The government leaves Google alone—what it means for users

[JMH]

The biggest tech news this week is: Google is safe.

Of course, from a business perspective, Google never looked endangered in the first place. The company has close to 70 percent of the US search market, and pushes 90 percent in some parts of Europe; in mobile search, it utterly dominates, with around 98 percent. Google's market share in the US would surely be even higher but for all of the computers pre-installed with Microsoft software.

When a company gets that big, its biggest threat starts to come not from its competitors—who, at least in the Web search business, are few—but from governments, or big public-relations slip-ups. "We’ve always accepted that with success comes regulatory scrutiny" was Google's very diplomatic way of describing that predicament yesterday.

Now the FTC's antitrust investigation is over, with no charges brought, and some quite minor changes to Google's business practices. On the patent front, Google will make a sacrifice that's more substantial—but still doesn't outweigh the enormous benefits of being "in the clear" as far as the feds are concerned.

The government leaves Google alone?what it means for users | Ars Technica

 

[cluberti]

They're not considered being anticompetitive at the current time. It means business as usual, and that means that de facto whatever they're doing is legal as far as the current administration is concerned. If anything changes drastically, then I'm sure one of their competitors that wants this reinvestigated may get their chance.

I actually feel like Google is indeed fine, for now. Their practices very well could get them in trouble, as they're behaving an awful lot like the Microsoft of the 90s, but the government doesn't feel like these practices are harming consumers or the market, so they're not doing anything that would warrant further investigation.

I do feel like the big word here is "yet" - if they get a lot larger in another marketplace (Android, for instance), or if some of their competition disappears, this will probably be revisited again, and the results at that point could be different. Antitrust isn't just about harming competitors, it has to be at the detriment of the consumer or the market. When that happens, obviously, the government will be forced to step in and take it's pound of flesh. Until then, though, at least here in the US it seems nothing more is going to happen other than "business as usual". Competitors will have to step up their game, or get out of the way.