Will
rivals do to Google what Facebook did to MySpace?
Tuesday July 19, 2011 01:03:45 PM,
Gurmukh Singh, IANS
|
Toronto:
Will rival research engines do to Google what Facebook did to
MySpace?
That's possible after US antitrust regulators last month started
investigations against the search engine for abusing its dominant
market position, say experts. The US action is the second
antitrust investigation against the search engine after the EU
launched first such action against Google last year.
"Google's position is more precarious than it first appears. If
consumers and advertisers decide that Google's methods are biased
or it has dropped the ball, defection to (Microsoft's) Bing or
elsewhere could follow rapidly - witness the migration from
MySpace to Facebook,'' says Wayne Crews of the Competitive
Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Criticizing antitrust investigations against Google, he says in an
article in the Vancouver Sun that US action against the search
engine will undermine competition.
"Rivals claim that Google manipulates its search results to
disfavour competitors' offerings and bolster its own properties.
How Google ranks sites or steers traffic is its own prerogative.
Yet even if it were to 'unfairly' favour its own properties, it
cannot escape the ruthless market consequences of those actions,
as competitors would be ready to exploit its folly,'' says Wayne
in the article written jointly with Alberto Mingardi, director
general of Instituto Bruno Leoni in Milan, Italy.
The authors say government intervention will undermine healthy
competition.
"Competing search engines like Microsoft's Bing are gaining
ground. Others could be created by alliances among firms, should
it come to that. It wasn't long ago that many of us were 'locked
in' to the Yahoo and AltaVista search engines. The very emergence
of Google would have been impossible if antitrust enforcers'
vision of Internet market share were true.''
The authors say if US antitrust investigations create the
impression among consumers and advertisers that Google's methods
are biased, "defection to Bing or elsewhere could follow rapidly -
witness the migration from MySpace to Facebook.''
MySpace was the most popular social networking site till 2008 when
Facebook overtook it.
According to the authors, "Google's market power derives from
consumers choosing to use it. To forcibly deny that choice is
wrong in its own right and short-circuits the competitive process
that yields consumer feedback and keeps companies on their toes.''
Google last month received a formal notification from the US
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it has begun a review of its
business.
"It's still unclear exactly what the FTC's concerns are, but we
are clear about where we stand. Since the beginning, we have been
guided by the idea that, if we focus on the user, all else will
follow,'' the Mountain View, California-based search engine has
said in its reaction to the antitrust notification.
Google is currently the world's second most valuable company after
Apple.
(Gurmukh Singh can be
contacted at gurmukh.s@ians.in)
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