Question

Do you think Google’s dominance of the Internet search market is detrimental to consumers and/or firms? Why or why not?

Answer 1

According to me Google’s dominance of the Internet search market is detrimental both to consumers and firms. Though Google has earned its position by its better algorithm but this dominance exploits both consumers as well as other firms.

In case of consumers, they are deprived of freedom of choosing from enough options; if anything is to be searched consumers generally Google it and the preference of results are of Google’s interest. Other search engines might provide us more relevant searches according to our needs. Google abuses its dominance in the search engine market to wash away its competitors of other market such as comparison websites. Consumers are deprived of better relevant choices for themselves.

In case of other firms, they are down in the market as compared to Google. Google captures almost 90% of the market users, which leads to a generation of huge amount of revenue for Google. Other search engines such as Yahoo, Bing etc are unable to collect enough revenue from the market because of Google. This is a situation when the other search engines might run into losses just because of Google’s dominance, which is a huge problem for other firms in the market.