Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: United States vs. Google
but Oracle basically killed the DoJ when it won the PeopleSoft case. There is no such thing as anti-trust in IT anymore because market definitions are too fluid, something other vendors should internalise.
The EU – that’s a different matter (is it?). I am sure as soon as she is done with Microsoft and Intel, Neelie Kroes will be asking Google for documents on something… but that may be some time…
Read Nick’s piece. Its designed to make you think-which is Mr Carr’s role in the industry, the great debunker.
His commenter erkanteman, though, nails the real reason we wont see a case yet: “This posting seems to miss the point of the forementioned United States v. X cases. In the first one, the plaintiffs alleged that IBM was “monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer system market.” In the latter, plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft “abused monopoly power in its handling of operating system sales and web browser sales.” Thus, the cases were about some ways of acting, and not about some state of things. The market share of Google, which is a state of things, would not warrant a case against Google. Nevertheless, if Google acts in a way to monopolize the market or abuse the monopoly power, a case U.S. v. Google will be meaningful.”
As Google starts to create a walled garden however the pressure will inexorably rise. I used to use Writely with my corporate email address – but Google forced me to use its email system in order to access my Writely files. That is pretty classic market dominant behaviour….
stephen ogrady says:
October 13, 2006 at 4:17 pm
meh, i’m with Berlind: i’m more worried about Apple than i am about Google. Google’s lockins on me as a customer are pretty much zero.
if i don’t like their search, email, documents, and so on, i can walk away. easily.
as for the logins, it’s the same thing that Yahoo did with Flickr. should we be worried about Yahoo, too?
Artur Kosmala says:
October 14, 2006 at 10:04 am
Building zoos for disabled people is such a terrible idea, don’t you think?
It just smells no matter how many good ideas you layer upon it.
And popular vote? Give me a break.