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Comment by bhauer | Hacker News Reader

But it's not. I never use Google for searching and I do a lot of searching. It's merely the largest search engine.

"It's the largest search engine, but I never use it, so it must not be a monopoly" :slow-clap:

The lack of a viable alternative is the pretty much definition of monopoly. Just because lots of people use something doesn't mean there is a monopoly.

Def: "the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service."

Google has a very nice search engine but I personally fail to see how they control the supply enough to be considered a monopoly. Sure most people use them, but that is by choice. There are viable alternatives.

Standard Oil only maxed out at 90% market share. US Steel only reached 60% of the steel market. There were banks other than JP Morgan. A more nuanced view of monopoly has to do with how much power they can wield in the markets.

And of those which ones had successful antitrust litigation against them? Just Standard Oil I believe.

Microsoft was declared a monopoly when every computer in my school was a Mac. Internet Explorer was considered a monopoly when everyone I knew was running Netscape/Firefox. It's obvious that the US federal government and the EU disagrees with you. You don't have to have 100% control over a market in order to be considered a monopoly.

"Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power"

It's not just the EU that thinks Google has a monopoly in search. The FTC investigators from the US that looked into thought so as well. Their bosses decided not to act on it though, for reasons unknown.

The 160 page document[1] is very comprehensive, and worth a read. There's a few surprising things in there. The way they manually adjusted the algorithm several times specifically to demote "comparison shopping engines" (CSE) is very telling. Their manual testers liked CSE properties, and found the results relevant and useful. Google kept changing the criteria and questions until they found a combination that justified demoting them...so that their own CSE would get more traffic.

One of the conclusions: "Google has unlawfully maintained its monopoly over general search and search advertising"

[1]http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/

The reason the FTC investigation was never going to go anywhere is because Google lacked durable market power. The reason they can't be accused of a monopoly is because they can't "raise prices" using their market dominance. Monopolies are not illegal in the US. Utilizing monopolies to harm consumers is.

I don't know how definitive that is. Search may not have "prices", but they can use their monopoly in search to manipulate consumers for products they sell that do have prices. The CSE situation I mentioned is specifically something that does involve prices.

I can't find anything that says that's the reason action wasn't taken either.

I suggest you look into the former FTC Commissioner, Joshua Wright, which should give you some idea where the interests of the FTC's leadership has been, and likely will continue to be: https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/google-gets-a-seat-on-th...

This says a lot more about why the FTC didn't go forward with its staff's recommendations to go forward with charges than anything else.

You somehow managed to contradict yourself in just a couple of sentences.

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