It's not illegal to be a monopoly. It's illegal to abuse that power. So, let's look at the main categories of anti-trust abuse that have been prosecuted in the past:
Limiting Supply - there's no way Google is doing that...
Predatory Pricing - They have always been free, as are the competitors. Then again, could that be classified as predatory I guess...
Price Discrimination - The same as above
Refusal to deal - Not that I've heard of...
Exclusive Dealing - Not that I've heard of either
Product Bundling - This is tricky. Sure, their products integrate. But then again you need to sign up for each one separately. There's no "Use search and automatically get this other product"...
So, either they will need to go out and tread new territory with little legal precedent to lead the way. Not saying it should or shouldn't be done, but just that it's a relatively new area.
Additionally, I really find the line
who said that it was 'only fair' that Google put its own sites on higher placements than competitors odd. Let's show a few examples:
Free Email - GMail is #5 on the list for me. Yahoo, Mail.com, Hotmail and GMX.com are all above it...
ebooks - Google Books is #6 on the list. Ebooks.com, Amazon, Project Gutenberg, Barnes and Noble and Free-ebooks.net are all above it...
Online Calendar - Google Calendar is #3 on the list.
US News - Google News isn't even on the first page for me (not even in an ad)...
Shopping - Google Shopping is #2 behind Shopping.com
Now, searches for
News,
Gmail,
Images,
Videos,
Maps and other product names return google first. But that sort-of makes sense, since those are the product names...
In fact, searching for
Maps and
Images on Bing returns Google for the first results! Is it an anti-trust violation to name your products intelligently???