Why Google Is Vulnerable to Feds, Not Microsoft Bing - Google's Web Purview is Broadening (
Page 2 of 2 )
Siva Vaidhyanathan, an associate professor of media
studies and law at the University of Virginia, recognized this when he told
CNBC's Maria Bartiromo in a segment aired on television Dec. 3:
"There's no reason to think that in five years
Google won't be the equivalent of the Web itself because it's active in so
many different areas of the Web, including hosted Web video and Web publishing."
This brazen unwillingness to leave any Web niche alone to
others is bound to foster fear and mistrust among startups in the space. This mass
mistrust sets it up to be targeted by the Justice Department and Federal Trade
Commission. Even now, the FTC is said to be
reviewing Google's $750 million bid to acquire AdMob, which IDC said would give
Google 24 percent of the mobile display ad market.
That doesn't come close to the company's paid text ad
market share of some 90 percent, but the FTC is scrutinizing it just
the same. This would not have happened three or four years ago.
Google
arguably put itself in the crosshairs when it tried to partner with
Yahoo in
search to thwart Microsoft. That gaffe has been eclipsed by the
negative attention Google is being paid over the Google Book Search
deal, whose
opponents claim the company's offer to digitize the world's
out-of-print books affords it too much control.
Even if government groups don't take action on Google at every
step, they are collecting evidence of Google's greed and use it as
ammunition for any future transgressions the company may make.
Who is to say what those will be? Google plays in some many Web circles that opposition and trust
issues can crop up on any front. However, experts agree that
Google's worst enemy is itself, or at least its Bigness, with the
feds coming in to burst Google's bubble.
In a New York Times interview face-off, Steve Lohr asked journalist Ken Auletta, who wrote "Googled: The End of the World as
We Know It" and Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures,
if Google is headed for an "antitrust collision."
Auletta replied:
"Americans have long been fearful of corporate power, and
companies with clout in Washington have assembled to urge elected officials to
circumscribe Google's power. The mountain of data Google collects is a source
of worry, particularly in Europe where privacy laws are more stringent. And
every powerful media industry — from newspapers and magazines to books to
television to movies to music — has rung the alarm bell to protect their
copyrights.
Although Google has become more aware of these threats
and has better armed itself to deal with governments, its executives also
believe they have powerful Democratic friends in Washington. They would forget,
at their peril, that Democrats traditionally warn of Bigness (except big
government) and believe in government regulation."
Though it irked him to agree because he dislikes
government regulation (find us a VC that does like it!), Wilson added:
"Google may well be headed for its own antitrust
collision. It is very dominant in search and even more so in search
monetization. There are other markets like mapping and related technologies
where it appears to be developing a dominant position."
As it stand now, Google's real-time search offering
should keep users from going to Bing or any of the startups hawking real time.
If
Bing or any other search player is to make headway versus Google, it will have
to keep innovating and hope that Google stumbles and finds itself in a antitrust
nightmare worthy of, well, Microsoftian proportions.
That is Bing's only hope of challenging the Do No Evil
Empire.
Indexing & Search Engine News & Reviews 
