Google's counterargument that Siegler rejects as "hollow" seems pretty valid to me. If these other companies choose not to give Google the data it would need to give them the same treatment, how can you say Google is dealing unfairly here? If Google offers them the same opportunity but they think the business upside of getting listed is less than the downside of sharing their data, then that's their call.
I reject the premise, namely, that Google is a monopoly supplier of Internet search. Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo are perfectly suitable search engines. I don't think any of them are necessarily as good as Google, but a) I use Bing all the time when I'm on IE9 and I hardly notice and b) that's a poor criterion for monopoly. As a bonus, the switching costs for changing your search provider are approximately zero.
I never knew he was an expert on antitrust law!<p>At least it’s expected from the likes of him, it’s less excepted and much more disappointing when actual reporters writing for supposedly credible newspapers start speculating about the law or relying exclusively on quotes from “experts” which are paid by one interested party or the other.<p>IANAL either but I asked one, and she thinks that any antitrust issues with Google results are little more than the product of negative PR and don't have legal merit.<p>As for Search+ itself I think that G+ is just a foothold, this feature will become more useful and interesting when data from one’s calendar, email, voice messages, saved maps, etc be included in the mix.