Running head: ANTITRUST INVESTIGATION 1
Googles Antitrust Investigation : Are They Trying To Become a Monopoly
Belinda A. Bognar
Chamberlain College Of Nursing
Economics 312-N
Why was Google the target of investigation for antitrust behavior? Well that is a big question to ask, and proving to be a bigger one to prove for many agencies world wide! Google has been under investigation because of accusation’s of “use of content from publishers websites without prior consent and sometimes even against their explicit will (Hoppner, pg 26)”. Since the early 1990”s Google has been dodging numerous accusations, but they have managed to avoid these claims in Belgium, France, and Germany so far. In Belgium they avoided the claim “ by removing or by threatening to remove the websites with the protected content fom its search index unless the providers waived their rights to compensation (Hoppner, pg 27)”. Europe considers Google to be an anti-competitive business because of these alleged behaviors.
Antitrust behavior is associated with costs that many would not realize because they use content they ahem no permission to use and offer compensation to the website publisher for that content, they are basically stealing from these various corporations. the companies suffer loss of income, even wight he exposure Google gives them. “ Instead of compensating publishers for the negative network effects caused by advertising on Google, Google has expand its own advertising so that increasing it has substituted organic search results (Hoppner, pg 27)”. There are laws established to help prevent this monopolistic behavior. The specific law, or act that the Google antitrust investigation fell under was section 2 of the Sherman Act. This act prohibits certain business activities that federal government regulators consider to be...