With the Microsoft antitrust case we learned that the government is primarily concerned not so much with what percentage of the market share you have, but the process with which consumers are using your product. Microsoft faced issues because all PCs purchased came pre-loaded with a copy of Windows. If you didn't want Windows, you actually had to pay extra. So consumers really didn't have a choice but to use Windows (unless they wanted to buy a Mac, which although increasingly more common is still not the dominant OS for many reasons. I could go on and on about why, but it's honestly pretty boring).
Consider this:
When you buy a brand new PC it's loaded with Windows, and MS Office, and Internet Explorer, and whatever else. You have to go out of your way to download Firefox and Chrome. Your homepage is conveniently set to MSN.com, and you have to manually set it to something else (in many cases it's Google search, Gmail, or Facebook). The search bar in your browser is oh-so conveniently defaulted to Bing, and you have to remember to drop down and select Google (or Yahoo or Ask, but honestly who even uses those search engines anymore? Might as well load up Lycos or AltaVista. Good luck with that.)
They try to helpfully get you assigned an oh-so convenient Hotmail account, and make it difficult to download drivers or updates from Microsoft unless you're using the IE browser. Ok so I get it, Microsoft had a sticky time fighting antitrust allegations.
Consumers go out of their way to use Google. If Microsoft is the free local paper that is conveniently hanging on your door every morning in your hotel room, Google is the news that's filtered for you and already loaded onto your iPad when you fire it up that morning. So while Microsoft is patiently waiting on the door for you to take off the plastic and read it, Google has beat them to the punch.
Google is probably safe from antitrust because 1) most of their services are free to consumers. 2) Not many of their services (save for Android) come pre-loaded onto devices or are made in a way that forces consumers to use them. The consumer is benefiting from Google, and not being exploited financially, they are also given a multitude of alternatives. People go out of their way to use Google. In fact, many of the established players do what they can to make it difficult for Google. (cough,cough, Apple). In exchange for the free-ness and convenience, we have happily shared our deepest, darkest and most personal keyword searches and handed over the keys to the internet (sorry Al Gore).
So play with Google+ happily folks, and please enjoy this charming nugget from someecards.
nothing like a snarky ecard to brighten your day.
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