Antitrust law is designed to protect consumers, not competitors, and our acquisitions have created great things for consumers. Our 2004 acquisition of Keyhole led to Google Earth, which for the first time provided free satellite imagery for consumers. Our 2005 acquisition of a small company called Android — and our investment in the technology that Andy Rubin was developing — later led to the creation of the Android mobile operating system, which has injected more competition and openness into the smartphone space.
but still, they are big… and competing against them is difficult. but hulu does it against youtube. cuil/bing/wolfram do it against the search engine. flikr/facebook/aviary against picassa.
there’s lots of competition still… but it’s niche competition.
if on the other hand, we take for granted that google is ‘good’ and not ‘evil’ then it might make even more sense that we allow them to continue to get big (presumably that wouldn’t necessitate ‘evilness’). this is my principle for buying into google… they get big, and stay straight, and eventually become (even-more)ubiquitous. then they become the first strong AI and take over the reigns from government. in just a single tiny leap.
right, then. obviously, that’s not going to sit well with your notions of likelyhood, and probably not with mine either… but it is an interesting thought experiment. why shouldn’t we allow a company that seems to be doing so much good continue to flourish? are they too big to fail? yes… probably, but they’re also solvent. are they too much competition? competition for what… they don’t charge anything except to advertisers.
oh well, that’s an interesting notion. so, we’ve got a new sort of printing press available to us. it’s the search engine. if you look at SEO ranking tools, none of them are the least bit concerned with bing or yahoo… and rightly so. Google has the lion’s share of search volume. and they do a damned good job of it.
but what about the consumer of advertising? the marketing firms no longer have the golden access pass of a relationship with clearchannel. drive down the freeway and look at your advertising options. you don’t have any. listen to the radio and consider your advertising options. you don’t have any. well… that’s not true, you obviously have at least one: clearchannel.
but if you’re advertising online, you get to bid on your keywords, against koke and pepsy and any other brand… your advertising is just as relevant as theirs. this is great, because it serves to level the playing field. increasing the pressure to perform for everybody.
okay… so there’s my rant on that.
thoughts?