[nostromo]

I think it's difficult to make the anti-trust case against Google.

Unlike Microsoft's control of the desktop, people choose to use Google everyday. It would be so very very easy to switch to Bing tomorrow (even easier than choosing not to use Facebook!) but people have chosen not to switch.

Just because you have a lot of marketshare doesn't mean you are a monopoly.

It's also quite easy to say that consumers will benefit from the increased competition with Facebook. This is what anti-trust tries to promote, not restrict.

[dolinsky]

To add to this...just because you have a monopoly does not make what you've done or what you do illegal.

[kevin_morrill]

Antitrust doesn't really on reason. It's a completely subjective law. In one breath you can be guilty because you have prices too low, in another because you have prices too high. Ultimately, it relies on how much pull you can exercise of politicians and bureaucrats.

I am not saying it's a good situation, just that that's reality.

[flomo]

That is likely the case, but technical fora tend to be overly concerned with "tying" (e.g. Internet Explorer or iTunes), while overlooking the indisputable fact that Microsoft did run a "trust".

MS had a set of legal contracts which gave them total control over PC distribution and pre-installed software. (And, they even had deals with their main competitors, Apple and IBM.) That was a much lower bar and easier for the government to make their case. In fact, the IE "tying" case was ultimately tossed out.

If anything, Google probably has more potential Antitrust issues in their relationship with Android handset makers than they do cross-promoting products on the web.

[kevin_morrill]

Tying as a legal issue has never made sense to me, and seems incompatible with private property and contract law. As a consumer, I don't have a right to an imaginary version of Windows without Internet Explorer that I wish Microsoft would build. Likewise, as a handset vendor, I don't have a right to an imaginary contract with Google where I get everything I want on my terms.

Tying laws, and antitrust broadly are a way for regulators to forcibly dictate what companies create. As stated above what's really revolting is this typically comes as a result of competitors lobbying to cripple the top player in the industry.

[pavel_lishin]

> It would be so very very easy to switch to Bing tomorrow (even easier than choosing not to use Facebook!) but people have chosen not to switch.

I assume that Bing also offers free e-mail with as many features, a calendar system, an equivalent of Google Reader, etc? Unless it can deliver all of that, it wouldn't be a very easy switch for me - whereas ditching Facebook is literally something I contemplate every time I access it and see the crap that's on my feed.

[bad_user]

Microsoft has alternatives for mostly everything, including Google Apps if you're willing to switch to Exchange and pay the price for that.

But all these Google products are hard to switch from because they are kick-ass. It's hard for me to switch away, not because Google has me trapped, but because the competition sucks.

You can export all your data from Google and import it wherever you want. I did so with Google Reader (since you mentioned), but I came back to it since it's better than any desktop client I tried.

But this doesn't mean Google has lock-in, unless you extend the definition to include "being better than the competition" and that shouldn't trigger antitrust regulation; and if it did, you could say that the system is terribly broken.

[nostrademons]

Microsoft does...