Time to loosen Google's grip?
In case you hadn't noticed, Google isn't just a Web search company any longer. In addition to online advertising, it's moving into operating system and application software, mobile telephone software, e-mail, Web browsers, maps, and video aggregation.
Context & Ripple Effects
The worry about Google is five years old and escalating on a schedule. Wired asked who's afraid of Google back in November 2005 when search dominance alone was the concern; by 2007 the company was telegraphing bigger plans for mobile phones, and by late 2008 observers were already arguing it was behaving a little more like Microsoft every day. This Washington Post piece marks the moment that argument moves from tech-trade pages to mainstream opinion: search plus advertising plus operating systems, mobile software, e-mail, browsers, maps, and video aggregation reads as a portfolio, not a product line.
What makes this round different is who answered. Google's own public policy blog published 'Acquisitions and antitrust' the same week — the company arguing its own antitrust case rather than leaving it to others — which signals the scrutiny has reached the level where Google feels compelled to respond publicly. The confirmed breadth of the expansion (Android spawning well-reviewed handsets, App Inventor opening app creation to non-developers) gives critics concrete evidence of reach beyond the search box.
First-order effects
- Google enters 2011 defending its acquisition strategy in public, with its policy blog now framing antitrust debate on its own terms rather than ignoring it.
- Rivals in each adjacent market — browser makers, handset software vendors, mapping providers — now compete against a company whose search and ad cash flows can subsidize losses elsewhere.
Second-order effects
- The Microsoft comparison circulating since 2008 hardens into a template: expect competitors to route their complaints through regulators rather than through products alone.
- Every new market entry raises the bar for Google's next acquisition, since each deal now gets evaluated as another rung on a cross-market ladder rather than in isolation.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the defining regulatory question for platform companies shifts from 'is this single market monopolized?' to 'does control of one chokepoint unfairly leverage others?' — a standard under which Google's breadth, not any one product, becomes the case.
- Companies that reach across search, ads, operating systems, mobile, and media set the precedent for how the next generation of multi-market platforms will be policed, making this fight about industry structure more than about Google alone.
The trend: Platform companies that parlay one dominant product into control of multiple adjacent markets are pushing antitrust debate from single-market monopoly tests toward gatekeeper-portfolio scrutiny.