Next big challenge for Eric Schmidt - Google and Anti Trust Trial

Google has been amassing the world's and public's data at a tremendous vigour. It is absolutely amazing to see at the rate at which it is amassing the public data. In last couple of years it has been able to amass

1. the public's Images (Picasa),
2. home videos (Youtube),
3. Map (maps.google.com).
4. Users Blogs (Blogspot)
5. Emails (gmail)
6. User Profiles (Google is collecting the internet browsing behavior pattern)
7. Social Networking (Orkut)

It is progressing to amass the

1. book data (http://www.books.google.com/)
2. Document, Spreadsheet, & powerpoint data (In my view, the biggest focus for Google at this time Google Docs and its Mobile Android Platform)
3. User's website data (pages.google.com, sites.google.com)
4. Chat Data along with Audio Data (Gtalk, and next version would be with Video Conferencing along with collaboration pieces embedded within Google Docs, calendar, and gmail)
5. User's and corporate data (Google apps for enterprises and universities)

There are other companies which have made some attempt at this forte. Namely Yahoo Flickr, Deli.cio.us, Blogging Site, Microsoft & Yahoo & AOL email programs. Yeah, all this is good as it provides me access to my data from anywhere in the world and on any device.

With Google's amazing data apetite, it will have to face the Anti-trust trial in near future. And this anti-trust trial would be for one company holding most of the public data.

Acutally, Microsoft moved for the Antitrust trial for Google acquiring Doubleclick back in April, 2007. Microsoft's claim was that Google was monopolizing the Ad business on the internet and that is why it bought out DoubleClick for $3.1b (see this, and this also). Actually, by some estimates that Google would be able to control approximately 85% of online advertizing business.

Today, I was just watching the Eric Schmidt's 2007 Web2Expo interview and in that interview Dr. Schmidt just brushed off the possible antitrust trials by saying that we allow people to take their businesses/data elsewhere and we do not lock them in. Unfortunately, the user's are getting locked because of its amazing applications and the users do not have any other place to take their data & business. In such a scenario what will happen? Will the governments across the world allow the Google to monopolize the data and internet? Somehow, I am not that hopeful and I wish to be proven right!!

Another of Dr. Schmidt is that Google stands behind net neutrality and will do everything in its power to maintain the balance. Yeah sure, Google is one of the most ethical companies around but nobody has disturbed the net neutrality balance as much as Google has. This will become more and more clearer in the coming years.

In my strong opinion, Google will have to face the Anti-trust trial in near future especially for the data it holds. US govt had made an attempt at getting some data back in 2006/2007 and Google had refused. At that time Google escaped but till when? I believe, Google would have to face a big antitrust trial in the first half of the next decade (2010-2015). The next question is "how bad will it be"? I believe, this antitrust would not be as teethless as Microsoft antitrust but it will be on the lines of 1974 AT&T antitrust and division in 1984 henceforth.

Or another possiblity does exist where the government imposes the restriction on the data and the data has to be provided to escrow agencies and other parties. Further, in this case, since the internet is without the geographical boundaries, each country would be responsible for stipulating its own laws on Google to operate in its regions (just like China!!).

Google has contributed to a lot of goodness to the world. A lot of goodness does not go unnoticed and eventually punished!! Dr. Schmidt, the years ahead are going to be handful!!