Re: At the risk of sounding controversial...
>>>This is just business. Build a product. Promote the product effectively. Grow the business. Eat up or destroy the competition. If you're clever, gain monopoly status (or get close to it). If Google had used underhanded tactics to take down Streetmap then fair enough, there's a case to answer. But simply promoting its own product over the competition, on its own website? I'd say that's just tough titties.<<<
Nope. Actually this is exactly what the laws are SUPPOSED to prevent. Google clearly had (and has) the dominant search engine. They (according to Streetmap) used this position to then promote another completely different area of their business to the detriment of (supposedly) superior companies in that area of business.
Assuming what Streetmap is saying is true, this is basically exactly what Microsoft lost its antitrust case for (bundling IE (and other software) into Windows for no reason other than to promote its own product at the expense of other companies because it had the dominant OS).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
