Google’s Looming Battle Over Search

[Commentary] “General search” -- searching of all of the world’s accessible information and delivering results without differentiation -- is fast becoming hopelessly outdated. In an era of exploding data, it is more efficient and more effective to presort information into categories. So it is hardly surprising that Google searches have evolved to emphasize specialized results better targeted to users’ queries. Yet regulators seem perplexed.

It’s a mistake to consider “general search” and “comparison shopping” or “product search” to be distinct markets. From the moment it was technologically feasible to do so, Google has been adapting its traditional search results -- that familiar but long since vanished page of 10 blue links—to offer more specialized answers to users’ queries. Product search, which is what is at issue in the European Union complaint, is the next iteration in this trend. To say that Google will be able to leverage its success in general search into dominance of more specialized markets completely misses the mark. There is nothing here that should worry antitrust regulators. Competition with Google may not and need not look exactly like Google itself, but it is competition nonetheless.

[Manne is the founder and executive director of the International Center for Law and Economics]