i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

EU launches antirust probe into Google

"The issue could boil down to whether Google has a right to program its search engine the way it wants or whether it is abusing the market power it has accumulated by processing about two out of three search requests made worldwide."

Maybe this is something that we'll cover in next semester's "Information Law and Policy" course but, for now, I don't completely understand the political implications that surround search results. Can Google face legal ramifications because of their IR algorithm? And, if yes, why? Google is a free product that users choose to use instead of other search engines. I understand that Google's dominance in the market is what (probably) opens them to an antitrust case. Still, I don't agree that their algorithm should be dictated by corporations that are disgruntled with their placement in search results.