Question

• Do you think Google’s dominance of the Internet search market is detrimental to consumers and/or firms? Why or why not?
• If you do think it’s detrimental, what remedies might be available to make the search market more competitive?

Answer 1

It is true that Google is eroding customer's freedom to choose from wide variety of online products. In this way customers are harmed as they do not get the best possible deal and also firms are harmed as small firms are not shown on the search engine.

Consumers are harmed because they might not get the most relevant results but rather those which are in Google’s interest.Trusting Google to give them a result that corresponds to market reality, consumers will in fact find the merchants who are inside the Google Shopping box. What consumers will not know is that there might be other comparison sites offering other merchants, products and prices that could be better or more relevant for them than those displayed in Google’s own service.

Suppose I want to purchase a camera and I use Google as search engine.While using google I only get prominently the results served by Google Shopping, which display the biggest merchants operating in a particular market. When I use some other less poular search engine I find some best deals being offered by less popular and small retail firms which are completely ignored in google's shopping box.

Google abuses its dominance in one market (search engines) to push away its competitors in another market (comparison websites). This result in consumers not getting the best available offers. This harms innovation and compromise on quality.

So, to conclude we can say that Google does not provide equal opportunity to compete. Both the consumers and small firms fail to get a fair and just deal.

Remedies available to make the search engine market more competitive:

• Regulators and Law Makers should enforce strict policies against such dominance of single firm in search engine market.
• Federal Trade Comission and other Anti Monopoly organizations can paly a vital role in putting a check on Google's unfair practises.
• Other search engines should improve their website content quaity, using better promotional techniques both online and offline to attract more customer base.

To conclude still a concrete solution has to be founded againd the unfair and unjust practises of Google. This is very essential to safeguard the interests of both consumers and small firms.