Anti competition would be using one product or market dominance to enforce another product or restrict/handicap/some other better word that my pre-coffee brain is having trouble thinking of the use of a product from a competitor. I have never seen google do anything like this (though that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen), though I have seen stuff that definitely go against these anti competition claims.

Examples: google mobile apps. It would be anti competition if they were only released for android, but are they? No, google also makes them for another OSes (iOS included).

You need a google account to use some google products (like G+) and you need an email to login. Do you need gmail to make a google account? No you dont! If you did, you could accuse google of anti-competition.

Now I’m not saying that google isn’t anti-competitive, just that I haven’t seen it happen. It is possible that I have missed some examples of anti competitiveness, but I dont think google is anti competitive.

I have read accusations that after google buys a product it jumps in its search rankings. Now if this isn’t due to some normal function of the search ranking (example: a jump in the number of searches due to the news of google buying that product) but do to deliberate tempering to promote the product, then yes that would be anti competitive.

Tying up google in red tape and internal investigations probably would give competitiors a better chance to compete. But should that happen if google is fairly competing? In that case, wouldn’t that be “unfair” towards google?

All I want people to realize is that google spreading to (and being big in) other markets doesn’t mean they are anti-competitive.

The article doesn’t in any way say that Google should be allowed to break the law, nor that anti-competition is okay. Did you even read the article?

Mobile operating systems
Turn by turn navigation
Local recommendations
Productivity software
Publishing
Etc

If Microsoft acted in this way the tech world would be up in arms. I don’t understand why Google would be above the law?

Also I think your wrong that these Anti-trust case are ineffective. Tying up he company in red tape and internal investigations is very effective in giving the competitors he chance to compete. Just look at what has happened to Microsoft or AT&T. Since the cases against them they are now shadows of their order selves.

Regarding YouTube:
http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-1b-revenue-2011/
I don’t see how you can describe it as a minor player with such revenues.

On to Android:
IIRC it is closing in fast on 50% global market share. Even if Google doesn’t profit directly from sales, that doesn’t mean a lot of money doesn’t exchange hands via ads etc.
Once again, claiming Android is a minor player or an also-ran is a very strange claim to make at this point.

Please note that I did not say either YouTube or Android were anywhere near dominant enough to be considered monopolies. I am simply arguing against your statements about their supposed insignificance.

Secondly, the purpose of the article seems to simply question whether antitrust verdicts and subsequent restrictions benefit consumers. As others have pointed out, I highly doubt Microsoft would be in it’s current position of “also-ran” in so many endeavors had it not been for their antitrust verdict. Apple probably would have gone under, Google may have been very difficult to choose as a default search engine, and Windows Phone might be the leading handset today because of vendor lock-in agreements.

Google has unquestionable market dominance – while this alone is not a crime, doing almost anything to protect that dominance at the expense of competitors is. The rules change when you’re the lead dog, and what’s perfectly reasonable for Bing to do to build it’s business may be entirely unreasonable for Google to do. By virtually all of the anecdotal accounts, they’ve crossed that line, and the only question now is how they will be forced to change their practices.

Finally, their defensive argument that Bing may overtake them in a year just makes them look like idiots to anyone who actually reads the comScore results. Growing by 0.2% is hardly an imminent threat.

I’m deeply offended by your suggestion that Google should be able to break the law with impunity. They operate in a country that leads the world in prisoners; where half of those prisoners are non-violent recreational drug users, most of them taxpayers; where marijuana arrests are UP this year; where the economy has been smashed by the banks and Wall Street and yet no arrests; and where African American men are hunted down and shot in the street by police who are completely out of control. There’s a cop who tased a little girl recently. Why should Google be able to break the law?

The Microsoft anti-trust trial did have positive effects. We learned about all the illegal stuff Microsoft had been doing and they were forced to stop doing it. We lost all respect for them, including Bill Gates. He left the industry only a few years later. Microsoft stock has been flat since it came out that they did not earn their past success, and so therefore could not be counted on to earn any future success. It came out at the trial that Microsoft had told Apple to kill QuickTime or lose Microsoft Office, the highly-profitable office suite that Microsoft had been making at that point for the Mac for over 10 years. Without Microsoft Office, maybe Apple doesn’t survive to get to deliver Mac OS X, but without QuickTime, no iTunes. After the trial, Microsoft suddenly was willing to commit to Mac Office for 5 more years, including moving it to Mac OS X, and without QuickTime having to be killed. If not for QuickTime, Microsoft goes on to dominate post-CD music with their Windows Media Audio that only plays on Microsoft devices, instead of Apple dominating it with standardized ISO MPEG-4 audio that plays on any device, not just Apple devices.

So if not for the Microsoft anti-trust trial, we may not have had iPod, iPhone, iPad and Intel Mac. Not because there were better alternatives, but because Microsoft abused its IBM-given monopoly over IBM PC systems to try and gain a monopoly over audio video. What Google alternative is being killed right now by anti-competitive behavior and we’re not defending it?

And to be clear: competition is when you work hard to become the best figure skater, and you skate a better performance than anyone else, and you win; anti-competition is when you win the same figure skating competition by hitting a better skater in the knee with a pipe so that they are not even allowed to compete. Yes, we have a responsibility to stop anti-competition. It is in everybody’s interest to have a fair market where consumers see a fair competition between all vendors. Otherwise, your only choice is Windows 98 and liking it.