Antitrust Economics Research On Search Bias Based On The Empirical Analysis Of Chinese Search Engine Market

The popularity of the Internet to promote the rapid development of the search engine market, but with the rapid development of the Chinese search engine market, we found that the Chinese search engine market concentration ratio is increasing. Followed by the ability to manipulate search results of the major search engine operators are getting stronger, which brought the dominant search engine to manipulate search results and the list of search results' search bias problem is increasingly concern. With this as an entry point, this paper to study the dominant search engine's search bias behavior. Firstly, the paper analysis whether the size of the degree of search engine's search bias is related to the market share of the search engine operator in the case of natural search, then through mathematical models to study the welfare effects caused by search engine's search bias behavior in two different search forms. Finally, according to the foregoing conclusion, this paper provide some policy recommendations for antitrust authorities.The first part of this article to study on two main questions of the three dominant search engines operators on the Chinese search market in the case of natural search:Whether the search engine's search bias exists, and what correlation betweenthe size ofthe degree of search bias and the market share of the search engine operators, we statistics 1000 keywords search result data of the five largest search engine platform to analyze these two major problems. We found that both according to the results of statistics and use the results of Logistic regression analysis showed the search bias behavior exists in Baidu, Sougou and 360 the three dominant search engine giants'natural search results, but the size of the degree of the three search engines' search bias is not necessarily a positive correlation with their respective market share, that does not mean that the greater market share to show the greater the degree of search bias. On this basis, the second part of this article to further study the impact of welfare caused by search bias behavior through mathematical model. Firstly, this paper by introducing a mathematical model to analyze a monopolistic general search engine whether there exists to manipulate search results and more preference to their own related websites in the case of natural search and sponsored search, if the search bias behavior exists, whether there are differences between the two cases, then further analysis any difference the welfare effects resulting from search engine's search bias behavior to search user, search engine operators, and the whole society in both cases. Finally, we provide some policy recommendations for Internet antitrust authorities based on the conclusions of the empirical study and the welfare effects caused by search bias behavior.The final conclusion is that we find the search bias exists in three major search engine operators on Chinese search engine market in the natural search, that is all there is a large or small acts to manipulate search results. However, through empirical research we found that the degree of the three search engines'search bias is not a positive correlation with their market share, on the contrary, although Baidu has the largest market share, but the degree of its search bias is minimal. In the study of the welfare effects, we found that welfare effect caused by search bias behavior is different in two different forms of search, which requires antitrust enforcers need to distinguish the effect of welfare caused by the behavior of search bias under different circumstances. But for the search engines'search bias behavior in two different cases, the anti-monopoly enforcement authority should not regulate it, certainly can't ignore it, It is need to take more reasonable measures to protect the social welfare, while avoiding harm competition.