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Ask HN: Is Google Maps Featuring Uber Legal?

6 points by meisterbrendan ↗ HN
If you do a Google Maps search from a mobile device and find walking instructions, there is a tile below the options that says "Get an Uber", comparing the time it will take for a user to walk vs. take an Uber.

Google has a dominant position in the maps app market and Uber is a company they've invested in. Is it legal for them to leverage their monopoly in this area to exclusively promote one of their portfolio companies?

At a minimum it seems like they should be offering all rideshare apps the ability to be featured in this space and let them buy it like any other ad space Google sells.

I'm thinking about this because of the recent expose of Uber's aggressive and potentially illegal tactics to undermine Lyft. I haven't heard anyone talk about this particular issue--Google potentially using its monopoly power to tilt the market in favor of one of its portfolio companies.

5 comments

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byoung2
Google has a dominant position in the maps app market and Uber is a company they've invested in. Is it legal for them to leverage their monopoly in this area to exclusively promote one of their portfolio companies?

It appears legal:

The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday it wouldn't bring charges against Google after a 19-month investigation into whether the company favored its own products and services in its search results and unfairly harmed rivals.

[1] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732387420...

coreymgilmore
Issues like this against Google are crazy and just wrong. What is wrong with a company pushing its own (or invested in) products (similarly: the EU requiring Google to not favor its own services when conducting a search)? If you do not like it, than use a different service; the benefit of the free market.

Sorry if that was a bit of a rant: illegal no.

ProblemFactory
There's something better than a free market: a competitive market. Multiple roughly equal providers competing on price, features, quality and so on benefit consumers more than the philosophical free market. But it's not in a company's benefit to compete and drive its profit margins towards zero, so sometimes regulations (restrictions on freedom) help to ensure competition.

The best example is phone number portability. By legally forcing all mobile carriers to offer phone number portability, users can switch between carriers without losing their existing phone number. This reduces lock-in to providers, and encourages them to compete on price and service instead. No sane carrier would offer phone number portability without being required to, since it only helps customers who move away.

FTC has decided that Google isn't unfairly using its popular products to prop up unpopular ones so far, and I think Bing Maps and Apple Maps are close enough substitutes to not consider Google Maps a monopoly. Also, ridesharing seems to be booked mostly via custom apps, not from general map apps. But if Google Maps really was the only serious option for looking up rides, then I would see the benefit to consumers to requiring Google to integrate all major ridesharing services.

jaredsohn
One thing to keep in mind is that Google only suggests getting an Uber if the user already has the Uber app installed on their device. So while this integration does give Uber an advantage in getting more rides, it doesn't help Uber get new riders. Not sure if this affects the post's argument or not.
maxbrown
Couldn't you similarly ask if they have to include Facebook, Twitter and others where they currently have Google+ integration?

Seems like it's their choice to integrate whatever they want, outside of some antitrust violation.