Google: We're not pushing our gear over rivals Eric Schmidt claimed in a letter to the US Senate's antitrust subcommittee that Google's huge array of web properties are not "separate products and services" offered by the company. The Chocolate Factory's chairman made that assertion in a follow-up missive to questions lobbed at him during his testimony to on Capitol Hill in …
That is all.
Google invented it, they patented it, and that's why every other search engine is shit compared to Google.
Isn't this what patents are about? You have a good idea, nobody else can copy it for the length of the patent availability.
Or are we now saying that patents are only valid upto the point when Microsoft throws a hissyfit and gets it's senate buddies on the case...
The only thing Google is replacing are sites that provide localized searches for information and very interesting to note that most of the companies backing this complaint are people I already had entered into my "block from search" before all of this started. When I'm doing a search I want to find the product I'm looking for and not find myself in some product search site that offers no more information than the search page I just left.
I admit some people may be confused (what, with google's search being called google, the same name as the company) but i think google can do what they please with their own search engine. If people are that bothered they will stop using it. If these other companies have such an issue they can write their own search engine and get it to where google is now because, at the end of the day, that's what this is really about... google's position, not what they do with their products. Everyone wants a piece of the guy in front (Just look at Apple).
Exactly, changing search providers is dead easy.
People keep comming back to google exactly because of the results they offer. If you search for calendar and google shows Google Calendar on top instead of whatever product the competition has the user is pleased and comes back for more, those who aren't happy can go to bing, siri or whatever.
I just did a little experiment; I typed the word 'search' into Bing, then into Google.
Bing gave me search.com, yahoo, then google
Google gave me bing, search.com, dogpile, then 4 results for yahoo.
Bing did not list itself at all on the first page; Google listed itself 8th.
I was expecting more of a smoking gun..
Microsoft was convicted for bundling IE with their platform, essentially using it as a tactic to squeeze out competitors on said platform.
I think Schmidt is making a dangerously wrong argument about Google as a platform. Unlike Microsoft, Google has not offering a platform on which other search engines compete. Then creating their own search engine offering, bundled it with the platform and squeezing other search engines off the platform. Instead, the browser is the platform that Google, as a product, sits on top of.
Comparibly it would be like Microsoft having to offer not a choice of browser, but a choice to install Linux, Unix, OSX or Other OS when you first boot into Windows. Much as I'd like to see that choice and think it would be beneficial to society - it's technically not what the anti-trust case was about.
As one other commentard has stated already, I don't want to search for results on google, only to be taken to another limited search engine rather than what I was after.
With regard to Google's other services that it does offer in competing search results, it's not as though their rivals are investing development time on a specific app that sits on top of Google's platform that people can choose to install at will. It's an independent and free listing service where they have used an algorythm to determine what results they deem useful. As part of this service they display their own offerings.
Has Google anywhere published an algorythm that allows someone to install their search result into their search platform - that users can choose at will?
No-one complains that Tesco put it's own brand on the same shelf as other brands or that their brand is slightly higher or lower on the shelf than the competing brand. I don't hear calls for Tesco to offer Sainsburys own brands either. Neither are Tesco obliged to put my own home-made product on their shelves.
I may even find when I enquire about where to find canned food, that a Tesco employee advises me to go with their brand because it's cheaper - someone call the police!
Even if you believe Google should be treating their search results as a kind of entitlement list for number 1 spot, I think the demise of Buzz and Wave is proof that they are competing fairly in search results and have been beaten by rivals' better offerings.
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