Nextag Shopping Website and customer review website Yelp have repeatedly accused Google, which controls 67% of the market, of ranking its own products above those of competitors in search results. Google's rivals cite an example in which a Google search for 'Best New York Sushi' displays Zagat, a Google-owned restaurant review site, as the first result, though this is not the information the customer is searching for (Marrs, 2012)
Nextag Shopping Website and customer review website Yelp have repeatedly accused Google, which controls 67% of the market, of ranking its own products above those of competitors in search results. Google's rivals cite an example in which a Google search for 'Best New York Sushi' displays Zagat, a Google-owned restaurant review site, as the first result, though this is not the information the customer is searching for (Marrs, 2012)
However, in spite of this theoretic economic rationale, there still is a fierce debate about the effectiveness and practicability of antitrust laws. Benefits of Competition Competition fosters efficiency because it drives service providers to not only venture, but to also initiate and innovate, so as to respond better to the needs and expectations of customers, and hence maintain market share (Baer, 2013)
Antitrust Laws: Benefits, Importance, And Effectiveness Standard economic theory holds that sufficient competition is a vital ingredient for the effective functioning of markets, without which unscrupulous players would be better placed to not only obtain monopoly power, but also impede on allocative efficiency by setting prices in their favor (Updegrove, 2007)
Authors Averitt and Lande (2007) explain, this consumer choice as a means of market regulations as being better than trying to regulate price and efficiency, especially for matter of non-price competition. Instead, this new model would value variety and circumstances that can be well assessed by consumer behavior, irrespective of the firm's behavior in price setting or bundling (Averitt and Lande, 2007, 175)
The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics." (Farmer, 2010) From this statement, it can be shown that the law in China, relative to business and antitrust regulations, is not as cut and dry, or universally applicable as it is set up to be in the U
Government's decision to bail out many banks and businesses that were deemed "too big to fail." This occurred as a result of an economic collapse and the government's willingness to understand that many of the businesses and banks that were bailed out had to be helped in order to avert an even larger crisis (Foster, 2010)
However, on the other side of the argument, bundling helps companies achieve preferred distribution for their products in many markets that require intensive distribution plans and huge amounts of resources. (Greenlee, Reitman, and Sibley, 2009)
S. antitrust laws are quite effective on the macro level, many of these regulations were put in place before the economics of firms and competitive advantages were fully understood (Millon, 2009)
From a business law perspective, the ever-changing world of technology represents an area where antitrust regulation has no clear focus or application, at least as far as the internet and communications-based media are concerned. This is largely because the internet has allowed large groups of people, both buyers and sellers, to come together in a virtual space to conduct business (Pressey and Ashton, 2009)
Q3.Given your research and findings, are monopolies and oligopolies (firms demonstrating power) always bad for society? However, while Facebook has a greater market share of users than its competitors (such as, for example, Google+), users can also become members of more than one social networking site, particularly since participation on the platforms are free (Efrati 2103)
Questions of jurisdiction arise, given that Facebook has an international outreach, and there are differences between, for example, American and EU definitions of what constitutes a monopoly. Comparing Facebook's market share (national or international) with other applications such as YouTube and Twitter is problematic, given the different ways users access these applications (Ingram 2013)
"From an antitrust standpoint, monopoly power is the power to raise price or exclude competition. Monopoly power is not unlawful in its own right, but unless a firm is deemed to have monopoly power (or at least a dangerous probability of acquiring such power), it cannot be held liable for monopolization or attempted monopolization" and having a negative impact upon consumers (Waller 2012: 1775)
Owing to this, such firms often charge a price higher than would be the case in a competitive structure (monopoly price), and produce less-than-optimal output levels. The resultant productive and allocative inefficiencies, as signified by the monopoly dead weight loss and high prices provide the framework for government regulation through antitrust law (Shughart II, 1995)
This act does not only violate SBC laws but also violates antitrust laws. This form of predatory pricing is a major focus of antitrust policy (Anderson & Johnson, 1999)
Courts hold competitors liable for having engaged in restraint of trade when they knowingly create monopoly, artificially maintain prices, restrict output, refuse to deal, or interfere with free play of market forces. The courts rely on three analytical approaches namely "per se" rule, "rule reason," and the intermediate "quick look" to determine whether an activity constitute an unreasonable restraint of trade (Lechter, Posner & Morris, 2002)
The Supreme Court ruled against the upstart Federal League owners and determined that MLB was not prosecutable under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The 1922 decision was built on the seemingly untenable position that baseball is 'just a game' and not a business or industry in the sense that steel manufacturing or mining is an industry (Belth; Greenberg)
But to understand the reasons why this exemption exists for Major League Baseball, we must look deep into the history of the game at the beginning of the 20th century. In January 1903, the early years of the game in the United States, two baseball leagues -- the American and National Leagues -- combined to form Major League Baseball (MLB) (Greenberg)
Baseball, at the time, was still somewhat in its national infancy and did not operate on the industrial scale it does today. The core idea behind their decision was that baseball "was not the interstate travel to far flung cities, but rather the intrastate exposition of individual effort in the playing of a game" (Morrissey)
Rather than 7-2 split, the Court ruled against Flood in a 5-3 split. Notably, in Flood's case, the Court determined that the antitrust exemption that baseball enjoyed was an anomaly (Rovell)