Microsoft and its anti-competitive activities in the form of tying up window media player and internet explorer, everyone knows. Now there are new monopolies in Internet sector. These are Google and Facebook. In this post, I discuss briefly, how Google works and its history. This post will be followed by further posts on Google antitrust (anti competitive behaviour).
Internet is a network of inter-connected networks, connected through wire and wireless. So we need searching mechanism as we search telephone directory for searching telephone numbers if we do not know it. Similarly, on internet also we search in search engine if we don know the domain name of a website. So search engines play a role of directory. The new thing about this directory is that everybody is on it. So it is very lucrative for firms to advertise on it.
Google was started by Stanford University PhD students Larry Page and others in 1996. It started as an academic search engine without economic motive. Throughout time if we see Google business strategy has changed tremendously. After gaining the market share in general search, it has 99 percent share in India. See here. It has entered into advertising and vertical search. Vertical search are kind of specialized search like youtbe, Google Pic and others.
Now they have incentive to put there search results over the other organic search results. They have economic incentive to manipulate the search results in favour of companies advertising with them. Because they are getting revenue from them.
Some scholars comment that there is no switching cost on internet and other search engines are also available. So if Google does not give good results users will shift to other better search engines. So they have economic incentive in maintaining the quality of results they provide.
Currently, Google is facing competition issues in issues in various jurisdictions are:
1. Manipulating the organic search results.
2. Allotting trademark of one company to its competitor.
3. Denying access to other vertical search engines on its first page
4. Not sharing their search query content stored by Google.
5. Denial of essential patents access to competitors. See
Search engine industry pose new challenges to competition authorities in form of its new economics of low switching cost, availability of alternative services. Still there is a virtual monopoly. Further this issue will be discussed in post in future.
Internet is a network of inter-connected networks, connected through wire and wireless. So we need searching mechanism as we search telephone directory for searching telephone numbers if we do not know it. Similarly, on internet also we search in search engine if we don know the domain name of a website. So search engines play a role of directory. The new thing about this directory is that everybody is on it. So it is very lucrative for firms to advertise on it.
Google was started by Stanford University PhD students Larry Page and others in 1996. It started as an academic search engine without economic motive. Throughout time if we see Google business strategy has changed tremendously. After gaining the market share in general search, it has 99 percent share in India. See here. It has entered into advertising and vertical search. Vertical search are kind of specialized search like youtbe, Google Pic and others.
Now they have incentive to put there search results over the other organic search results. They have economic incentive to manipulate the search results in favour of companies advertising with them. Because they are getting revenue from them.
Some scholars comment that there is no switching cost on internet and other search engines are also available. So if Google does not give good results users will shift to other better search engines. So they have economic incentive in maintaining the quality of results they provide.
Currently, Google is facing competition issues in issues in various jurisdictions are:
1. Manipulating the organic search results.
2. Allotting trademark of one company to its competitor.
3. Denying access to other vertical search engines on its first page
4. Not sharing their search query content stored by Google.
5. Denial of essential patents access to competitors. See
No comments:
Post a Comment