Self-Regulating Public Servant, Profitable Internet Innovator, or Rapacious Monopoly: Assessing Google, Thinking about the Possibility of Regulation

Google is a powerful company with enormous market share in its core businesses of search and sponsored search. It is using this base to develop other online businesses, in areas ranging from map search and search for images to mobile cell phone operating systems and office support systems. It is using some of these systems to go head-to-head with Microsoft in calendar and email, document services, and, with Acer´s announcement that it will use Google´s Android OS in its computers, in operating systems as well. Google is becoming bolder, responding to complaints about possible trademark infringements by dropping almost all restrictions on the sale of trademarks. Although the company remains enormously popular, it is starting to suffer setbacks and reversals in the courts and debates about regulation are surfacing. The paper addresses four questions that will be essential when considering the regulation of Google, breakup, or other judicial remedies.