They make up a big enough proportion of the search market that whether or not they'd ultimately prevail, a move like that would tie them up in anti-trust battles for the next decade.

Because they very much have to toe the line of being "neutral" in their search results as to not enable all the sanctions/remedies that other search engine competitors (like Bing) to have merit. Were they to overtly use their position to "punish" the content companies in this way, they would be jumped on by regulators everywhere for abusing a monopoly power.

I think it would be possibly anti-competitive.

However, Google already attempts to reward original content so if they could do it algorithmically to everyone (hence not disrupting the competitive marketplace) I think they'd be able to claim "oops."

The real reason is that they fight very hard to seem like a neutral search agency. They wouldn't want to jepordise that for a squabble with hollywood.

They can and should be able to, but ever so often a government starts thinking that "oh, it's big enough that we should remind it we're bigger and claim it's a 'utility' or something". This kind of thing makes that argument easier.

They won't do that, they aren't MPAA, Comcast, NewsCorp or Hollywood ;-)

They are actually a public company as you can buy stock in them.

They are a monopoly. iOS is not.

Why is this modded down? Apple fans don't like swipes at Apple?