FTC Watch.org

Editor’s Note: Mr. Sullivan concludes:

In the end, reviewing the report is frustrating. There are serious industry-wide issues about how consumers interact with search engines. There are also serious concerns about what rights publishers should have in regards search engines. These, among others, deserve serious attention. These are also rarely Google-specific issues.

CRE agrees these issues are not unique to Google, thus the need for the FTC to adopt the CRE petition asking  for establishment of the standards for reviewing the matter.

Oct 11, 2011 at 9:36pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Editor’s Note:  Our Readers are encouraged to post their comments in the space provided below or in Public Discussion Forum to the right of this page.  CRE will review the comments and submit a report to the FTC and publish on this website.

Calls for enforcement actions are premature until which time regulatory agencies specify the norms to be used in judging unfair practices for web based firms, see the CRE petition to the same.

In addition as CRE sets forth in the aforementioned petition, antitrust enforcement actions taken in two-sided markets, which are the markets in which web based firms  such as Google, Facebook and Twitter operate, without a deliberate recognition of their unique properties will cause more problems than they solve.

From: BusinessWeek

The company doesn’t make anything, and it’s not clear its tactics in the market hurt consumers

By Mathew Ingram

As Google’s federal antitrust case wends its way through the halls of justice in Washington, investigators for the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Dept. will have to consider some fundamental questions about how to apply antitrust law to a company whose primary products are free—and whose monopoly was arguably gained not through coercive relationships but through the power of an algorithm. What does the word “monopoly” even mean when applied to a Web-based entity such as Google? Are network effects a barrier to entry, as some have argued, or are online monopolies inherently more fragile than their real-world cousins?

Editor’s Note: Prior to responding to a request for the investigation described below, the FTC should  first respond to the petition filed by the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness requesting that the FTC define unfair practices for web based firms and allow the public to offer comments on the said definitions, see  http://www.thecre.com/ftcwatch/?p=117