Why regulate ? In that case, regulation would be a way for google's competitors, to gain the market share they didn't get by bringing more value to customers.

Regulation must happen only when a dominant player is using unfair or illegal tactics to prevent a competitor from entering the market.

As far as I know, google hasn't employed any of these tactics to get a competitor out of the market. So google domination is not based on illegal or unfair practices. It doesn't compare with the microsoft case.

About ranking methods used by google: If one doesn't like the way google ranks it results, just use another search engine, or create a new one ! But google is free to use the way thay want to rate web pages.

"Regulation" in this case must come from competition: be better than google, provide more accurate results, better "search refinement" tools, more value for customer, and google's predominance will be regulated for the best.

Posted by: vincent on November 3, 2002 07:58 AM

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Everybody wants to regulate Google. But maybe we should regulate services, like link farms, that abuse Google.

Posted by: Stephen Downes on November 3, 2002 11:01 PM

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Personally, I think the comparison between Microsoft and Google is quite faulty. Yes, we should regulate Microsoft. They own the market, there's no way around them and the society (hence the government) should make sure that the playing field for all competitors is levelled out. The problem with Microsoft is that it is competing with other software manufacturers *and* owns the platform that these manufacturer's software runs on.

Google doesn't compete with other websites other than search engines, and it doesn't promote its own services (like news.google.com) unfairly (e.g. superficially ranking them higher in search results than other sites). The problem is that different people perceive their ranking at Google to be unfair, not that Google uses its power to fight against some sites while helping others.

Also, nobody relies on Google. There's no way around Windows, but you don't need to have a high ranking at Google to become successfull with your website.

If Google were the only search engine or the only way to promote your site, then Google would have to be regulated. It's not.

Posted by: LKM on November 7, 2002 03:38 AM

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