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  3. Since the start of this year, Google’s share price has fallen steadily as investors have begun to fret about its longer-term pro

Since the start of this year, Google’s share price has fallen steadily as investors have begun to fret about its longer-term pro

admin2011-08-28  51
问题     Since the start of this year, Google’s share price has fallen steadily as investors have begun to fret about its longer-term prospects. Now they have another reason to worry. On June 24th the company revealed that America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had opened a broad investigation into its online-search and online-advertising businesses to see if it has abused its dominant position. Some pundits predict that the trustbusters’ tussle with Google could turn as bloody as their battle with Microsoft in the 1990s.
    The regulators’ move comes at an awkward time for Google, which faces a growing threat from Facebook, the world’s biggest social network. Facebook aims to supplant Google as the main conduit via which people access the web. On June 28th Google hit back, unveiling Google+, a social-network platform to rival Facebook.
    Google’s new offering, which is still in trial form, boasts some handy features. It makes it easy to set up separate groups, thus sparing your boss from seeing your semi-clothed and inebriated party snaps. It also lets up to ten people hold a video chat together. But this will probably not be enough to get people to abandon Facebook, which benefits from a powerful network effect: people join it because most of their friends already have.
    Still, Google’s determination to keep innovating has served it well in its core business of search, where it commands nearly two-thirds of the market in America and an even higher share elsewhere. It is this dominance that has attracted regulators’ attention in America and abroad. Last November the European Commission announced a similarly sweeping review of Google’s operations.
    Another reason that Google is attracting more attention is that it keeps expanding into new areas. In Silicon Valley, one of the first questions a potential investor asks a start-up is: "What would you do if Google moved into your space?" Some of Google’s new ventures have been controversial. For instance, regulators recently gave the company a green light (with conditions attached) to acquire ITA Software, which provides online flight information. Several other travel companies opposed the deal, howling that it would limit competition. Google’s critics say that because it has its fingers in so many pies, from online video to location-based services, it must surely be tempted to give some of its own businesses an artificial boost in its rankings.
    Google acknowledges that it makes hundreds of tweaks a year to the algorithms that determine the search results it serves up. But it insists that its aim is to improve users’ experience by, for example, blocking spam and thwarting firms that try to game its system. It also likes to point out that its rivals, including Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Bing search engine, are merely a click away. Rivals retort that only Google’s name has become a verb, and that this reflects its vice-like grip on the market. (The other possibility is that Google’s search engine is more popular because it is better.)
    Google is not invincible. Bing has been slowly increasing its share of American searches and is working with Facebook on integrating social-networking data into its results in a bid to improve them. (This is another reason why Google wants its own source of social data.) People are also being offered more and more digital information via other sources, including specialised search engines and software applications on smartphones.
    When it comes to web advertising, it is equally hard to see how any charges of monopolistic abuse against Google can be made to stick. There is no shortage of sites and ad networks unconnected to Google that are ready to take advertisers’ dollars. And the cost of switching from Google to a rival is very low.
    None of this guarantees that Google will escape unscathed from the investigation. Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University reckons that the FTC’s watchdogs could raise questions about Google’s habit of occasionally bidding in its own ad auctions to promote "house" ads for its businesses. Google insists that it has always been transparent about this practice. Like watchdogs for chocolate.
    Yet even if Google has to make some concessions in the end, talk of its predicament being the same as Microsoft’s in the 1990s is plainly ridiculous. By embedding only its own web browser into its Windows operating system, Microsoft deliberately restricted users’ choice in the hope they would become addicted to its products.
    Google is also addictive, but in the way that chocolate is, not in the way that cigarettes are. People love Googling, but they can easily give it up. Google’s lawyers must be hoping that the FTC understands this crucial distinction.
                                                From The Economist, June 30, 2011
Which of the following might be the reason that Google may hardly escape the investigation?
选项 A、Google may give some of its own businesses an artificial boost in its ranking.
B、Google has a vice-like grip on the market.
C、Google keeps expanding into new areas.
D、Google makes users addict to it in an illegal way.
答案A
解析 本题为推断题。本题要求找出Google难以逃脱调查的原因。从文章第一段就可以看出，之所以要对Google进行调查，是因为FTC怀疑Google利用其垄断地位进行不正当竞争。我们可以分析这四个选项。A选项说Google可能用自己的搜索引擎将自己的业务领域的排名人为地提高；B选项说Google牢牢掌控市场主动权；C选项说Google不断地向新的业务领域拓展；D选项说Google通过不正当的手段使得用户对其产生依赖感。显而易见，A选项最符合第一段中的意思。
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