Internet Search and the Nature of Competition

Antitrust law protects consumers by protecting the competitive process — not individual competitors.

Since 2010, U.S. and EU antitrust agencies have been investigating Google’s search practices. We’ve written a new white paper applying a Chicago School analysis to the potential legal theories against Google, finding that many of them face significant legal hurdles.
Notably, Google’s critics, consisting mainly of its competitors, have alleged that Google is making it more difficult for them to compete in Internet search by including “specialized” search results in general search pages. As the figure below shows, specialized search results provide direct responses to a user’s query based on the type of media pertinent to the query, such as images, videos, maps, local places, products, and real-time news. Google’s competitors are also complaining that Google is limiting access to search inputs, including “scale,” Google content, and the Android platform, a free, open-source mobile software platform.
Google may have gained significant market share in general search over time, even from its questioned practices and at the expense of its competitors. However, that growth in itself cannot justify antitrust intervention. As Judge Frank Easterbrook has explained, “every successful competitive practice has victims. The more successful a new method of making and distributing a product, the more victims, the deeper the victims’ injury.”¹ Such is the nature of competition. To question every practice that produces victims would be counterproductive.
Since the late 1970s, the courts have emphasized that antitrust law protects consumers by protecting the competitive process — not individual competitors. A monopolization claim under section 2 of the Sherman Act requires, in addition to the possession of monopoly power in the relevant market, “the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident.”² The distinction between monopolization through unlawful means and growth from meritorious rivalry is crucial to examining Google’s investigated search practices.

Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/november/internet-search-and-the-nature-of-competition