Healthy Competition?
February 13, 2013
I read an interesting article the other day, “Google, the EU and Competition: Speaking Different Languages” by David Vranicar. It was a good beginner’s read from Tech News World about the intricacies of competition within the tech world via the US and EU.
“So this term “competition keeps popping up, but I wonder if maybe the term means something different to Europeans, or at least to European regulators, than it does in the U.S. I feel like in the U.S., “competition” refers to the process by which consumers pick out their favorite products and in Europe it might be more of the process by which companies are allowed and encouraged to enter the market.”
Vranicar talks about the idea of monopoly in terms of legality within the US and EU. This is where Google has violated the trust of Americans and Europeans. The European idea of monopoly centers around the term “harm.” If one entity has a monopoly on a service or product then others who seek to enter are harmed as are consumers who aren’t given a choice.
“Whereas in Europe, the point is made that Google, which has a much bigger share here —Google here is sort of 95 percent of searches, compared to the U.S., where it’s about 65 percent— so their point is Google basically covers the whole landscape.”
Now, not to throw a monkey wrench into things but I’m not sure that the author is correct in his assumption. I think that the “competition” we see — in smart-phone technology for instance — has in large part been taken out of the consumers hands, in the United States AND abroad thanks in large part to the patent wars, like the one Google is currently waging with Apple and Microsoft.
It keeps others from entering the market so is it really just a case of “lost in translation” between the bureaucracy and the techies?
Leslie Radcliff, February 13, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
