Fire Alarm Companies

Senate hearings with Google yesterday, we noticed that the inquisitors have focused on the fact that Google is large or a problem. Senator Franken specifically on this point: the "greatness" of Google is a concern. And, of course, true that large firms tend to be more capable of using his position to make decisions that are detrimental to consumers. But this is a correlation, not a causal relationship - and only because the company is big does not automatically make things worse. Mathew Ingram has a more thorough analysis I've seen so far of the hearings, which analyzes the issues raised, and there was no evidence Google is harming consumers. What surprised me was how Senator Blumenthal specifically asked if Google will do its own production, less functional. Why would he do it? This seems to be the exact opposite of what should be an antitrust investigation. As noted in Ingram:

The hard part comes when Barnett said that Google's dominance in these areas affects consumers as they face higher prices and reduced innovation. This is the heart of antitrust case (including the hearing of the Senate is not technically part, but is currently in the Federal Trade Commission and possibly the Department of Justice, and because they share responsibility both competition). It is not enough that a company like Google is dominant or monopoly, even - that Judge Learned Hand wrote: ". The successful competitor, who urged to compete, must not be activated when wins "

And it is not even enough to say that a company with a monopoly that is using the wrong position. It must be shown to consumers or the market as a whole are harmed by this behavior, either through higher prices or reduced choice, or both.



The problem with a company like Google - in relation to a company like Microsoft, the last major antitrust investigation in the field of technology - is that users do not pay the Most of their products and services. Microsoft's conduct potentially affected physical goods such as computers and software, that people had to pay. What Google's behavior is affected? I'm not going to pay more to use Google Maps it would with any other service, I do not pay more to use Yelp as has been somewhat disadvantaged by the attempts of Google to "scrape" the local content of the recommendations.
certainly "big" companies can become companies that abuse their position and harm consumers, but nowhere, no one has shown any real evidence of damage. To date, the focus was mainly on the fact that Google is great ... and how some competitors did not, as they can not follow. But the evidence of rising prices? There's just no