On February 11 2009, 29 MP’s signed an Early Day Motion explaining their concerns about Google’s dominance in the search advertising marketplace. The motion urged ministers to “consider measures to prevent the monopolisation of the online search advertising market.” It has come to light that this year Google has increased its share of the online marketplace to over 90%. The motion was supported by 25 Labour MPs, one Conservative, two Liberal Democrats and a member of the Scottish National Party.

Andrew Dismore, a Labour MP supporting the motion said, “A monopoly is unhealthy, Google cornering the market is not good for competitive pricing or quality of service. The Government should recognise that there is a potential problem.”

“The Competition Commission should draw up recommendations to protect consumers – in this case, the people buying the advertising.”

Is Google suffering from its own success? Google does not set the price of its advertising; the cost is driven and set but the advertiser, bidding for position in an auction style environment. Competition dictates the marketplace and this has long been seen as a fair method of determining ad placement.

“On the internet, competition is literally one click away,” said a Google spokesman. “We have to prove our value to our users and advertisers every day, because if they’re unhappy with Google, there’s nothing preventing them from switching to another search engine.”

Google dominates the internet, it’s powerful and simple to use search interface offers good levels of return to advertisers investing in online marketing campaigns. Since 2005, at which time Google had just 36.5% of the market compared to Yahoo’s 30%, Google’s popularity began to grow to an astonishing 63% of the market in 2009, where as Yahoo is floundering as 21%. This is testament to Google’s ongoing commitment to improving the service they provide their customers, offering good levels of return to advertisers and serving exciting and relevant information to the end user. So why is this a problem?
Barack Obama has appointed Christine Varney to take over the top antitrust position of the US Department of Justice. It has been noted that Christine Varney has already taken an interest in Google and has discussed the subject to some length.
“For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem,” Varney reportedly said during a panel discussion last summer.  She suggested that Google, “has acquired a monopoly in internet online advertising”.
These comments along with Varneys background as a lawyer working for Netscape during the monumental Microsoft case, have led to the speculation that the US Department of Justice could be ready to start investigating an AntiTrust case against Google. Will Google suffer the same fate as Microsoft in the late 90’s?