The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
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David Heath
Tuesday, 04 August 2009 10:14
Last week Google was sued in the Commercial Court of Paris by French company Bottin Cartographes (roughly translated as Directory Cartographers), alleging "unfair abuse of a dominant position." In French, the accusation is "concurrence déloyale" essentially disloyal competition.
The company is claiming furthermore "that Google Maps is distorting the rules of the competition by offering free business the same service when she even undergoes costs for its product design." (translation provided by Google Translate).
An initial hearing is scheduled for October 16th.
Even before this action was commenced against Google, Dana Wagner (Senior Competition Counsel) wrote in Google's Public Policy blog (essentially in response to the Anderson book), "There have been claims made against private companies for so-called "predatory pricing" tactics, where the concern is that companies will use cheap goods to drive out competitors and then jack up the prices once the competition is gone. But again, even if you think this is a valid antitrust issue (and many commentators don't), almost no one believes that Google would or could start charging exorbitant prices for products like search and Gmail."
Wagner goes on to add: "It is true that if a company has a dominant product, it may run afoul of antitrust laws if it "ties" that product to another -- for instance, by requiring customers who buy that product to buy another product as well. When a company provides products for free on a stand-alone basis, however, it's not requiring anyone to buy anything. It may take business away from other companies trying to charge users for similar products, but that's hardly an antitrust issue."
One contrary view has been expressed by Scott Leland, President of Precursor LLC and Chairman of NetCompetition.org.
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