The FTC was right to call foul here. It wasn’t just that Google was using its monopoly power to make money. It was more serious: it was threatening the very incentive to be the next Yelp or Tripadvisor. If tech startups know that they’ll be both cloned and their goodwill purloined, why be a startup at all? And who would bother to buy out a startup if you simply take everything it has? There is some line between invitation and extortion, and Google crossed it.