http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/business/global/google-submits-proposals-to-resolve-european-antitrust-concerns.html?ref=business&_r=0
Google for the past 3 years has been locked in an anti trust case against the European union and also Icomp who claims that they are monopolizing the internet search engine market and making it impossible for other people in the market to claim a stake. Recently they had an agreement with the country of France for 60 million euros to agree to remove the anti trust laws and make Google a viable search engine again. After an extensive search however it was found that even though Google did not break any laws, it just had many complaints filed against them due to the fact that they were pretty much a monopoly in Europe Google is supposedly looking to end the case as soon as possible but many competitors are looking to prolong the case for obvious reasons.
3 comments:
Interesting to hear about problems google is beginning to face as it grows accustomed to being one of the world's largest companies. All this legislation, right or wrong, must be incredibly time-consuming and costly for google to be involved in and I believe it will be interesting to see if they purposely go out of their way to avoid further legislative backlash in the future.
The article mentions that part of the case against Google is that it made deals with big advertisers to ensure they would not advertise on other search sites. I agree that Google having what seems to be a monopoly, or at least a significant advantage, over European sites is not exactly fair; however, the idea that Google should pay millions of dollars to pay 60 million euros to fund Icomp development seems unusual. This goes beyond simply giving other companies like Icomp space to compete, but also actively contributes to their growth. It almost seems like trying to take some of Google's success and giving it to Icomp- which happens to be backed by Microsoft, another company often accused of monopoly.
We are seeing some very interesting signals from this segment of the market as a whole. First with Apple significantly pulling back, and now Google's chariman Eric Schmidt is selling 3.2M shares of his stake. It is my opinion that this market is very mature, and that innovation is at a bit of a stand still at the moment. It is hard to bet against a giant like Google, however at the price they are trading at it may be best to just sit on the sidelines here.
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