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Google's Antitrust Investigations

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If like the vast majority of the public when searching for information it’s a reflexive action to just ‘Google’ it. With this being said, one generally doesn’t think of why they choose a search engine as long as they find what they are looking for. In recent events, it has been proposed that Google has misled users and monopolized the market. In June 2011, Google was placed under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission or FTC (Ammori and Pelican, 2012) in violation of Section 2 of The Sherman Act and Section 5 of The Federal Trade Act (Hazan, 2013). The FTC's investigation focused on allegations that Google has been abusing its dominance in Internet search. Google's competitor’s say the company has been headlining its own services on …show more content…

Antitrust investigation is of considerable importance because it is utilized in the establishments of mergers, partnerships, acquisitions and other business takeovers/partnerships which when completed might result to an antitrust violation. These laws serve to prohibit services designed to restrain trade and commercial progress such as a monopoly structured market. Monopoly structured market is when there is a single provided product with no close substitutions. As opposed, to a monopoly, a pure competition market is an aspect in which multiple companies offer identical or close to the same products, which will compete with price and quality, and in some case costumer service. Additionally in contrast, oligopoly is a market structure where there are a few firms producing all or most of the market supply of a particular good or service and whose decisions about the industry's output can affect competitors. Oligopolies firms tend to charge reasonably premium prices but they compete through advertising and other promotional means. Simultaneously, possessing an array of market structures safeguard the consumption of basic products and services as supplied by the business community to the rest of the human populace. “When P = MC, society cannot gain by producing 1 more or 1 less unit of the product. In contrast, a monopolist maximizes profit by producing the lower output level at which marginal revenue (rather than price) equals marginal cost. At this MR = MC point, price exceeds marginal cost, meaning that society would obtain more benefit than it would incur cost by producing extra units” (McConnell, Brue, and Flynn, 2012, p.375). Unlike most companies, Google has cornered its market and does not have to contemplate the high barriers to entry or costs. However, these

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