Geoff Manne on the Google Search Case
ICLE President Geoffrey A. Manne was quoted by Reason in a story about the U.S. District Court order in the Google search antitrust trial. You can read the full piece here.
“The court’s order, which relies heavily on contested theories from the field of behavioral economics about the supposed power of defaults, fails to demonstrate how the contractual agreements at-issue harm consumers or competition,” said International Center for Law and Economics President Geoffrey A. Manne via email. “Moreover, the court overlooks the broader competitive landscape in search and the vigorous competition in which Google has been engaged to become the default search engine.”
“The fact that Google search has an 80% market share even on Windows devices, where Edge is the default browser and Bing is the default search engine, demonstrates that consumers go out of their way to use Google because they believe it is the best option,” Manne pointed out. “A default placement is worth very little if your product isn’t any good. By the same token, Google hasn’t been ousted as the default anywhere, because it has a superior product. The opinion offers no evidence to suggest that Bing would have become a viable competitor under any other set of facts.”