What An Antitrust Case Against Google Might Look Like

Re:What An Antitrust Case Against Google Might Look Like by gojomo on Sunday March 01, 2009 @05:24PM (#499369)

And when the DOJ is done with Google, Facebook will get similar scrutiny.

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Re:What An Antitrust Case Against Google Might Look Like by gasull on Sunday March 01, 2009 @07:37PM (#499507)

From the article: Google is earning enough from sponsored search to subsidize almost all of other businesses, including gmail, Google Office, Latitude, gDrive, and others.

I don't think Facebook is subsidizing other businesses with its profit. Actually it doesn't have any profit yet.

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Re:What An Antitrust Case Against Google Might Look Like by gojomo on Sunday March 01, 2009 @08:20PM (#499539)

It will take years for the DOJ to be done with Google. Give Facebook some time!

I agree with Facebook board member Marc Andreesen's assessment: Facebook could be profitable and make over a billion in annual revenue whenever they choose. Instead, they're forgoing that for bigger riches -- and even more entrenched market power -- down the road. Facebook understands the game they're playing.

Facebook users face higher switching costs than Google search users. And individual features in Facebook -- photo sharing, status streams, comment threads, group utilities, invitations/RSVPs, instant-messaging, etc. -- already compete against multiple other companies.

When Facebook turns on their revenue spigot -- whatever it turns out to be -- they will look a lot like Google, in the same ways the article highlights. They will be subsidizing a bunch of free services, to the detriment of potential competitors, to defend their master proprietary asset -- the social graph plus a critical mass of users -- and the massive revenue that flows from it.

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Re:What An Antitrust Case Against Google Might Look Like by ericwaller on Sunday March 01, 2009 @11:06PM (#499663)

I'm curious, do you know when Andreessen said that? Because two years ago I would've believed it, but now I just don't buy it.

Beacon was supposed to be their adsense and look how that turned out. I don't doubt facebook's potential, but I do doubt that there's a switch that they're just waiting for some magic user count to flip.

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Re:What An Antitrust Case Against Google Might Look Like by gojomo on Monday March 02, 2009 @12:11AM (#499713)

...when Andreesen said that?

About 10 days ago, in the Charlie Rose interview. TechCrunch has a transcript:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/20/andreessen-on-charlie-r...

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Re:What An Antitrust Case Against Google Might Look Like by ericwaller on Monday March 02, 2009 @01:23AM (#499764)

Thanks for that.

According to Alexa, Yahoo gets a little less than twice Facebook's traffic. Yahoo's revenue for 2008 was $7.22B. So yeah, $1B+ for Facebook from conventional ads is probably reasonable.

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