Snapping up competitors and potential competitors, on the other hand, as Google is doing, and using your might to unfairly boost them, is pretty old-school anticompetitive behavior. Here’s how Pearlstein puts it:
The question now is how much bigger and more dominant we want this innovative and ambitious company to become. Google has already achieved a near-monopoly in Web search and search advertising, and has cleverly used that monopoly and the profits it generates to achieve dominant positions in adjacent or complementary markets. Success in those other markets, in turn, further strengthens Google’s Web search dominance and reduces the chance that any other competitor will be able to successfully challenge it.
Nicely done.
Because some folks are envious or wary of Google's success, they yearn for the Big Brother State to bust 'em up. They simply call Google monopolistic and refer to Google's honest, lawful means of acquiring property and wealth as unfair. "They are too big to exist!" they'd cry.
Nice. If only we could thus employ arbitrary govt force to ensure "fairness" everywhere!
In reality, govt antitrust begets real monopoly.
The sad irony here is that the would-be enforcer of fairness is in fact the most powerful and unruly monopoly of power in existence: the central govt.
#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 15 Dec 2010 at 06:26 PM