Thursday, December 16, 2010

Is Google Too Big to Shop? - NYTimes.com

“Convicted and regulated monopolist” appears to be an inevitable part of Google’s future description

“Fair and square.” Those words — which also appear in Mr. Pearlstein’s column— represent the crux of the debate. Does Google, with its market capitalization of $189 billion, 23,300 employees, and vast array of online businesses, compete fairly?

According to Gary Reback, the lawyer who spearheaded the antitrust case against Microsoft in the late 1990s, the answer is no.

“The acquisitions are interesting, but they’re the tail, not the dog,” Mr. Reback told DealBook. He said that the antitrust case against Microsoft was analogous to the situation surrounding Google, which he argued is using its dominance in search to push its own content. “Microsoft bundled the browser with the operating system and gave preference to their own, a lot of people worked very hard to break that monopoly, and now Google is getting away with everything that Microsoft did,” Mr. Reback said.

Is Google Too Big to Shop? - NYTimes.com

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