[governance] Google's Fight the ITU/WCIT website

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Google doesn't have any kind of a monopoly on the online collaboration market and nor does it mine data for advertising from its paying clients for google apps.  In that it competes with Cisco, Dell, ibm and a variety if other large and small companies in the same space.

So while antitrust concerns may be entirely legitimate in discourse about google search, those concerns don't quite apply for online collaboration and nor does the market situation that exists in this space facilitate cartelization and antitrust.

--srs (htc one x)


----- Reply message -----
From: "Norbert Bollow" <nb at bollow.ch>
To: <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>, "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <suresh at hserus.net>
Subject: [governance] Google's Fight the ITU/WCIT website
Date: Wed, Nov 21, 2012 11:00 PM


Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh at hserus.net> wrote:

> Norbert Bollow [21/11/12 10:36 +0100]:
> >> I fail to see how google selling email, collaboration etc services
> >> to telcos has anything to do with the free and open internet here.
> >
> >You may need to read up on the very significant body of literature
> >that exists about the effects of this kind of partnerships.
> 
> I haven't seen significant papers in this area, but am glad to be
> corrected.
> 
> I do come from a background where my workplace (and my previous
> workplace) have been large mail hosting shops that hosted mail for
> everything from small businesses, ngos and universities to ISPs and
> free webmail providers.  So - please do tell me just what effect
> outsourcing your mail hosting has, from a governance standpoint. I
> might be able to provide a counterpoint or two.

I don't know about any literature on this specific type of deal
that would describe how there's a significant difference between
that "email, collaboration etc services" deal with a company with
Google's technical and market power muscle as opposed to outsourcing
just email to the kind of company that you describe.

But there's a significant body of literature on antitrust concerns in
general, and it's easy to find. Also there is literature on price
discrimination, which goes very much to the heart of Parminder's point
as I understand it. I would propose that a good starting point on that
topic is this paper:

A. M. Odlyzko: The evolution of price discrimination in transportation
and its implications for the Internet, Review of Network Economics,
vol. 3, no. 3, September 2004, pp. 323-346.
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/rne33.pdf

Greetings,
Norbert
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