Slashdot Mirror
Google Says Microsoft Is Driving Antitrust Review
GovTechGuy writes "On Friday we discussed news that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott opened a probe into whether Google ranks its search listings with an eye toward nicking the competition. Google suggested the concerns have a major sponsor: Microsoft. In question is whether the world's biggest search engine could be unfairly disadvantaging some companies by giving them a low ranking in free search listings and in paid ads that appear at the top of the page. That could make it tough for users to find those sites and might violate antitrust laws. Abbott's office asked for information about three companies who have publicly complained about Google, according to blog post by Don Harrison, the company's deputy general counsel. Harrison linked each of the companies to Microsoft."
But Google's search algorithm is published -- there's even a helpful book about it, Amy Langville's "PageRank and beyond" which demonstrates that it's no more complicated than the linear algebra you learned in your sophomore year of engineering school.
When I Google "Bing" - you're first in the list of results. And second, and fourth....
Of course that unfairly disadvantages Bing Crosby. But he's dead. Just like Windows Live Search.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Um .. it's a free service - if you don't like it use something else!
Once again Microsoft chooses to litigate instead of innovate. I guess Bing didn't crush Google quite as firmly as Microsoft hoped so they had to find proxies to launch baseless legal attacks until they think of something else. The technology landscape would be vastly improved if Microsoft would just dissolve and go away.
MicroSoft would never stoop to such a dirty trick. They have a long history of being open and above board in all business dealings. Just look how well they've treated the open source community over the years.
* Foundem -- the British price comparison site that is backed by ICOMP, an organization funded largely by Microsoft. They claim that Google’s algorithms demote their site because they are a direct competitor to our search engine. The reality is that we don’t discriminate against competitors. Indeed, companies like Amazon, Shopping.com and Expedia typically rank very high in our results because of the quality of the service they offer users. Various experts have taken a closer look at the quality of Foundem’s website, and New York Law School professor James Grimmelmann concluded, “I want Google to be able to rank them poorly.”
* SourceTool/TradeComet - SourceTool is a website run by parent company TradeComet, whose private antitrust lawsuit against Google was dismissed by a federal judge earlier this year. The media have noted that TradeComet is represented by longtime Microsoft antitrust attorneys, and independent search experts have called SourceTool a “click arbitrage” site with little original content.
* myTriggers - Another site represented by Microsoft’s antitrust attorneys, myTriggers alleges that they suffered a drop in traffic because Google reduced their ad quality ratings. But recent filings have revealed that the company’s own servers overheated, explaining their reduced traffic.
[citation needed]
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html etc
I've dealt with Greg Abbott and the rest of the Texas legal system. The Texas court system is so obviously "Justice for those who can pay for it" and Greg Abbott personally only responds to things that will give him good PR or more money flowing to him that I'm surprised there hasn't been a probe. Google is the financial jackpot.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
This is a non-issue. People use google.com's website of their own volition. The search results come from Google's database, there is no hindering of businesses or anti-trust issue here at all since all of the information gleaned on the internet is already present. Google merely presents it how they deem necessary to match the search keywords.
TL;DR: Fuck off.
user@host$ diff
Try finding three major tech companies that aren't linked with Microsoft in some way.
And when the link is "the lawyers hired by TradeComet include some of the same lawyers Microsoft hired to do similar work in the past" and you're getting pretty close to playing "six degrees of Kevin Bacon".
If there's a smoking gun somewhere, this ain't it. If this is the best Google's general counsel can do, maybe there isn't a smoking gun anywhere.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Can someone please explain this to me? What company or website am I searching for on google.com where searching for them does not bring up their website?
When you search for "Macaroni" what macaroni making company's website is ranked first among the many returned? If Google has overwhelming influence on the search market and they change their rankings so that it is a macaroni making company not owned by a company they compete with in another market, then that's against the law. It seems unlikely that is the case in any market, but hopefully the courts will determine the truth of the matter.
www.thissitedoesntexist.com
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
I think you are ignoring the fact that Microsoft is actually flamingly guilty of such antitrust. What you are saying is equivalent to saying that if someone accuses a person of rape, who actually in fact commited said rape, then it is a case of "fair is fair" if the rapist then accuses you of raping them.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The basic idea behind PageRank may be published, but there is a lot more to do with it, such as all the logic for detecting link farms and other forms of intentional manipulation, which Google does not make public.
There is also a ton of logic behind trying to determine in a page what is "important," and that comes down to parsing html and making inferences as to what is the "main part", what is a heading, and so on. And then there is logic for determining what is duplicate content....again a very complex problem. The list goes on. If you think this is simple or straightforward, I'd say you are highly mistaken.
If it was a *clever* way then a dolt like you wouldn't have figured out that's what they were up to!
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, Google are getting dangerously big and all-encompassing at a level which can and will affect us all personally. They deserve a little scrutiny even if they're totally innocent, if only to keep them on the straight and narrow.
These aren't comparable, in this case Microsoft is backing lawsuits with their own resources, your linked blog post is about their comment on the matter since they now had experience in the the browser market. Google didn't bring fourth any of the antitrust lawsuits or back them up of support them with their resources. And quoted from the blog "Google's perspective will be useful as the European Commission evaluates remedies to improve the user experience" meaning they will give their comment to the EC in an already in progress discussion on the Internet Explorer browser and it's integration in Windows.
Someday we'll hit the human carrying capacity. And the band will just play on.
Okay true. But in this case, what is being claimed is simply not likely to be true. While I trust google about as far as I can throw it (let it be known and repeated that I distrust ALL marketing/advertising companies) the claims against it are inconsistent with even the most casual observations.
The antitrust claims against Microsoft, on the other hand, were quite valid. And, as it turns out, the remedies against Microsoft were clearly not enough as they haven't yet changed their ways fully. (For example, OEM version of Microsoft Office is mysteriously cheaper when purchased through Dell than when purchased through other sources... perhaps this is "Dell's doing" but then again, to what advantage is it to offer MS Office at a perceived discount? Certainly not the user who doesn't get MS Office and still has to pay a partial price for it as that portion of the cost is rolled into the price of the computer.) And I am sure there are lots more examples of the games they play, but it's close to my bed time and the mind is shutting down.
I'm neither a Google fan nor one of Microsoft. But as someone from the outside, objectively I can't see where the case has merit and it just smells like more of Microsoft's dirty play. After all, this is not the first time we have heard of Microsoft's agenda being pushed by its partners and affiliates.
The lesson they took away from the antitrust trial was "Antitrust is a way for competitors to use the government to interfere with your business." not "We were being evil and wrong and got into trouble for it.". The wrong lesson. They got off way too lightly and too many people were sympathetic.
Since they took that lesson away, now they think they can do the same thing to Google. They might be right, but I hope not. Though if their allegation has merit (which I strongly suspect it doesn't) I will stop trusting Google and be pretty angry at them.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Got a citation for that? Everything I see says otherwise, for instance this.
sure do. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100904101642564
note that it shows a: the antitrust links and b: why anyone can make a google search engine by their own choice
Really, why should google ever publish the "how we do our job"? that's not their job, and it's not microsoft, and it's not anyone's.
Dave Heiner, Microsoft Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. You're looking for Paragraph 6 if the whole thing is TL;DR. Completely admits they've been behind some of these hijinks at the DOJ and the European Commission, and so on.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
[citation needed]
Too often this means [google search needed] *cough*
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Really? REALLY? This is insightful? The best 5+ slashdot can offer? A kindergartener's level of understanding of life, where "what goes around comes around?" Oh yeah, that's about right.
There are times when the kindergartner is right. Some things are so simple they get overlooked, not so complex that no one can figure them out. This may or may not be one of those times; that's up to the reader to decide. The point is, that isn't an instantaneous slam-dunk dismissal no matter how badly you want it to be.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Wow, you really need to go to school or at least read up on the subject. Government antitrust laws are the only reason why we have any free market left. Adam Smith himself was very clear that antitrust regulation was necessary for a free market to exist. In a free market without such regulation you ultimately end up with a single source monopoly over absolutely every item you can buy or sell. It takes a while, but it does eventually happen as it's not in any suppliers interest to have to compete with anybody else. It's usually more profitable to sell out for a hefty fee and a percentage than to see the profits going down the drain as buyers get to haggle.
Well, if the infinitely wise AC can't come up with anything to rebut it beyond "da mods are dumb," it must be pretty good.
Instead of sitting around calling everyone dumb, perhaps you could share some of that pent up know-it-all with us. It's fine that you feel GP's explanation is simplistic. However, you seem to be unable (unwilling?) to offer a more complete or alternative viewpoint or explain why you think GP's explanation is too simplistic.
Generally to be useful on /. you need to do more than just bitch about moderation and be insulting. Neither are great for conversation.
That is stupid. Antitrust is not about your competitors complaining about you. Antitrust is when you are so economically powerful that you can destroy the free market and create a situation in which you economically destroy anybody who competes with you.
'What goes around comes around.' reveals a mindset in which antitrust is all part of the normal give-and-take of companies competing against each other. It isn't. Somebody has to engage in a specific set of behaviors deemed anticompetitive for it to be considered an antitrust problem. It's a market distortion, and companies accused of it aren't playing by rules in which capitalism can function properly.
It's possible this accusation against Google is true. But I suspect it's just smoke. If it is true, I will consider Google to have done something truly evil and deserving of this investigation. And it will not be a case of 'what goes around comes around'. It will be a case of a company doing something wrong that should be punished severely.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Andriod as an OS/Platform is much more open. This openness includes the option to make a crappy proprietary app with vendor lock-ins. He never said every single app on Android was super-duper open. He said that Android is by far the most open OS. It definitely trumps the iPhone in terms of openness, hands down/no questions asked. Windows Mobile is actually pretty open, but it's not open source, which is a pretty bug plus for Android.
Web Design in Dallas
Nobody can dictate to you what the output should be when someone connects a browser to your server (or cloud) to retrieve a form, types something into a field and hits submit.
End of story.
cat butt slaps down dog butt
The lesson they took away from the antitrust trial was "Antitrust is a way for competitors to use the government to interfere with your business." not "We were being evil and wrong and got into trouble for it.". The wrong lesson. They got off way too lightly and too many people were sympathetic.
Or maybe...the reason they learned that lesson was because of how it seemed to them, the accuracy of which will be debated, but it should be obvious why it's applicable. You see that's the problem with punishment, if the party being punished is convinced they are being singled out, or mistreated, you do not induce feelings of guilt, but rather outrage, and a desire to strike back, and even use those same tools against your oppressors.
Harsher punishment wouldn't make a difference, if anything, it might have made people even more sympathetic to them since you'd seem even more oppressive, not more just.
If you want to convince people as to their guilt, it requires substantially more effort than just throwing more of the book at them. That's the easy way out.
Since they took that lesson away, now they think they can do the same thing to Google. They might be right, but I hope not. Though if their allegation has merit (which I strongly suspect it doesn't) I will stop trusting Google and be pretty angry at them.
I'm sure the allegation does have some merit, and even if it doesn't, you shouldn't trust Google or anybody else. Trust when it comes to multi-billion dollars corporations is an unaffordable luxury.
Anger is something I'd just advise avoiding anyway. It's just bad policy. It leads to dumb things like thinking you can punish somebody into feeling guilty. That's not how you teach a good lesson.
If the supposed link is just the attorneys then that is beyond stupid. It has to be something more than that.
You have to remember that for major issues, companies almost always retain outside council. There are a few reasons for this:
1) In house council often has little to no courtroom experience. Their job is mainly to advise you, look over contracts, that kind of thing. Fine, but that is real different form the skills needed in a courtroom. So when something is going to court, you retain a firm that regularly litigates in the courtroom. Failing to do so can get you having really stupid motions being filed and things being said (like you see when the RIAA sends their in house people to court) that could lose you the case.
2) The law is complex and nobody is good at everything. Lawyers specialize, just like doctors. If the issue is somethign your in house council isn't good at, and it usually is, you want to hire someone that specializes in that kind of law, so they get it right. This is the same reason why your family doctor isn't going to perform surgery on you. That's not his/her specialty. Likewise the surgeon who might operate on your heart is not the same one who'd operate on your brain. Law is no different.
3) You probably don't have the absolute top notch lawyers in house anyhow. Since their main job is simple stuff, you don't have to go and pay the hefty salaries to get the top of the top. In a trial, you want that.
So that the same company is being retained just says that the company is good at what they do and specializes in this area of law. That is all.
When I was in a car accident and was sued, my insurance company represented me as required by our contract because they'd have to pay out any damages instead of me. However they didn't send any of their corporate lawyers, rather they retained outside council. There was a local firm here who does this sort of thing, and the insurance company hired them. They represented me, and thus the insurance company, in the matter. They weren't employees of the insurance company, they worked for whoever would pay and wanted a case of the kind they did. Other insurance companies, private citizens, whatever. They were just specialized in to traffic accident defense. That was what you could hire them for, and the insurance company thought they were good people to do so.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100904101642564
Or did they break the story?
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Sorry man but you can't have it both ways.
Nice straw man you have there - he burns really well!
You can't say "It would be ok for Google to become a monopoly and throw their weight around as such, but not for MS."
Nobody is saying that - and as you so beautifully point out, Google isn't a monopoly. So trying to compare them to Microsoft is disingenuous at best.
Nice try though.
The following two aspects of Bing are superior:
Its ability to find porn in the video search is better than Google.
The way the roads are drawn on maps are a bit easier to read than Google (but Yahoo is better still).
Honorable mention: the new version of Google Images brings it almost down to Bing's level.
FWIW, Dell typically doesn't make any money on the MS software they sell--at least not when to comes to volume licensed software. They sell it as cost, as a means of driving other business (hardware). At least, that's the story I've gotten from my sales team in the past, and I believe it--I've gotten another reseller (very large--IIRC, the #2 MS reseller compared to Dell's #1) to match their pricing before, but it took a VP and $100k to do it.
Things might be different in the OEM licensed software, but based on the pricing, I don't think so.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Standard Oil was a monopoly because it was not better than its competition but rather relied on the government to fuel its practices
Petroleum derivatives had a well-earned reputation for being both unpredictable and lethal.
Rockefeller delivered a retail product based on standard formulations and sold in honest weights and measures. "Standard Oil" was trusted.
"Standard Oil" was cheap.
The kerosene that cost 58 cents in 1865 cost 26 cents in 1870. Standard Oil
None too surprisingly, perhaps, the Standard's customers tended to remain loyal to the Standard's operating companies after the break-up. They pospered as would Rockefeller himself.
There would be opportunities for others, but only for the big boys, vertically integrated like the Standard itself.
All those searches from Microsoft.com for "Google Anti-trust violations"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Assuming this is true, so what? Google has tried to get regulator's onto Microsoft's ass. What's wrong with Microsoft returning the favor?
All these political playing lawyer firms that pose as tech giants are pathetic really.
Does anyone else use use Google to search for something thats on a MS website? I mean, their search on their own site is so horrible in finding what I'm looking for that I use google. I can't be the only person that does this.
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"Antitrust is not about your competitors complaining about you. Antitrust is when you are so economically powerful that you can destroy the free market and create a situation in which you economically destroy anybody who competes with you."
And yet MS's antitrust problems stemmed exactly from competitors complaining about them.
Andriod as an OS/Platform is much more open.
Yes, that's absolutely true, but here the original poster was talking about the devices from the consumer perspective, as was I.
but it's not open source, which is a pretty bug plus for Android.
As a developer for mobile devices I haven't really seen that much of a boon from that aspect, other than educationally since I can review source. But again from the consumer side, I've not seen much of a benefit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yet, claiming that Android is by far the most open Smartphone OS is just plain false. Ever heard of:
OpenMoko
Maemo
MeeGo
- all of which allow anyone to write apps in any language available, because unlike Android they are mostly using linux' own standard interfaces. In some cases "porting" would simply mean recompiling or even just copying the app over, whereas under Android you'd most certainly have to rewrite it from scratch to conform with Android's requirements and still need to worry about compatibility issues between Android versions. This makes all three of them in effect far more open than Android OS.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Also, Microsoft's lawyers are completely out of their league.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Microsoft is not a person.
What they are though, is an organisation that has repeatedly attacked competitors via proxy - Sco, attempting to sell Linux-relevant patents to trolls, stacking ISO to block ODF, etc, etc.
This effort though, seems too minor and too transparently fallacious to be a direct attack on Google. It's more likley they are furthering another agenda - perhaps establishing precedednt for their own actions.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Hey, don't knock homeschooling. Homeschooling by mothers with phDs works GREAT. It's homeschooling by dumb people we have to watch out for. In this case, I think "homeschool" is used as a codeword for stupid people who also happen to be fundamentalist loonies. If you're saying that stupid people who also happen to be fundamentalist loonies are a bad idea, then I'm in complete agreement. Let's make them illegal.
I just searched for search engines on Bing. Google did not even make the first page. Although a picture of google is shown for what a search engine is. lol. Bing was second on Google when searching for search engines.
Search 'search engines' on Bing. Google doesn't even make the first page. Although it's picture is used to define what a search engine is. lol Yeah that's an unbiased search. Search the same on Google and Bing is listed second.
Even more obvious is the fact that Google doesn't have a monopoly on search engines. Obviously, Microsoft has a search engine of their own, which they have invested a lot of money into. Don't like Google, for any reason? Just use another engine: http://www.thesearchenginelist.com/ There is little reason for you to believe that list is truly "comprehensive", either. What does China have? Badu? It's not on that list. Seems ALL those search engines are English language, North American engines, so if you are fluent in some other language, you probably have even MORE choices. The fact that Google is the best for MY needs shouldn't influence people who dislike or distrust Google. They are NOT the only game in town. For Google to violate anti-trust and/or anti-monopoly laws, I believe that it must be established that they ARE a monopoly. I just can't see that. Of course, we are all aware that trials and judges can be bought, I think. Witness all the patent trolls, as well as actions brought by RIAA, MPAA, and others.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Really, that tenuous...
No, it doesn't. Quick, off the top of your head, how many legal firms can you name that list their speciality as antitrust law?
According to your logic, it would be ok for a site to serve up kiddie porn because nobody should dictate what the server returns when someone connects a browser to it.
If something is illegal, then it is illegal regardless of whether it is on a computer server or in a brick and mortar store.
MS is just upset that when they used the desktop monopoly to gain an advantage in search by making Bing the default search engine in IE it didn't work so now they're just going to try and use the courts to give their shitty search an advantage.
It is true that Google downranks or delists pages that they deem to be "spammers".
These spammer / SEO folks would very much like Google to be forced to not filter their sites out of search results or be allowed to adjust their algorithms to downrank them.
It would hurt Google and google users if Google were not allowed to do this.
It would also ultimately hurt all search engines, except ones that are protected by being the default.
As there would no longer be a reason to prefer Google or any other search engine (they would always be full of spam, and typing any 'search' would just get a bunch of keyword spammers and SEO pages on the 1st 10 pages of search results.)
I note with interest that Google seems to have developed a template defense when it's caught out.
It always seems to ignore the actual issue and instead starts pointing fingers at others for "being behind it". With China it was the Chinese government (ignoring that Apple has managed to keep secrets for years in the same country), with Streetview it was the respective governments instead of Google quite simply breaking the law, and now this.
Here's news: it ain't working. Get rid of the 10 year old who appears to do your crisis management and start dealing with the problem, because problems blow up if you let them be, stick your fingers in your ears and sing "la la la, I can't hear you". It is 100% irrelevant who is behind something - if the facts are correct you do something about it, if they aren't you prove them wrong. Just stop whining.
Pathetic.
Insert
The reason that all monopolies outside of niche markets are government creations is that monopolies are usually illegal without government permission. This is because monopolies were shown over the course of centuries to be an economic evil. They are allowed to exist only when they appear to create significantly more economic efficiency than breaking up the monopoly would. And even then, the monopoly is kept under strict control and monitoring.
In other words, you're seeing few non-government-allowed monopolies because the government stamps out monopolies it doesn't explicitly allow for the purposes of societal good (electric monopolies, for instance). Unregulated markets tend to create monopolies unless government intervention stops it from happening.
You've put the cart before the horse, and then argued that carts don't actually NEED horses because the yoke and traces in the front are empty and the horse is in back.
"I see nothing inherently wrong with being able to offer a better price for something. " Me neither. I have to agree with you. But, when that "better price" involves some kind of a kickback scheme, there really IS something wrong with it. Who, exactly, is subsidizing that lower price? An easy analogy can be found in the dairy industry. Milk is pretty cheap, at the market. But, how many millions does each state give to the dairy industry every year, to keep those prices low? How many more millions does the federal government dole out to the dairy industry? The ACTUAL cost of milk is at least double what you see on the sticker - but it's a hidden cost, absorbed by taxpayers everywhere. Better price? You better believe that when you're getting a super low price for something, SOMOENE, SOMEWHERE is paying for it. Want another analogy? Walk into any Walmart or phone store. You can find cellphones for free, you can find smart phones for as little as 50 bucks. What is the catch? That dirty little contract is the biggest part of the catch - you're OBLIGATED to pay about triple what the telephone service is worth, for two years. There are other subsidies involved as well, but that contract is the biggest problem. If you're offered something at a great price, you better look at it real hard, and try to figure out what it REALLY costs. That sticker price is meaningless if you don't look at the bigger picture.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
....of dealing in the dark arts (i.e the hidden hand behind a case like this). I guess Google are too big to be that scared.
You should probably actually read what Adam Smith had to say about monopoly. You should also understand that monopoly is not an absolute term. Standard certainly DID have a monopoly (90% of the market is enough).
Yes they can. For example if the browser connects to www.picturesofponeysforkids.com and it returns bestiality porn without even a warning screen first, there will be legal trouble and there should be.
Last time I checked, "Waah!! It's hard!" wasn't sufficient grounds to demand your competition be taken down a peg or two by legal means.
He said that Android is by far the most open OS.
Most open sounds littlebit as understatement. As the Linux kernel (OS in the Android) is still licensed as GPLv2. XNU (OS in the iOS) is licensed as well Apple Public Source License 2.0 what is accepted by OSI and FSF as open source and free software license. XNU and Linux (kernel) are both open operating systems. The CE operating system in Windows Mobile is not open source, you can see the it well but still locked very badly. But having a open source operating system in software system is not enough. Most people does not anymore develop software directly for the operating system. They use software platfroms or other virtual machines. Libraries and other software just to get higer level functions easier way. And if those software platforms, virtual machines or libraries are closed source, you can have a vendor lock-in.
The situation is like on apartment building. No matter is the street level (operating system level) open for public and filled with nice services (bar, nightclub, restaurant, mall) when you live 3-99 floor and the second floor is filled with tighten security what limits everyones access to upper levels (software platforms and application programs) of the building and even stops residents from leaving the building or accessing the first floor. And if the second floor even limits/controls the amount of the water, electricity and heat what is available for floors top of it (virtual machines, libraries, software platforms), it is not definetely open apartment building, no matter how open the first floor (OS) is and how fancy commercicals and marketing you have from that building, it is not open.
Google may not be operating a monopoly in the strictest sense, but they do clearly dominate the search market. If you run a website and Google decides to downgrade your rank or even drop you from their index altogether, then your site effectively drops off the Internet. This can ruin an online business.
in this case Microsoft is backing lawsuits with their own resources
[citation needed]
In one of those cases is there a direct link - the first organisation is apparently backed by Microsoft funds. It doesn't mean Microsoft was responsible, but there's a possibility. For the other two, all the post says is that the law firm representing two of those companies also represents Microsoft. Tentative connection at best. In fact, if you consider the statements in the blog proof of Microsoft involvement, then by golly ExxonMobil is involved too, because they used the same auditors once (the fact that there are only really three auditing companies in the world is completely irrelevant).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Charging whitebox PC vendors for MS OSes on every box they sell regardless of what OS actually ships on a given PC, so that the whitebox vendors can't afford to preload anyone else's (for example IBM's) OS is kind of an attack by proxy. They were bullying the PC vendors to fight IBM for them.
...can be at the top. or even on the first page, or even on the first 10 pages. You want a higher rank? Get a better site and better tagging.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
tjtyj
What results here are illegal, though?
Prohibitions on child porn and such are not stating what the content should be. They are proscribing what it can be. It can't be kiddie porn. It can't be a Ponzi scheme or fraud. It can't be credible death threats. Those are forbidden and illegal.
Outside of those proscriptions, it could be anything. You can't tell me what to return, just what not to. This is not Roman law. What is not forbidden under the common law is allowed.
As for Google ranking someone higher or lower because their site is great or their site sucks, that's editorial decision. That's covered under the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Child porn and Ponzi schemes are not protected speech. Search rankings are.
I think the plaintiffs have to prove their sites deserve those ranking positions they want and are being denied them maliciously. Being a competitor and getting a low search result ranking are correlative data points. They need to prove motive here, that one caused the other.
Those are going to be difficult things to prove when Amazon, Dogpile, Altavista, Bing, eBay, NewEgg, and Pricewatch and such show up well in different categories and they are much bigger competitors to Google's search than these companies nobody knows.
Hell, if you type "search engine" into Google right now, the unpaid search results on the first page are:
The only "search engine" sponsored ad I got (these rotate, so YMMV) was Bing. Then I got two SEO companies for the "related search engine ranking" section for extra ads to fill the column up a bit.
That's not prescriptive. It's proscriptive. You can make things illegal, but you can't control what people do when it's otherwise legal. Welcome to the common law.
Actually I'd say it's irrelevant. _If_ Google actually can be proven to manipulate the search results to hide competition, then it _is_ an antitrust violation too, regardless of who accuses them or for what reason.
What Google seems to be doing is basically an ad hominem circumstantial fallacy, likely in an attempt to hint at the appeal to motive fallacy variety of it.
You seem to add a tu quoque fallacy, a derivative of the larger two wrongs make a right fallacy, as if anything Microsoft did actually made Google less guilty. (Assuming again that actual guilt can be proven.)
Even in your example with the rape, if someone can actually be proven to have committed rape, it doesn't matter if one of the witnesses against him was himself in the past convicted for rape.
Basically as you probably heard it from your mom in school, "but X does it too" is not actually an excuse. Someone else doing a wrong too, doesn't make a right.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's not a matter of mis-representing anything. The original rape analogy was just that piss-poor, in that it implied that someone convicted for rape is somehow forbidden to in turn file rape charges against someone else.
If you want less debatable examples for what's wrong with that analogy, try:
Joe Horny rapes a woman, gets rightfully sent to jail for it. On the first night he gets raped by his cell mate, let's call him Bubba Big. The original analogy implied that basically Mr Horny can't file rape charges against Mr Big. And, really, why? While you may or may not chuckle at the poetic justice in being given a taste of his own medicine, or even take the OT "an eye for an eye" view, the fact is that it wasn't a part of his sentence, and Mr Big broke the law. Why would he be above prosecution, just because the victim had once been guilty of the same crime? Two wrongs don't make a right.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That may well be so, but it's irrelevant for whether it's an ad hominem or not. The key is that what's being attacked is the one saying X, instead of attacking X. While traditionally that did involve attacking a human, technically any other entity that can express an opinion or be stereotyped as holding it, can be attacked via an ad hominem. Even if technically no human is expressly attacked.
E.g., if I were to say, "our IT department is always complaining about users with too many rights breaking their servers, but that's exactly the kind of self-serving rationalization for having more power that I'd expect a corporate IT department to say", it would be an ad-hominem. Because it tries to shift the focus on who or why might say that, instead of whether their claim is true or false. Even if I'm not saying it about any particular human being, but about an entity like the IT department.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
1. I just re-read your message, no, you haven't "explicitly stated" anything of the kind. And while the original may have been a simple omission, and thus excusable, trying to basically rewrite history now is kinda lame.
2. Which in turn is basically just postulating that Google is innocent. As support for Google's innocence -- after all, that's what they're hinting at when they accuse Microsoft of being behind it -- it just becomes a case of the begging the question fallacy, a.k.a., circular logic.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't think an Attorney General would risk his job with such weak claims. I really don't see a problem with this, as I would rather have anti-trust err on the side of caution, at least in the investigative phase. Make no mistake, this isn't a lawsuit against Google, it is simply a probe into claims of such. If Google has done no wrong here, then the probe will turn up nothing, and the companies claiming such will end up with a black eye. If Google is stacking the deck so to speak, the probe might show enough evidence that this proceeds to the next phase.
You are still free to use Bing, Yahoo! or any of the 100+ search engines out there. There is nothing stopping you or me from doing so, and Google knows that.
Yes, Google is huge and they are the best to use for search. When they started, I was still using Alta Vista. I only heard about them through word of mouth. I never saw an ad on TV, in the newspaper, anywhere. Google grew by word of mouth despite all the MS lemmings out there pontificating about how great MS was (just adding emphasis here, not to imply that you're a lemming, too). On the other hand, on a daily basis, I can skip the commercials beseeching me to Bing! and decide. (Google tells us not to use their name as a verb, Microsoft wants us to Bing! everywhere.)
I don't see Google pushing closed standards or operating systems like MS was and still does. That's because Google is OS agnostic and they really have no vested interest in which operating system you choose to use to the extent that Microsoft does. Their mission statement says it all. They want to be the best organizer of information available and to a very large extent, they are. And they have a 1st Amendment right to do so. Therefore, I don't think that the sort of scrutiny applied to Microsoft should be applied to Google. We still have a choice.
The implications of the lawsuits are worth considering from the point of discovery. In discovery, Google may be required to reveal the algorithms used for search. Microsoft may very well be interested in seeing Google divested of it's own hard work, for competitive gain.
The difference between Microsoft and Google is a matter of goodwill, and I would prefer Google as an ally rather than Microsoft for now.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Indeed. As long as Dell continue to offer a wide range of Linux system as well as Microsoft Windows PCs then I cannot see anything suspicious about getting cheap access to Microsoft products. I have not seen their web site for a while, but I cannot see why they wouldn't offer just as many Linux products as Microsoft as the operating system is simply a cost to drive the hardware part of their business.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
It will be a lawsuit against Google, and I'll tell you what Google do that Microsoft is afraid of.
It's not Google Search. It's Google for Domains.
Seriously, loads of companies are already outsourcing email anyhow - punch "Outsourced exchange" into any search engine and you'll get hundreds of hits. But Google for Domains gives you email, shared calendar, chat, documents, spreadsheets and sites for about a third to a half of what you'll typically pay per user for outsourced Exchange. And as every month goes by, a few more features are added. The current version of docs, for instance, has realtime collaborative editing built right in - that didn't exist a year ago.
Right now, it's still a poor second for many advanced features (you can't do a mailmerge, print labels or envelopes, for instance), but don't expect that to last long. The rate of development is incredible, and it probably won't be long before the entire Office suite is obsolete for most people - and unlike with OpenOffice, it's being obsoleted by a company with a name that people outside of IT know and trust. People on /. go on about "who wants to outsource such confidential information?" but you know what? Lots of businesses already do.
(I'm actually slightly concerned as a sysadmin, because a few more applications like that and for many employers my job will become little more than setting up a router to get them on the Internet, which is hardly a fulltime role - but if I wanted a career that would keep me employed until I was due to retire I shouldn't have gone into IT)
ok, I'll bite. What government taxes, subsidies, regulations, or bailouts helped establish the Windows monopoly?
Bing is the guy on Friends who makes witty, sarcastic jokes.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you call yourself "cat butt" on the Internet you have low self-esteem?
People who take themselves so seriously on the Internet are the ones with low self-esteem (see: LOLcow).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Easy, exclusive contract with IBM, which was even sued by USA for a decade before the suit was dropped. IBM always benefited from gov't subsidies and taxes and regulations and contracts, it even started as a census counting firm with US gov't and it benefited greatly during the WWII by selling hardware and business skills to the fascists to help manage the concentration camp prisoners, weapons, trains, army troops, everything.
You can't handle the truth.
Oh, and I forgot to mention: copyright and patent laws. Patents helped IBM and eventually MS as well, copyright was the principle that Gates used to lock others out from redistributing code, so the entire gov't system is set up to create monopolistic behaviors.
You can't handle the truth.
Wow, try the little yellow pills next time. The red ones aren't doing it for you.
You mean Apple didn't make any laptops?
Even stranger, if you do a Google search for "search engine", Bing, Altavista, and Ask.com all show up ranked higher than the first Google-related site.
In the past it seemed like you always got better results searching MSDN with Google than their old search. If I just wanted to just see the objects in "namespace System.Net" where using the site token on Google the first result was the MSDN doc page on the System.Net namespce. If you used their old search you were just as likely to get a Tech Net or random discussion that was mentioned "namespace" and "System" and "Net".
I'm pretty sure these days things have gotten better (I suspect it is now powered by Bing!) but those days it Microsoft own search of their own live docs was as primitive than using "man -k" .
OOOh, they have to parse html? Wow, that must be sooo hard....NOT!
And relevancy ranking has been beaten to death by the information retrieval people, for decades.
Try again, kimosabe.
And yet only Google seem to get it right.
For all you try and belittle them they keep people coming back for more while the grumpy neighbor next door wonders why nobody takes his free candy.
You can't say "It would be ok for Google to become a monopoly and throw their weight around as such, but not for MS."
The problem with your statement is that MS has thrown their weight around again and again, while there's no indication whatever that Google ever has. Google is guily of many sins (e.g., helping China firewall off its citizens) but they aren't doing anything anticompetetive.
Your MS examples are disingenuous at best, and leave out some of their worst practices. DoubleSpace/Stacker, "DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run (using undocumented calls in their office software to get an edge on other office software companies, then changing them when the competetion found them), the list goes on. Google has, to my knowledge, never done anything like that.
And the fact is, it's Microsoft's lawyers who are behind this. Way to go trying to paint the rapist as the victim.
Free Martian Whores!
Yep. And IE doesn't have Google in its default browser list until you jump through several additional hoops. Yet there are browsers in there I've never even heard of. It couldn't be more obvious who is being Evil here.
Right, a contract between IBM and Microsoft really helped establish window's market share as the OS to use on IBM's computers.
... And since IBM was helped by "gov't subsidies and taxes and regulations and contracts", it's obviously the government's fault that Windows dominates the OS market?
This isn't exactly on topic so if mods want to mod me down I have no objection. But before the environment was regulated, you could not drive past a Monsanto plant without the air burning your lungs, and you could not swim in a lake or stream because they were all POISONED.
Some industries and activities are overregulated, some are underregulated, but to say government ruins everything it touches is just ignorant. You really need to stop listening to Rush and Glenn, and find some better sources for your "information."
As to antitrust regs, hedwards gets it in his answer to your comment.
You were modded "troll" not because it was a troll, but because thre's no "-1, fucking stupid, get off my lawn kid" mod.
Free Martian Whores!
IBM may have benefitted fro subsidies and contracts, but IBM had far more power than just that. Industry's mantra when the IBM-PC came out was "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". The IBM-PC didn't become dominant because of government, it was dominant because industry trusted it. before the IBM-PC, no PCs (or "microcomputers" as they were called then) were compatible at all. Most PCs used CP/M, but each had its own different, incompatible CP/M.
When Compaq clean-room reverse-engineered the IBM-PC's BIOS, MS's dominance was cemented and IBM's influence in the microcomputer market failed. Yes, government bought a lot of IBM iron, but sodid everyone else.
Free Martian Whores!
Yes and no. Yes, competitors complained about them, and that started the investigation. And it was numerous competitors who were largely unconnected with each other, not a small group who's financial health were intertwined. And they all complained about similar behavior spread out over a long period of time.
But no, that wasn't what got them convicted. What got them convicted was a clear and obvious intent to use a monopoly in a different market, and their use of their monopoly position to create false barriers to entry to another. The findings of fact were painfully clear on that point.
They wanted to kill Netscape, not compete with, but destroy utterly, and not by making a better browser, but by using their control over Windows to make sure Netscape would not be installed anywhere regardless of whether or not people liked it better.
And they made it nearly impossible to buy Intel hardware that ran anything other than Windows by penalizing companies that sold anything other than Windows on their hardware.
The only monopoly position where Google exercises a great deal of exploitable control is over ads on the Internet. Their acquisition of Doubleclick concerned me.
Only a complete idiot of a search company would ever use search results as an anti-competitive tool. They would lose consumer trust nearly instantly, and that's what keeps Google in business. In fact, the main reason I don't use Bing is because I suspect Microsoft would be that stupid.
I see this complaint as a cynical ploy by a company that thinks antitrust shouldn't have ever been applied to it. A ploy to both knock consumer confidence, and possibly manage to get Google in the same kind of trouble Microsoft thought it got into.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
The difference is that Google is open about it, while Microsoft uses straw companies and paid shills.
Clever signature text goes here.
Try actually reading Groklaw. They never have anything good, or even neutral to say about Microsoft. Even if Microsoft does something positive (rare though that may be) Groklaw's response is always "what's their angle?"
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
No, I don't watch Beck, maybe that's because I don't live in the US. However my point is still valid, no matter your ad-hominem, yet I can add another one easily: copyright law.
Yes, copyright and patent law created by gov't is what allows monopolies to appear. Of-course MS also actively lobbied the US gov't, and it got quite a few privileges doing that, and it is the main problem:
If you want to be a monopoly, pay money to politicians.
Gov't must not be a participant in economy, by being a participant it presents a way to gain unfair advantage over competition and destroy it.
You can't handle the truth.
Adwords are free for Google, so they can always be at the top. Check it out, search anything to do with email, calendar, webmail, apps, etc.