Boston, MA 09/29/2014 (wallstreetpr) – According to reports, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has eventually decided to respond to the criticism done by News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA). As per the reports, NWSA said that GOOG didn’t want to use its market leadership position to reduce web piracy and quash competition more than other companies.
Insights of the matter:
On September 8, 2014, Robert Thomson, Chief Executive Officer of NWSA wrote a letter to European Union antitrust chief Joaquín Almunia, in which it stated a lot of things, facts and figures about GOOG. Thomson was not the first person who spoke against Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG). He joined a group companies in Europe that included Axel Springer SE as well. All of them had issues with the antitrust settlement that was done between European Commission and GOOG. Thomson used this platform to put forth his words about antitrust issue as well as other matters like news aggregation and piracy.
Reply came from GOOG’s side in the form of a blog post when Rachel Whetstone, Senior Vice President Communications and Global Policies at GOOG replied News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA)’s allegations. She was accompanied by one member from the executive team of CEO Larry Page.
Thomson said in a report that GOOG was ready to exploit its leading market position to stifle market competition. He was countered by GOOG representatives saying that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) was facing a lot of market competition. Ms. Whetstone further added that GOOG was not the ‘gatekeeper’ of the web as a lot of people preferred to go directly on companies’ websites than through GOOG’s search engine. She also added that evolution of mobile apps had further narrowed the options for GOOG as people had started exploring web world through mobile apps like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter rather than GOOG. She said that there was very minor scope for improvement as competition was just one click away with very low barriers to switching.
