Tech And Antitrust Stratechery By Ben Thompson

Ben Thompson:

Google: Again — and note a developing theme here — Google’s anticompetitive behavior is relatively clear. First, the company consistently favors its own properties in search results, particularly “above-the-fold” — that is, results that are not actually search results but which seek to answer the user’s query directly. A partial list:

• Google by-and-large removed video segments from competing properties in favor of YouTube videos
• Google offers local results from Google Maps above search results that tend to favor Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.
• Google offers hotel and flight listings above search results that tend to favor Booking, Expedia, etc.
• Google displays AMP-enabled websites (a Google technology) above search results that are agnostic about how a web page is displayed.
• Google displays tweets for individuals (thanks to a beneficial relationship with Twitter) above search results that tend to favor LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

$&…$&

Then, of course, there is Android, where Google leveraged the Play Store to force Android OEMs to feature Search and Chrome, and further forbade said OEMs from shipping any phones with open-source Android alternatives (a la Microsoft).

Ben does a great job outlining all the antitrust cases for the big tech companies. For Apple, Amazon, and Facebook, there doesn’t appear to be much of a case.

Google is another story.