free advertising to attract enough customers to make your advertising business viable.