March 5, 2010

Is Google the new Microsoft?

The European Union has just began a preliminary antitrust investigation of Google . This is very interesting. Many people cannot help but relate this to Microsoft, as Google is growing into a new IT giant that threatens Microsoft, which has been the major antitrust target for the past 10 years.

We all see Google's presence on the web today: over two thirds of the search market share and the online advertising market share. Google's growing its business from the web search to many domains: information services, e-commerce, software, platform, cellphone, etc. Such a dominance leads one frequent question: is Google a monopoly? At least the former antitrust highlight (Microsoft) thinks so. And some people think more than Microsoft (Google is a dangerous monopoly -- more than Microsoft ever was).

What do you think about Google? Is it fair to compare Google with Microsoft in the context of antitrust? Do you think Microsoft is a monopoly? Share some of your thoughts here.

5 comments:

nancy lattroh said...

in my opinion google is a great search engine.everytime i am looking for something my first choice is google you always find whatever you are looking for.google may be the prefered search engine but that does not make it a monopoly since there exist other search engine.google has a lot of features that such as google translate,google docs that i like and there are all free.in one sence,i think that google is establishing a situation of monopoly.google has almost every application that we need on a computer.since google is even offering microsoft office service and if they continue to develop new products no company will be able to compete with google.yes i think its fair to compare microsoft with google.since the rise of the computer era everybody use microsoft and no company has been able to compete with them i think it's the same thingh google is doing.there is a lot of choice out there but are they really able to satisfy people like google and microsoft do? i don't think so.

omar razzaq said...

Google is a great search engine, information company, operation system provider what ever you want to call it. The U.S. government and other international governments see that Google is providing a freedom to any person with a computer and an internet connection. That freedom allows you to view any type of information such as government documents, food recipes you name it. They get all flustered because free information is given out. We are taxed on almost anything that we receive or buy and now they want to tax and charge for information that is supposed to be free. That is why they are claiming Google is a monopoly so that people will have a negative view of Google. Microsoft won countless dismissals in the court room so will Google.

David Youmans said...

That is a really interesting take on Google. I never considered it to be a monopoly like Microsoft has been considered. In my opinion, it's becoming all too common for these "take overs" of industries to occur. It tends to discourage competition rather than encourage. Also, there's always that danger of becoming so big that rules and regulations get "overlooked" because of the power and revenue that is created.

Lauren Hoffman said...

I think that Google does offer Microsoft some competition, however I don't think that it is an extreme threat to Microsoft. Microsoft has been around for years, many people have grown comfortable with it and depend on this for everything. Also, being that in most schools even offer a course that consist of learning to operate the Microsoft program. If Google was given this some treatment, many people may become to gain this same comfort as Microsoft. As far as search engine, Google is used more than any other engine, but it is not a total monopoly. I believe that Microsoft is still a monopoly, but a the rate of growth with Google, it will not remain that status for to long.

Michael Kahn said...

I agree with David Youmans. I never really considered Google to be a monopoly at all. Google is great competitor to Microsoft and they are simply scared. They have been hot for so long now companies like Google and Apple are threatening their stranglehold on the computer industry. I do not find Google to be in anyway a monopoly, though. With programs like Microsoft Office and Apples counterpart, Numbers, Pages, and Keynote, there is no way of justifying google to be a monopoly