Here’s what analysts, journalists and and others are saying about competition in search.
Advertisers and Publishers
Craig Macdonald, CMO, Covario (search engine marketing firm)
"[Google is] quite transparent when it comes to how they determine Quality Score, and advertisers who do not benefit from this understanding either have not put in the work, or are simply unhappy with the result (they are bidding on irrelevant keywords, which hurts quality score, which raises price — those are the publicized rules of the auction — play or don't play)....Our position then, as it is now, is that there is no antitrust case in paid search due to the way pricing is set in the market for paid search keywords. Google acts as market facilitator, not market enforcer....Google is going to be a more effective arbiter of their algorithm and relevancy than the government, and that any action that would allow information to be disclosed that allows advertisers to game the system against those with truly relevant content is bad for advertisers, bad for consumers, and bad for the search industry. Google is incented to be good at this, and to put the needs of the consumer above the needs of the advertiser. Google provides a service to the market — it organizes information more efficiently than anyone else out there right now, and makes it available to consumers and to advertisers. And they should be allowed to do so unfettered." (Multichannel Merchant, July 27, 2011)
George Michie, CEO, Rimm-Kaufman Group (search marketing agency)
“Government regulation of Google or the search industry would be a disaster for consumers and advertisers alike. Legislating organic search algorithms would destroy the incentives to innovate, and is completely unnecessary as Google's incentive is to provide results that the users want. If Google fails in that, users are one click away from a different search experience with a different engine. The notion that somehow advertisers are hostages to Google is also absurd. There is an ever expanding array of advertising opportunities online and off; Google has grown to be a major player precisely because the advertising works so well for both advertisers and consumers. Moreover, advertisers have complete flexibility in how they buy advertising from Google. Advertisers determine how much they are willing to spend for each click on each ad. The price is not set by Google, it is set by the advertiser. Google is a platform on which advertisers compete with each other. May the best companies win and may government stay out of the way!” (Statement, July 15, 2011)
Ross Twiddy, Director of Marketing, Twiddy (North Carolina vacation rental company)
“As a small second generation family business on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Google’s advertising system has revolutionized our vacation rental business Even though the Outer Banks of North Carolina is a small area, we’re competing on a national level for summer vacations, and we’re able to host more summer family vacations than ever before. In our experience, I cannot see the logic in government involvement as I believe this would suffocate the resources required for the ever changing and sophisticated online advertising arena.” (Blog, July 10, 2011)
Rich Masterson, Chairman, CampaignGrid (online advertising platform for candidates and causes)
“The fact that Google has become a worldwide leader should not make us feel threatened; it should make us feel proud. Our Government would do well to think about ways of encouraging success stories like Google, not spend taxpayer money on multi year investigations into something as innocuous as advertising. Consumers and advertisers have a choice and if Google violates the trust of either then the market will respond accordingly and it will require neither years of investigation or the using precious taxpayer funds of a country already overburdened with national debt.” (Blog post, July 15, 2011)
Industry Analysts
Danny Sullivan, Search Analyst, Search Engine Land
“Google’s offered more than web search for a very long time. Image searches, for example, stretches back to 2001. It is a search company. It is supposed to offer search products. It makes no sense to expect those search products to be merely listing web pages. If people are doing shopping searches on Google, it should evolve its product to have a specialized shopping tool. That’s what its users want.” (July 15, 2010)
Greg Sterling, Analyst, Search Engine Land
“Antitrust law is not supposed to protect companies from competitors but protect the marketplace in general and consumers in particular. Right now there’s no evidence that Google has harmed consumers. And the booming startup market suggests that innovation hasn’t been adversely affected by Google’s rise.” (Search Engine Land, June 27, 2011)
Paul Gallant, Research Analyst, MF Global
“We suspect the dynamism of the Internet services sector will lead the FTC to proceed cautiously in deciding whether to pursue a formal complaint against Google. Bing/Yahoo has recently taken share from Google search, and more fundamentally, new advertising models are emerging via apps, mobile services, and potential game-changing services like Facebook that individually or collectively could challenge Google’s leadership position.” (MF Global Research Note, May 2, 2011)
Journalists and Commentators
Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt
“There Is No Such Thing As Search Neutrality, Because The Whole Point Of Search Is To Recommend What’s Best…‘Search neutrality’ is not a problem because ‘search neutrality’ makes no sense. The whole point of search is to be biased. The whole point of search is to recommend which sites fit your query best. ‘Search neutrality’ isn’t search at all. It’s a list of unsorted and totally useless links.” (June 18, 2010)
Financial Times – Editorial Page
“[‘Search neutrality’] is an impractical and unnecessary idea. As Marissa Mayer, Google’s head of search, argued in the FT, it is better for different search engines to compete vigorously with each other to produce the best and most relevant results. Google may be highly successful in search, but competition is only a free click away.” (July 15, 2010)
Harry McCracken, Time
“[Google] has every reason to do whatever it takes to preserve its algorithm’s long-standing reputation for excellence. If consumers start to regard it as anything less than good, it won’t be good for anybody—except other search engines.” (March 3, 2011)
Ryan Singel, Wired
“No one would win if government regulators got access to Google’s algorithms, except maybe Bing. Hell, it’s not even clear if there was an agency that would be qualified to actually understand it, if they saw it.” (July 16, 2010)
Kathy Kristof, CBS MoneyWatch Contributor
“If the government does have some information about how Google is violating the nation’s antitrust laws, let’s hear it. […] Let’s be clear, market dominance does not equal antitrust. To have violated antitrust laws, you must be actively working to reduce free competition. When it comes to Internet search and advertising, Google is dominant because they’re better. Unless there is some evidence of coercion that we’ve yet to hear, this is not the same as the 1990s Microsoft antitrust case. […] Google, which now offers its own browser called Chrome, clearly does not pressure anyone to use either its browser nor its search engine when we access the web from our homes and offices. When I open up the Chrome web browser, it’s just as easy to get to Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, as it is to get to Google.” (June 23, 2011)
Sam Diaz, ZDNet
“Finally, in the aftermath of one of the most turbulent economic times in nearly 100 years, there’s some good news coming out of a sector that has already proven to resonate through national and global economies. And now the government wants to start poking around one of the big players because it might be too big? […] Is it un-American for the government to launch a probe of one of the leading companies in an industry that has the potential to put the U.S. back on the global map?” (June 24, 2011)
Policy and Legal Analysts
James Grimmelmann, Professor, New York University Law School
“Of course Google differentiates among sites – that’s why we use it. Systematically favoring certain types of content over others isn’t a defect for a search engine – it’s the point.” (Some Skepticism about Search Neutrality, January 2011)
Herb Hovenkamp, University of Iowa Law Professor
"There's no lock-in with a Google search engine. If you want to have six different search engines all on your desktop, you can do that. It's all free. That's a very different situation than Microsoft was in. ... It was very hard to escape from the Microsoft operating system, but here the escape costs are zero." (The Huffington Post, June 24, 2011)
Jonathan Askin, Brooklyn Law School
"I'm not sure [the FTC is] ready to launch a real antitrust inquiry into Google given the inability of Internet companies to maintain control over their consumers...Someone could come along and create a new algorithm that's more effective than Google's. It's just much easier to compete against a Google because there are no monumental start-up costs to coming in and providing a competing capability." (The Huffington Post, June 24, 2011)
Lauren Weinstein, Co-Founder, People for Internet Responsibility
“Recent calls for regulatory oversight of Google Search are way off-base, and – beyond the obvious First Amendment concerns – threaten to undermine Google’s efforts to provide the best possible natural (organic, algorithmic) search results via Google’s continuing work to avoid distortions in or gaming of those results.” (July 18, 2010)
Eric Goldman, Associate Professor, Santa Clara University School of Law
“[I]t’s difficult to imagine how regulatory intervention will improve the situation. First, regulatory solutions become a vehicle for normative views about what searchers should see – or should want to see. How should we select among these normative views? What makes one bias better than another?”(The Next Digital Decade, 2010)
Ryan Radia, Competitive Enterprise Institute
“This investigation may be welcome news to Google's rivals, but it's bad news for consumers. When slow-moving bureaucracies meddle with fast-moving Internet markets, consumers lose. The FTC's investigation reeks of a desperate attempt to make headlines and appear 'relevant' in an era when firms of all shapes and sizes must work harder than ever to keep pace with the competition. If the FTC truly cared about consumers, it would recognize and celebrate the thriving Internet marketplace and focus its limited resources on pursuing wrongdoers who are actually guilty of harming consumers.” (CEI, June 24, 2011)
Geoffrey Manne, Lewis & Clark Law School, and Director of the International Center for Law & Economics
“Google today is not the Microsoft of 1998, and even if it were, subsequent history has demonstrated that consumers are better served by letting rapid technological change play out in digital markets than by heavy-handed antitrust remedies. The fact that Google's rivals -- including Microsoft itself -- are complaining about the company suggests, ironically, that Google's practices are in fact pro-competitive and thus pro-consumer.” (National Journal, June 24, 2011)
Gary Shapiro, CEO, Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)
“The fact that any given company is big or successful does not inherently make it bad. Unfortunately, in America it seems that our most successful and innovative firms attract the most intrusive regulatory scrutiny. These expensive, drawn-out investigations deter innovation, siphon money from productive uses, and place additional burdens on those trying to grow our economy. We urge the FTC to conduct its investigation narrowly and swiftly, and let Google get back to the critical business of innovation and job creation.” (CEA Statement, June 24, 2011)
Robert Lande, University of Baltimore Law School
“Observers said it would be tough for the FTC to prove any harm to consumers. ‘Nobody really cares about harm to competitors,’ Lande said. ‘If there's no harm to consumers, the case is over before it begins.’" (Sacramento Bee, June 25, 2011)
Glenn Manishin, Antitrust Attorney
“The only thing that keeps Internet users returning to Google — which unlike AT&T or Microsoft has no technological means to lock consumers into its site or services — is running faster than its competitors. Antitrust law should intervene in that race only if Google acts to trip a competitor — if it cheats.” (National Law Journal, July 4, 2011)
Ed Black, President and CEO, Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA)
“Big doesn’t automatically equate with bad. So far, it appears that Google is big enough to change the game for dominant players. But being big and disruptive is different from be being dominant and abusive. We trust that government regulators will distinguish between solid evidence and speculative or subjective data, and will analyze the motives and credibility of all interested parties. We have some general concern that increasingly, we’re seeing antitrust charges manufactured and wielded as a cudgel by companies hoping to find any way to hurt successful competitors. Their motives have less to do with the public interest than with a drive to protect their own entrenched business models, bloated margins and legacy revenue streams.” (CCIA Statement, June 24, 2011)
Robert Hahn, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
“Antitrust is built on models of slow-changing markets in which the name of the game is to prevent sellers from charging more than costs. By contrast, high technology in general and information technology in particular is all about charging more than costs – that is, earning amazing returns on amazing innovations.” (Forbes, June 27, 2011)
Adam Thierer, Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center at George Mason University
“The critics will be hard-pressed to show how consumers have been harmed by Google’s practices. The firm’s success seems tied to high quality products that users prefer over rival services. Importantly, barriers to entry are low: there’s nothing stopping new entrants from innovating and offering competing online services to match Google. It’s vital to remember that antitrust law, at least in theory, is supposed to be about protecting consumers, not competitors. Some of Google’s competitors would benefit from Google being hobbled by law, but that won’t keep America’s high-tech sector innovating and moving forward.” (Forbes, June 30, 2011)
Diane Katz, The Heritage Foundation
“[I]n seeking protection from competition, [companies] effectively become creatures of government—their success a product of regulation, not ingenuity or utility. Notwithstanding all the rhetoric about protecting ‘consumer choice’, such intervention inevitably harms consumers more than it helps.” (April 6, 2011)
David Balto, Former Policy Director, Federal Trade Commission
“There is really not much evidence that consumers are harmed in any respect by Google’s conduct. To put this in perspective, you need to know that the FTC brings cases in about one of every 10 matters that they open.” (San Jose Mercury News, June 23, 2011). “[Balto] says the big hurdle will be showing that Google’s search results were deliberately biased or harmed consumers in a significant way.” (The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2011)
Thomas W. Hazlett, Professor of Law & Economics, George Mason University
“[Google is] being schooled by the market even now. Their company is in legal jeopardy due to complaints from rivals – most sensationally, Microsoft. [...] The Obama administration might want to examine the policies that steer ‘innovation’ in the fast-growing competitor-on-competitor lawsuit industry. [...] The fact is that Google dominates search, with some 65 per cent search share, because it is competitively superior. [...] That is a pro-consumer outcome, even if – in reality – it takes multiple clicks, and some user investment, to determine how Bing or Yahoo measure up. Here’s the nut: consumers gain when Google innovates, and rivals lose. [...] If the Obama administration truly wants innovation, it ought to encourage more of what they are drinking in Omaha, and less of the trouble brewing in Washington, DC.” (Financial Times, June 30, 2011)