The DOJ's Crusade Against Productivity
The feds want to punish the best of the search engines for its successes.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has sued Google, alleging that the latter has obtained a monopoly in the relevant online search market and that it maintains this monopoly through anticompetitive business practices. The government’s case doubly falters since it will not likely prove either claim.
This author discussed all this earlier in a blog post and expanded on the non-anticompetitiveness of Google’s conduct this week in Townhall:
Based solely on Google’s astounding success, the agency seeks to transmogrify ordinary, pro-competitive, pro-consumer business practices into nefarious, monopolistic conduct.
Such default agreements well predate Google’s stratospheric success. The DOJ case admits it can trace Google’s deal with Apple to be the default engine for Apple’s Safari browser to 2005. That year, Google only represented about a third of the search market, rivaled closely by Yahoo.
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Google’s partners elect to establish a default engine on their devices and browsers for their users’ convenience, and they choose Google Search due to its superiority over such competitors as Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo; Apple CEO Tim Cook has labeled Google Search “the best.” Indeed, users revolted when Mozilla Firefox in 2014 made Yahoo its default browser, after which Mozilla prematurely terminated its contract with Yahoo and reinstated Google Search. On Bing, Microsoft Edge’s default search engine, users search “Google” more than almost any other query.
Google’s partners rely on the revenues the default agreements provide. For example, in 2021, Google’s payments comprised 83 percent of Mozilla’s revenue. These default deals have, moreover, deflated the prices of Android-based devices, increasing the competitive pressures on Apple’s iOS family.
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Despite much overwrought fretting about “exclusivity,” any consumer who prefers a non-Google search engine may switch quickly and easily to their preferred option. Many default agreements also do not preclude manufacturers from providing other search engines with second-tier promotional status, for which Google’s competitors readily pay
What’s more, these default deals have clear offline analogues. Food manufacturers, for example, regularly pay grocers “slotting fees” to receive more prominent shelf placement.
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Google achieved its current success by developing a product that far surpassed its competition — a status it has maintained through continuous, energetic innovation. Google will not, however, remain perpetually dominant. It faces growing threats from such marketplaces as Amazon, social media, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence. But consumer choice and robust, free competition — not Washington’s bureaucrats and lawyers — can resolve these struggles best.
In essence, the government’s case seems to presume that once a company reaches a certain level of success, its competitors deserve a handicap. It is as if the NFL, after Tom Brady’s fifth championship, decreed that the Patriots would be allowed to pass the football only during the first half of all subsequent Super Bowls they were to play in. Neither the real-life antitrust theory nor the NFL’s hypothetical one would increase competition.
Some Wisdom
Edmund Burke, the ever-prudent conservative, wrote this in his Reflections on the Revolution in France:
“Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste; because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery.”
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Some Beauty
This from Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost:
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs; O, then his lines would ravish savage ears And plant in tyrants mild humility. From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain and nourish all the world: Else none at all in ought proves excellent.
Many call Shakespeare a wordsmith. At first blush, applying smith to the Bard may seem to give his work a quality that is too indelicate, too harsh, too brawny. He intricately wove together words, phrases, and verses into beautiful, sparkling masterpieces. Smith, however, can describe many artisans who do such careful work — e.g., silversmiths and goldsmiths. It is this sort of smith that Shakespeare resembles best.
Some Humor
Speaking of Burke, sometimes one suspects that some “conservatives” do not understand that the following is a joke.
Now go actually read Burke.
Sundry Links, &c.
Sea lions remain ungovernable.
Anthony Blinken is a competent guitar player and a fair singer (?!?!?).
Waino gets a hell of a send-off.