The big tech news for today comes from the Wall Street Journal: the FTC is prepared to serve Google with subpoenas as part of an antitrust probe. The amusing part is not so much the legal aspects, but how this issue turns on-line communities (such as those at Ars Technica) with a record of general hostility to free markets suddenly turn into an extended wing of the Libertarian Party. Arguments deemed inadequate for Microsoft or Apple are now suddenly appropriate in the case of Google.

The most common argument in defense of Google is the ease by which users can switch search engines. They argue that if Google's coercive actions result in an inferior product, users will simply switch to Bing, Yahoo!, or the myriad alternatives and the situation will resolve itself. There is a fundamental flaw in this argument, an attribute of the knowledge market: the user does not know if Google is providing the optimal answer or not. A user's only metric is whether they receive acceptable answers to their queries.

Due to inertia, Google will remain dominant so long as users receive a experience sufficient to their needs and expectations. When a user searches for “photo sharing,” they don't know that Flickr should be the top link or else they would never have asked Google. If Google's own Picasa is provided in the number one slot, the answer is acceptable as judged by the user since it fulfills their need and expectation. This means that should Google give preference to its own products in search or advertising placement, it will unfairly benefit Google's own products without negatively impacting users' perception of Google.

This ability is certainly not unique to Google. Microsoft could easily give preference to SkyDrive over Flickr in Bing; however, Bing's market share is a small fraction of Google's and thus would not significantly impact Flickr's overall market share. In contrast, Google's dominant position in the search market, the fundamental means by which users discover content and products, gives it the ability to produce significant barriers to entry in sectors where it wishes to compete, a key concern of Antitrust law.

Does this mean that Google is guilty of antitrust and corrective actions should be taken? Of course not. Natural monopolies (which Google arguably is) are neither illegal nor bad. Examples include utilities, sports leagues, and operating systems. However, each of these has been investigated by antitrust bodies and subjected to oversight and regulation due to their ability to create economic damage. Google should be no different.