Is an anti-trust lawsuit on Eric’s list?

Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, says to call him an idiot.

No, sorry, I’m the idiot here and Eric isn’t an idiot. At least not when I’ve met him.

But, he says that Google hits every conceiveable problem, but faster. Well, let’s see, how long did it take IBM to hit anti-trust problems? It was founded in 1888 and if I remember right its first problems were in the mid-60s (so around 70 years). Microsoft was founded in 1975 and had its first anti-trust problems in the 1990s (so around 20 years). So, that must mean that Eric is preparing for an anti-trust lawsuit already, no?

Update: that link above came from John Battelle’s blog. Battelle also has an interesting interview with Vint Cerf, Google’s “old fart.” (That’s what Vint told me to call him when I spoke at Google last year, but he’s really Google’s evangelist, and inventor of a few minor little Internet protocols).

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8 thoughts on “Is an anti-trust lawsuit on Eric’s list?

  1. Anti-trust law is getting weirder and weirder as time goes on. I think people should just chill out and quit worrying about stuff so much.
    ANother thing I wish I would see less and less of is Google news. Google is NOT the be all and end all. Their search engine is NOT the best out there. Google has mindshare and that is hard to beat. Google is now a verb, a noun, and possibly an adverb. It’s hard to compete with mindshare.
    THe problem with people is that if Microsoft were to come out with something cool, and they have with Windows Live Search, etc. people think it cannot possibly be cool because it came from a convicted monopolist, big behemoth corporation.
    I look at things weirdly, though. I refuse to shop at Wal-Mart, for instance because of the way they treat their employees. They refuse to let them unionize or give them a living wage. Everyone looks at things differently, and sadly, America has become the land of “settle everything in the courts” rather than settle it in the marketplace.

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  2. Anti-trust law is getting weirder and weirder as time goes on. I think people should just chill out and quit worrying about stuff so much.
    ANother thing I wish I would see less and less of is Google news. Google is NOT the be all and end all. Their search engine is NOT the best out there. Google has mindshare and that is hard to beat. Google is now a verb, a noun, and possibly an adverb. It’s hard to compete with mindshare.
    THe problem with people is that if Microsoft were to come out with something cool, and they have with Windows Live Search, etc. people think it cannot possibly be cool because it came from a convicted monopolist, big behemoth corporation.
    I look at things weirdly, though. I refuse to shop at Wal-Mart, for instance because of the way they treat their employees. They refuse to let them unionize or give them a living wage. Everyone looks at things differently, and sadly, America has become the land of “settle everything in the courts” rather than settle it in the marketplace.

    Like

  3. Actually, IBM got caught with some consent decrees sometime in the 50’s. It had a lot to do with vertical and sometimes horizontal integration (sound familiar?).

    One problem was over blank punched card stock and who you had to buy them from (a maneuver that was similar to Kodak requiring you to get their processing when you bought their film and a number of other recent cases, like whose inkjet cartridges or toner you might have to use).

    Another was over the service bureau business. Service Bureau Corporation was once a subsidiary of IBM and they had to divest it. (Control Data Corporation was the lucky winner, for a time.)

    This last also reminds us of some things about scale and monopoly power. Other companies (e.g., Remington Rand Univac, where I worked at the time) were allowed to have service-bureau subsidiaries, but they did not have monopoly power. I also notice that certain kinds of licensing and exclusive business arrangements are not frowned on in the small but become honerous when exercised by a company with monopoly power.

    You’ll notice, in all of this, that being a monopoly isn’t a problem, it is how monopoly power is used. (Well, maybe not exactly in Europe, but in the US certainly.)

    When the DoJ went after IBM in the mid-sixties (LBJ era), the DoJ eventually had to simply give up. I don’t believe it or the public gained much of anything.

    Oh, the unbundling of software as a tie-in to hardware and opening up to third-party software was a mid-sixties biggie. IBM was sued into unbundled software and consulting services and Mel Conway, a buddy of mine who understood architecture at the economic level, successfully predicted the 5% increase in TCO that resulted almost immediately. Heh. (Anybody remember who “won” that suit and where they are now?)

    Like

  4. Actually, IBM got caught with some consent decrees sometime in the 50’s. It had a lot to do with vertical and sometimes horizontal integration (sound familiar?).

    One problem was over blank punched card stock and who you had to buy them from (a maneuver that was similar to Kodak requiring you to get their processing when you bought their film and a number of other recent cases, like whose inkjet cartridges or toner you might have to use).

    Another was over the service bureau business. Service Bureau Corporation was once a subsidiary of IBM and they had to divest it. (Control Data Corporation was the lucky winner, for a time.)

    This last also reminds us of some things about scale and monopoly power. Other companies (e.g., Remington Rand Univac, where I worked at the time) were allowed to have service-bureau subsidiaries, but they did not have monopoly power. I also notice that certain kinds of licensing and exclusive business arrangements are not frowned on in the small but become honerous when exercised by a company with monopoly power.

    You’ll notice, in all of this, that being a monopoly isn’t a problem, it is how monopoly power is used. (Well, maybe not exactly in Europe, but in the US certainly.)

    When the DoJ went after IBM in the mid-sixties (LBJ era), the DoJ eventually had to simply give up. I don’t believe it or the public gained much of anything.

    Oh, the unbundling of software as a tie-in to hardware and opening up to third-party software was a mid-sixties biggie. IBM was sued into unbundled software and consulting services and Mel Conway, a buddy of mine who understood architecture at the economic level, successfully predicted the 5% increase in TCO that resulted almost immediately. Heh. (Anybody remember who “won” that suit and where they are now?)

    Like

  5. From the first paragraph of Battelle’s post – “…the IPO filing and going pubic.”

    Does this mean Google is now an adolescent company? What happens to all of us when search’s voice starts breaking, or the page has massive acne?

    Like

  6. From the first paragraph of Battelle’s post – “…the IPO filing and going pubic.”

    Does this mean Google is now an adolescent company? What happens to all of us when search’s voice starts breaking, or the page has massive acne?

    Like

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