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by dragonwriter 3624 days ago
> In this thread a lot of people don't understand the meaning of monopoly and assumes a monopoly is only synonymous with the companies they hate. It has more to do with having a dominant control over a market and abusing that dominant position to own advantage.

No, it just has to do with the former (usually defined through possession of pricing power, which is very hard to argue Google has in many of the free services in which it is dominant.) The latter is abusing a monopoly, not having one.
1 comments
toomuchtodo 3624 days ago
> (usually defined through possession of pricing power, which is very hard to argue Google has in many of the free services in which it is dominant.)

They can dictate AdWords pricing though, no? And where else are you going to go? Bing?

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dragonwriter 3624 days ago
> They can dictate AdWords pricing though, no?

Perhaps; they certainly have a very large share of search advertising and its a paid market, but whether they have pricing power is a fact question that I haven't seen strong reasons to believe either way on. Its pretty clear that there are competing places for online, even search-specific, advertising, and that firms make cost-benefit considerations in choosing these; its not clear to me that there is any range in which Google can increase AdWords prices without losing some business to its competitors, even if AdWords is so attractive at its current price point that it draws the vast majority of spending.

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green_throwaway 3624 days ago
> They can dictate AdWords pricing though, no?

It's an auction model. The buyer literally sets the price.

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toomuchtodo 3624 days ago
And Google dictates the rules of the auction marketplace.
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dragonwriter 3624 days ago
> And Google dictates the rules of the auction marketplace.

Every company "dictates the rules" on which its sells product. Pricing power -- the key test in antitrust for a monopoly -- requires that they be able to change those rules so as to raise prices within some range without business moving to alternatives; in the case of AdWords, it would mean that Google could make it more expensive for the same results without any net migration to any other advertising vendor.

Is that the case? I don't see compelling evidence either way.

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green_throwaway 3624 days ago
In a way that has never been suggested to harm consumers or be even remotely anti-competitive. So your point being?
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toomuchtodo 3624 days ago
Point: Google is a monopoly. I don't believe enough research has been done to decide if they've used their monopoly in an anti-competitive manner.

Interested to see what the EU conclusions are.

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