> Google's smart enough to know not to explicitly block a competitor, they just make it impossible for the competitor to participate.
This will be an interesting legal issue when it inevitably gets into the courts. A judge will want to know from Amazon what product features prevent it from participating in Google's product and then will look to see why Google has that feature in place. If its clear its only there to keep Amazon from participating, that can be found to be the same as explicitly blocking them.
If its structural however, such as an integrated shopping cart, that's much harder to argue is targeting Amazon so much as retailers that don't want to integrate carts.
It still feels an awful lot like using an effective monopoly in one space (search) to try to create one in another space (buy).
This will be an interesting legal issue when it inevitably gets into the courts. A judge will want to know from Amazon what product features prevent it from participating in Google's product and then will look to see why Google has that feature in place. If its clear its only there to keep Amazon from participating, that can be found to be the same as explicitly blocking them.
If its structural however, such as an integrated shopping cart, that's much harder to argue is targeting Amazon so much as retailers that don't want to integrate carts.
It still feels an awful lot like using an effective monopoly in one space (search) to try to create one in another space (buy).