Do No Evil? Google’s Deceptive Practices Harm Consumers

[Commentary] Google harms consumers by misrepresenting its search results as unbiased and aligned with users’ interests when the facts show they are not. The issue will come to a head in the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust investigation of Google.

Google implies it is immune to antitrust laws, because consumers benefit so much from Google’s search engine and over 500 other free products and services. This “Google is really a philanthropist, not a business” argument is not an antitrust defense, but a highly deceptive misrepresentation of their business. Ultimately the facts will tell whether Google is right that the benefits Google provides consumers for free essentially represent an unassailable antitrust wall of defense, a virtual “Great Wall of China” that can successfully keep out the hordes of antitrust complaints against Google, or whether it will prove to be more like France’s disastrous “Maginot” line of defense in World War II, where all of its defenses were based on the experience of the last war. French General Maginot never contemplated that a future opponent might learn from the past and attack differently where defenses were most vulnerable.

[Scott Cleland, is President of Precursor LLC, a consultancy serving Fortune 500 clients, some of which are Google competitors]