Europe Accuses Google of Monopoly Abuse

bonch writes "European antitrust regulators are set to issue a 400-page statement of objections accusing Google of 'abuse of dominance' next month, the result of an investigation launched last year after complaints from rivals that Google manipulated ad pricing and barred advertisers from running ads on rival sites. If found guilty, Google could be fined up to 10% of its annual turnover, which is about $3 billion. Microsoft avoided a similar fine when it settled its European antitrust case and included a 'browser ballot' in Windows."

Comments

Google is not even hiding it anymore

[InsightIn140Bytes]

They're using their huge market share to unfairly promote their other products left and right. They have the most dominant position to do this too - the largest search engine on planet. They can put out anyone they want out of business. For years they have scraped smaller websites and then returning their own sites higher in search engine results. They push Google+ to every that comes to Google. How is Diaspore or other smaller social networks ever going to challenge that? They push Chrome to every IE user in a very spammy way, and they always do it in YouTube too. Recently all the flight ticket search engines started fearing as Google introduced their own one and embedded the results directly in search results.

Now with Google+, they're tieing all their products together too. YouTube just got a much more "social" and google+'ish look, and in one of their recent videos they show how search results, maps, calendar, news, music, video and every other Google service will integrate with Google+. Because of their market share that is blatant monopoly abuse and I'm good to see that EU is finally doing something about it. US is still investigating Google, but with Google having bought so many politicans in Washington and friends in NSA and FBI I'd be more surprised to see if they did something.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[EasyTarget]

Oh; stop talking out of your arse.

Once you have CHOSEN to go to the Google webspace then yes, you will see the whole Google portfolio; nothing wrong with that, you would not expect to see Macy's products advertised on Sears would you?

bing - four characters
google - six characters

People take extra effort to use google; they actively select it. If you install windows and select the default/first option everywhere you end up with bing/MS on everything. and yet: PEOPLE ACTIVELY CHOOSE GOOGLE..

They do need controlling on their advertising dominance but to claim they abuse their search position is nonsensical. (or, given the speed and pre-written nature of your response, shows that it is a claim mostly made by the paid-for muppets of their rivals.)

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorta like how Microsoft do this with Bing (and with IE back in the day) as well?

"Oh hey guys, so what if we bundle IE with Windows, it means a better product overseas, and as you know, we are gonna make it big in the future, that is a very good export!"
"Why yes, I do believe you are right Bill"
ANTITRUST DROPPED. FTC are useless.
As long as it benefits them, it doesn't matter.

EU is the only one with balls big enough to challenge these people.

I do hope they fix Google out a bit, they are getting too god damn cocky even for my liking.
Might even give me a chance to take advantage of this situation in the time it takes for the investigation to go ahead and potential changes made.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[InsightIn140Bytes]

Every monopoly abuse still needs that choosing. No one has anyone ever physically forced you to use their services. Yet, companies are fined for monopoly abuses and it's against the law. EVEN IF PEOPLE ACTIVELY CHOOSE THEM TOO, like you shouted. It's still wrong to abuse your monopoly status even if people choose to use your services, that's the whole point of it.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet the barriers to switch away from google for the end user are essentially zero, so there really is no monopoly power to abuse. If end users find google searches limited in scope to google's products and thus is not what they are looking for, they can switch away to yahoo, bing or whatever website they want. Google even makes it easier for you to change default search engines in its browser, than the browser of its competitor, microsoft, does. Don't forget that in the market of finding information, it's not only search engines that do this anymore. Facebook is driving a lot of traffic to sites just as google is. It is also offering its own ad system.

Simply promoting Google+, or Chrome is in no way abuse of monopoly power. Scraping is not what Google is doing. it is indexing sites, fully complying to robots.txt, and offering information to its users and therefore traffic to these sites in a manner it sees is more useful to its users. Let's face it, when you search for "New York", you more likely than not want to see a map and maybe stuff you can do there (links below that open up relevant searches). Calling this unfair advantage and calling for action on it, would in essence not let google users find what they really intended to find and thus render google less useful to them.

Ultimately you have to ask yourself is: What is the harm being done to consumers? If you ask me, the people complaining that Google abuses its position, don't really have a compelling answer to that, other than "please protect our interests".

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[InsightIn140Bytes]

Monopoly abuse has nothing to do with end user or their barrier to switch away from company's products. It's about unfair and unlawful tactics used against smaller companies to gain and keep prominent market share and monopoly.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite the contrary my friend. Take the time to study the findings of fact in the case vs microsoft and you will see that defining the market, outlining the barriers are all key part of defining monopoly power.

http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

The fact is that Google may have enormous marketshare, true, but it really isn't in the position to abuse its power to harm competition. Facebook, Yahoo, Bing, etc are all just a click away.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[king neckbeard]

Generally speaking, prosecuted monopolies tend to make it unreasonable to make an alternative choice. For example, it is still quite difficult to buy a new desktop computer that has a non-Windows operating system installed, and it was even more difficult back when MS was under antitrust investigations. In addition to that, it was at the time very difficult to NOT have IE installed on said computer. IIRC, they even used their position in the desktop OS market to ensure that Netscape was not installed on computers. By contrast, all a user has to do to not use Google is to go to a different search engine. Hell, Google can even help you find them.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[InsightIn140Bytes]

Barrier to entry, for other companies. Yes, that is very relevant. However, end users are not relevant.

Facebook, Yahoo and Bing are not the only companies abused by Google's monopoly. The most significant proportion is small companies, like flight search engines, that Google is killing off by illegally promoting their sites above those.

But the a huge abuse in this case is also that Google forbid advertisers on Google running the same ads on other networks. That is pure monopoly abuse.

The commission is investigating exclusivity obligations on advertisers, something Ciao alleged. Those obligations bar advertisers from using the same ads they run on Google on their own sites or competing search engines such as Bing and Yahoo.

Again, monopoly abuse has nothing to do with end user or their capability to switch to other services. It's solely about companies and their actions toward other, smaller companies.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[InsightIn140Bytes]

But what matters here is that Google is actively working to destroy competition, by forbidding their advertisers from using the same ads in competing advertising places. This leaves worse revenue stream for competing services, and no finances to compete against Google. Bing is only capable of it because Microsoft can back it from separate revenue sources, and yet Google is still actively trying to prevent advertisers from moving to their services. Other companies just don't have any change. That is pure abuse of monopoly.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sorry but you seem not to be familiar with anitrust law. All barriers are considered. Again I point you to the microsoft case. Hopefully this time with a proper link:

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA vs. MICROSOFT CORPORATION

You will note that viable alternatives were considered practically nonexistent. All barriers are taken note of when examining monopoly power. And in this case, there simply isn't anything keeping users locked to Google. There are viable alternatives, just a click away that keep Google from being able to effectively abuse its power.

Antitrust isn't just slammed at any company, you have to carefully examine all the facts to conclude that there is in fact a market distortion that does harm to the comsumers in some way. In Google's case, it simply is not the case.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[NeutronCowboy]

They're using their huge market share to unfairly promote their other products left and right.

You mean, like every business on earth, they use their existing mind share to promote their other products. Unless you actually want to fine Boeing for advertising their regional jets when they're selling their intercontinental jets, you're full of hot air.

They have the most dominant position to do this too - the largest search engine on planet.

Only if you define the planet by Europe and US. Russia isn't so enamored with Google, and China... well, we know about China. You can, of course, always weasel out by arguing that they are still the largest engine on the planet by total users, but now you're just mixing arguments. I'm pretty sure that's not an accident, too.

For years they have scraped smaller websites and then returning their own sites higher in search engine results.

They push Google+ to every that comes to Google.

Yes? Should they hide the fact that they have another product available?

How is Diaspore or other smaller social networks ever going to challenge that?

By being better? Or, to turn the argument around - the same way that Google ate Altavista's lunch.

They push Chrome to every IE user in a very spammy way, and they always do it in YouTube too.

Another outright fucking lie. Unless you think that telling people that they should upgrade from IE 6 is a terrible sin. In which case, you're just delusional.

Recently all the flight ticket search engines started fearing as Google introduced their own one and embedded the results directly in search results.

Yes. God forbid there's some competition in the flight search engine market.

Because of their market share that is blatant monopoly abuse and I'm good to see that EU is finally doing something about it.

Newsflash: having a large market share is not a monopoly. Furthermore, having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. What is illegal is to turn a non-government sanctioned monopoly into a rent-seeking enterprise by limiting external competition.

Now, how exactly is Google limiting competition? People are a click away from Bing. A click away from Facebook. None of the data that Google holds is sticky. There is exactly zero cost to switching to a competitor like Bing. Why aren't people doing it? Tell me, why? Because.... they're Google? That's a circular argument.

Tell you what, I'll make you a deal. You start posting the same crap in Facebook and Microsoft stories, and I'll pretend that you actually believe what you're posting.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[dell623]

Everyone is using their huge market share to promote their products left and right. It takes a long time for laws and legal authorities to catch up to developments in technology, and by that time these monopolies are so big that they can painlessly absorb any fines and have bottomless cash reserves for a legal fight.

Google is doing that, but it is important to note that Google is no different in this respect from any other major company. It offers the only way anyone will ever compete with Facebook, and the fact it, Google is one of barely a handful of firms that have any hope of ever challenging facebook. Smaller social networks are never going to challenge Facebook, with or without Google, the best they can do is find a niche like LinkedIn did.

Facebook's privacy issues are well documented. Facebook have also been happily abusing their monopoly in the social space. They are trying to take over the world of instant messaging and email - I already have people who send me facebook messages as a substitute for email - it's not just Google. If I install the facebook app in my phone it will automatically copy all the phone numbers to my facebook account. This is a classic example: http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/22/google-android-facebook-contacts/

Facebook want to control all your social contact over the internet, and they are using their monopoly to try and extend the control to IM, email and other things. Another example is how if I share a link to a news story on facebook, the link automatically gets converted to one that forces you to add the facebook app of that media outlet before being able to open a link. And the default option for the app is that every news story you read is posted to your profile - more lovely data for facebook to build a comprehensive profile about you. In effect, facebook is redirecting links I post, if that's not worrying I don't know what is.

Apple have a lovely history of monopoly abuse too, again I don't know if this puts them on troubled legal grounds but it definitely should. A classic example is their refusal to provide an iTunes app for Android, when they quite willingly make one for Windows. Since iTunes is the sole way of acquiring a vast majority of digital content, Apple are using that monopoly to distinguish their mobile devices and operating system.

Apple are also trying to use design patents, not utility patents to force other tablet makers to make tablets that are functionally or ergonomically inferior: http://www.slashgear.com/apple-made-to-specify-design-alternatives-for-samsung-02199756/

"Apple suggests Samsung to design devices that do not have a front surface that is black, do not have a shape that is rectangular or do not have rounded corners, and that the front surface should have substantial adornment as opposed to a sleek clean surface" -- None of these are brilliant distinguishing design innovations, they are obvious design decisions any tablet maker would make. These aren't technology patents, Apple is in effect asking Samsung and others to make funcitonally compromised designs just to make them look different.

In an ideal world, compatibility would be enforced. If Apple are running a digital downloads store that has market dominance they would be obliged to make it available on different platforms. Google+ and Facebook would be obliged to let people add Facebook contacts on google and google contacts on facebook, so the social networks are forced to distinguish themselves based on features, not on which one is already too entrenched to compete with.

Microsoft's continuing monopoly abuse is incredible, after the anti trust rulings. I am still amazed that it is impossible to buy a laptop without windows being loaded on it and without paying a few dollars to Microsoft. Also, retail versions of Windows cost far more, so in effect if you think

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yet the barriers to switch away from google for the end user are essentially zero"

Exactly! I switched away from google years ago. Anyone who hasn't, just doesn't CARE about the massive information gathering the google engages in. It took me all of 10 seconds to switch to another engine as the default in FF. It took another 2 to remove google from the list in the dropdown box. That's it.

If you don't like google, *don't use them*. What a concept. It's bewildering why it appears too advanced for most people to understand.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

"They have the most dominant position to do this too - the largest search engine on planet. " ... which takes all of a few moments for anyone to switch to another. I know this, because I did several years ago and haven't looked back. I no longer allow google to collect information about me via their omnipresent scripts and trackers.

THere is no lock-in with google. With Microsoft, sure, because of the huge software ecosystem around Windows. With google? You can switch to another search engine in a few seconds. Nothing ties you to www.google.com except your own choice to use it.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[gl4ss]

barrier to move your site away from google is a bit bigger though if you still want to do business. not in position to abuse it's marketshare? yeah right. I guess that depends how you define abuse.

companies are the customers of google ads, not consumers. consumers are what makes the google ads worthwhile.

also, justice.gov has fuck nothing to do with eu.. if it did, eu wouldn't have fined ms.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm good to see that EU is finally doing something about it.

It's about time the EU went away and ceased to exist they are nothing more that a bunch of freeloading parasitic scum just somewhere for EX PM's and MP's to go and get stupid amounts of money for doing fuckall that is why almost all governments wont deal with the EU problem they are all banking on them for their income after they have been flushed from power so all in all fuck the EU and all it stands for

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[AmberBlackCat]

PEOPLE ACTIVELY CHOOSE GOOGLE

Please. They choose Google because no matter what they choose, it's automatically Google. They type in the search bar, it goes to Google. They type in the address bar, it goes to Google without even telling them. They click the magnifying glass on their phone, it goes to google. They search on their game system, it goes to Google. I realize there are some phones and web browsers that don't use Google. But in general, people choose Google because it's the only thing they see.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[victorhooi]

Hi,

Hmm, "illegal", I don't think that word means what you think it does...lol.

You claim Google is killing off small flight search companies by "illegally" promoting their sites. What exactly is "illegal" here? *sigh*.

What, they don't run ads for their competitors? Big whoope de do. *sigh*. In what sort of idiotic world do you live in where you *have* to do that?

Now, if Google was filtering search results to actively remove those companies, and claiming that it's search results were virgin and untampered with, that's an entirely different kettle of fish. But they're not. They just happen to usually have links at the top saying "hey, you searched for flight results, did you know we also have a flight search engine". That is not illegal, and never has been - it's called cross-promotion, and is as old as the hills.

And in fact, the funny thing about Google is that A. they actually *do* provide information about their competitors and B. They make it very easy to switch - e.g. Chrome makes it easy to change default browsers, unlike the nightmare that is the IE startup wizard, and Google even lets you export your data with them (www.dataliberation.org) - something nobody else does.

You still haven't backed up your "illegal" claim with anything that Google has actually done.

Cheers,
Victor

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[horza]

They're using their huge market share to unfairly promote their other products left and right.

Hardly. Why wouldn't a company be able to promote its own products? Even if they did reserve some advertising space for themselves, they are not censoring their rivals from appearing.

They can put out anyone they want out of business.

Is Facebook out of business yet? Last time I read people were still using it.

They push Google+ to every that comes to Google.

One of the initial reasons people loved Google is how unintrusive it was. The front page was just their logo, the search results had ads in plain text tucked away to the right. If they start getting too pushy they will lose users.

How is Diaspore or other smaller social networks ever going to challenge that?

Are you saying G+ is responsible for the current failure of Diaspora?

Now with Google+, they're tieing all their products together too.[...] Because of their market share that is blatant monopoly abuse...

Why? *tries doing a search in Google* Sorry don't see what you're talking about.

Phillip.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Flammon]

Looks like we've got a Google hater on our hands here folks so put your critical thinking caps on and let's review.

They're using their huge market share to unfairly promote their other products left and right.

Do you always talk gibberish or are you trying something new today? Google can promote all they want, there are no laws against promotion. If Google forced you to use Chrome to access their sites, then we would have a problem but there not so let's move on.

They have the most dominant position to do this too - the largest search engine on planet.

Good for them. They did it fair and square.

They can put out anyone they want out of business.

So can anyone else. As long as the competition laws are followed.

For years they have scraped smaller websites and then returning their own sites higher in search engine results.

Do you have any proof of this? If not, your just making shit up.

They push Google+ to every that comes to Google.

See first answer.

How is Diaspore or other smaller social networks ever going to challenge that?

The same way Google did it against the giants of the time. Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, Microsoft MSN Search. They provided a better product.

They push Chrome to every IE user in a very spammy way, and they always do it in YouTube too.

See first answer. In addition, IE less than 10 is such crap that they're doing everyone a favour. And, it's not spam. I've never gotten anything in my inbox from Google promoting Chrome.

Recently all the flight ticket search engines started fearing as Google introduced their own one and embedded the results directly in search results.

Afraid that Google might offer a better service? Who's side are you on anyway? Consumer's or do you work for the flight ticket search engines'?

Now with Google+, they're tieing all their products together too. YouTube just got a much more "social" and google+'ish look, and in one of their recent videos they show how search results, maps, calendar, news, music, video and every other Google service will integrate with Google+.

I love it. It's a great feature. And you know, Google provides an open API to almost all of their products. You're free to use them and tie them to your own products. So they're actually helping you compete with them by letting you use their services via on open API! This is cooperation which is the opposite of anti-competition. http://code.google.com/more/

Because of their market share that is blatant monopoly abuse and I'm good to see that EU is finally doing something about it. US is still investigating Google, but with Google having bought so many politicans in Washington and friends in NSA and FBI I'd be more surprised to see if they did something.

You obviously don't know what monopoly abuse is and you obviously don't use Google enough to find the information so here's the link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[sydneyfong]

PEOPLE ACTIVELY CHOOSE GOOGLE

You could say the same for the Microsoft monopoly. After all, you have to choose MS Windows before you'd get the default IE browser. And before you say Windows is installed by default on the computer and users didn't "choose" it, keep in mind that Apple had always been happy to sell you a Mac -- the user did choose the Wintel platform.

you would not expect to see Macy's products advertised on Sears would you?

If Sears became a monopoly, and used its position to block competitors of its own products, then I suspect there'd be a problem too.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[dissy]

If you hate Google's products so much, why do you insist on continuing to type google.com into your browser and going there?
You forcing the problem on yourself is the only way for your statements to be true.

If you don't want to be there, STOP going there.

The only thing more funny than Nelson taking a kids fist and using it to punch said kid in face, saying "Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!" -- Is people like you, who stand alone in a field punching yourself all on your own accord, and then complaining loudly about it.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

"They choose Google because no matter what they choose, it's automatically Google. "

I think you meant to say Bing? Bing is the default search engine for the default web browser for the desktop OS that has 90% market share.

A friend just bought a new Dell. It only had IE installed, and the search engine was Bing. That's true for almost every desktop or laptop computer people buy.

People CHOOSE google because it does what they want.

I don't choose it myself. But I acknowledge their right to choose it if they want.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[sgtrock]

Please. They choose Bing because no matter what they choose, it's automatically Bing. They type in the search bar, it goes to Bing. They type in the address bar, it goes to Bing without even telling them. They click the magnifying glass on their phone, it goes to Bing. They search on their game system, it goes to Bing. I realize there are some phones and web browsers that don't use Bing. But in general, people choose Bing because it's the only thing they see.

FTFY

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I have to call you out on this. Put up or Shut up

Reply to this with the exact law names, numbers, and references. One for EACH time you used the word illegal.
Bonus points if the law you quote actually has any relevance to your claims, and not just some land zoning law that doesn't apply.

Until you do that, you are not just wrong, you are a LIAR.
Yes, a malicious LIAR with intent to cause harm.

If you can backup just one of your statements with an actual law behind it, I will post a full apology and retraction to my statement.

Otherwise I encourage everyone to simply filter this UID out, which I will likely be doing in 24 hours after he fails to show what law was broken.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but still Google has to compete for consumers for the ads to be worthwhile. So does its competitors. I am very aware that the EU is a different beast than the US, but the statement of objections from the EU has not been mad public so InsightIn140Bytes' comments are really off base. More like a rant against Google than talking facts.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

MS is allowed to used it's Windows monopoly to block others out from companies MS-networks. MS is allowed to continue using closed format for documents. MS is allowed to use closed interfaces for their servers...

Google got is status by making something better than others. MS got it's status by IBM's mistake.
Anybody could change search engine from Google to Bing without loosing much (but it would make MS monopoly even worse). But no one can change away from Windows.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Lawrence_Bird]

And exactly what is wrong with promoting your other products? Think about wtf you just said. So if you start a company and it provides a product or service which does incredibly well, so well that it is the defacto choice, then you should not market your other products to your customers? You are not forced to buy them. You are not even forced to buy or use the original product.

And given that for the end user that a) Google searches are free (as are youtube, gmail, etc) and b) there are many competitors (Facebook, Bing, Vimeo, etc) your rant is completely off base and is nothing more than socialist propoganda. Imagine 10 years ago saying to the founders of Google "hey don't get real big and popular or you won't be able to sell other things you think of" what do you think they would do? Do you think you would have the myriad of free services offered by Google today? Or would they have just packed up shop, hoping to sell their idea to some vc or patent troll?

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[StripedCow]

The point is that google is funding parts of their company (google+, docs, you name it) by completely unrelated parts (search).

Those are unfair practices and are rightfully questioned and stopped by the EU.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anthony Mouse]

You could say the same for the Microsoft monopoly.

No, you really can't. People don't choose Microsoft because they like it, they choose Microsoft because they don't have a choice. It is necessary to run third party software, which has nothing to do with the quality or price of the actual Microsoft product. And by and large it comes on your new PC whether you want it or not.

Compare this to search engines: They all cost the same (free), and there is no switching cost because there is no third party software (you don't have to buy a different web browser and retrain your employees etc.), you don't have to learn anything new because they all work the same way and the thing that comes on your new PC is Bing rather than Google. The only reason to choose a search engine is if you actually prefer the search results.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[satuon]

For example, it is still quite difficult to buy a new desktop computer that has a non-Windows operating system installed

In my country, which is in Eastern Europe, nearly half of all PC and laptops sold come without Windows. They either have Ubuntu or FreeDOS installed, and they cost about $50-$100 less. This is done because a price difference of $100 means a lot to people here. Of course, people buying a Core i7 laptop running FreeDOS intend to pirate Windows, but it's perfectly legitimate for vendors to sell the laptops, because they're not the ones doing the pirating.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[hairyfeet]

Personally i'm damned sick of google shoving chrome down everyone's throats thanks to having it spammed in every piece of freeware on the planet. First it was the damned toolbar now its Chrome. seriously WTF Google? you have the biggest fricking search engine on the planet AND the most popular video site AND one of the biggest mobile OSes AND a very popular email client. that isn't enough damned ways to shill chrome for you? you gotta act like God damned Bonzi Buddy too? WTF?

Personally TFA wouldn't surprise me in the least, when they went from just trying to make good products to spamming their toolbars i knew that 'think no evil' was a crock of shit. When a company gets greedy enough they start trying to backdoor shill their products by shoving them down the clueless with tiny checkboxes in the middle of installers? yeah that is pretty sleazy in my book and while maybe not technically 'evil' it sure as hell is scummy in my book.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[EasyTarget]

Google is one company, and can distribute it's finances any way it wishes to within the company.. Just as I distribute my personal finances as I see fit.. An so long as I meet my basic obligations (tax, fishfood, I have no debts ;-) ) I can use, for instance, money I earn working as a web admin to support my private websites etc..

If using profits from one branch of a business to promote another is 'unfair' then every company that's ever expanded has done so 'unfairly'

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[bhagwad]

Wow - if that's what you call unfair, let's just shutter every major company on the planet.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anthony Mouse]

But the a huge abuse in this case is also that Google forbid advertisers on Google running the same ads on other networks. That is pure monopoly abuse.

You want to provide a link for where you got this? Because it sure sounds like you're just parroting the line from the CNET article linked in the summary ("Those obligations bar advertisers from using the same ads they run on Google on their own sites or competing search engines such as Bing and Yahoo.") But the whole CNET article is just rewording the Financial Times article it links, and it looks like the game of telephone has produced a transcription error, because the FT instead has: "Google is also said to impose exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their websites"

Which is a completely different thing. As in, a completely legitimate and understandable thing, because the point of paying "advertising partners" to put ads on their websites is so that users will see them, and if you fill your website with ads from a dozen ad companies then users are not going to look at all of them and you're ripping off the ad companies because they're paying you for eyeballs that never see their ads.

So let's see the link for your claims other than the CNET article that itself doesn't cite any source for it.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound just like the Microsoft partners that started this case in the first place. In Microsoft's mind, if you can't beat them, sue them.

The bottom line is that Google search is not dominant in China because they will not filter Tiananmen Square results to remove massacre footage. They were banned in Turkey for respecting someone's right to mention that Attaturk might be gay. They do not sell their own phone, or act like a patent troll.

Microsoft is the aggressor here. They have no regard for human rights, freedom of speech, or anything other than money. They are a thrice convicted monopolist who has not changed their behavior. They make more money off of the sale of an Android phone than a Windows phone. It is time to put some billionaires in prison.

Apple is not off the hook either. Congratulations on getting the competition temporarily banned for selling rectangles with rounded edges. Your empire will soon fall.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched away from google years ago. Anyone who hasn't, just doesn't CARE

You're dead right. We don't. Care to explain why we should? I mean, an explanation that doesn't involve reverse vampires, the RAND corporation and tinfoil?

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Rockoon]

It is necessary to run third party software, which has nothing to do with the quality or price of the actual Microsoft product.

You arent considering the full-breadth of what 'quality' means.

Q: "Why did you choose Windows?"
A: "Because it does the things I want."

That is the very fucking definition of quality when you get right down to it.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[EasyTarget]

"You could say the same for the Microsoft monopoly."

Nope; I really cant.. Having brought and tried my first windows machine 20 years ago It was crap; but the cost to me of changing it for a mac would have been many hundreds of dollars and a fair amount of physical effort and re-learning stuff .

The cost to me of switching web search providers is trivial; in fact a good argument can be made that people generally start with a competitor and actively switch to Google to get a better product. And equally importantly can switch back instantaneously without any cost.. and indeed can use both Google and a Competitor at the same time on the same display.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[gl4ss]

--"They push Chrome to every IE user in a very spammy way, and they always do it in YouTube too."

-"Another outright fucking lie. Unless you think that telling people that they should upgrade from IE 6 is a terrible sin. In which case, you're just delusional."

have you actually booted up ie lately? I had a win 7 installation in summer(work laptop) and used ie(version that shipped with it) and bing just for keeping up to date on them. the chrome adverts google served up for it were downright spammy and in your face if you went to google with it. it wasn't ie6. it was just google detecting what product I was using and then recommending their own product over the one that I was using. sure, maybe it's not evil since webgl is so coooool shit that I should have a browser that supports it. as if I didn't know that chrome existed. very annoying. but that's just one thing how they've made their search more annoying, that isn't in itself illegal though.

surprised they don't seem to be doing the same thing to safari users.

(in most areas of the world a monopoly/cartel that hurts consumers is illegal no matter how it came to be btw - did display manufacturers abuse some government sanctioned monopoly? no, they just used their combined plant dominance to screw customers).

advertising is a different thing though. forcing exclusivity deals to stop advertisers from advertising on other search engines makes other search engines business harder.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[EasyTarget]

"If Sears became a monopoly, and used its position to block competitors of its own products, then I suspect there'd be a problem too."

Care to elaborate; care to explain how Sears will stop you shopping at Macy's?

The mechanisms I can see would be by buying the land and closing the stores (or closing the road to the stores, or screwing with their supply chain, or attacking them economically/legally). All of which would scream 'red flag' and be very actionable.

However; I can type 'www.bing.com' in chrome and see the full Bing experience (same for Yahoo, ask, Baidu etc), and can even do the same on ChromeOS..

I have yet to hear of Google ever interfering with other companies web crawlers or hosting. Google have never prevented me accessing the competition, in fact they have assisted me in doing so at times (or have you never seen the Chrome search selector screen?)

And Google seem to be on the receiving end of lawsuits and the manipulations of paid-for lobbyists, politicians and activists; not the originators of them.

So; I fail to see any way your analogy works. In fact it looks quite dumb and designed to only appeal to gullible people.

I'm only talking about the search/web service space here; as an advertiser they do seem to have a aggressively maintained dominance driven monopoly.. But since I think of advertisers as second-class lifeforms I really cant get very worked up about it.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

If "things I want" is "browse internet, read mail, view pictures and play media". Everything else (and even thouse four, usually) are handled by 3rd party soft, not Windows.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[EasyTarget]

But what matters here is that Google is actively working to destroy competition.

Welcome to a capitalist economy; this is what companies do..

As I noted elsewhere here, there probably is (from what I have seen) a case to answer in the advertising sphere..

But search. No. And it's not just Bing of course, there is Baidu, Ask, Yahoo, even Watson. and many more.. As a search consumer I feel fully empowered and actively use multiple products from multiple companies.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[NeutronCowboy]

have you actually booted up ie lately?

I have. Same reason as you - I have a work laptop with Win7 that has IE8 for troubleshooting purposes. Just for kicks, I clicked around google.com, did some searches, clicked around Youtube, watched some videos. Not a single Chrome ad. Not even a link to Chrome in any
discernible fashion. You're gonna have to do better than just claiming that, because I just don't see it.

advertising is a different thing though. forcing exclusivity deals to stop advertisers from advertising on other search engines makes other search engines business harder.

If that is true, they deserve to be slapped down for that. I'm still waiting for some sort of proof, other than someone just claiming that.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anthony Mouse]

You arent considering the full-breadth of what 'quality' means.

You're attempting to fold all of the market barriers to entry into the definition of quality, so that any barrier to entry (like third party application support) is written off as a good quality of the monopolist's product. Which is totally useless when the point to distinguish between barriers to entry and meritorious competition on the basis of price and quality.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, it is still quite difficult to buy a new desktop computer that has a non-Windows operating system installed, and it was even more difficult back when MS was under antitrust investigations

It is not, and never was hard to buy a Mac, even when Microsoft was on trial. so it was never hard to buy a desktop without Windows. Before Atari and Commodore-Amiga died, it was harder to find Windows PC than to find anything else.

Unless you mean to say it is and was hard to find a new desktop bundled with the OS you want it to be bundled with because the vendor utterly fails at marketing or hooking up an OEM deal, or really just generating enough market interest to justify to an OEM why it should be offered.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, like every business on earth, they use their existing mind share to promote their other products. Unless you actually want to fine Boeing for advertising their regional jets when they're selling their intercontinental jets, you're full of hot air.

You do realize that the rules change when you're in a monopoly position right? Ever wonder why Microsoft bundling IE was bad, but Apple bundling Safari and Linux bundling Firefox were okay?

Only if you define the planet by Europe and US. Russia isn't so enamored with Google, and China... well, we know about China. You can, of course, always weasel out by arguing that they are still the largest engine on the planet by total users, but now you're just mixing arguments. I'm pretty sure that's not an accident, too.

Well, shame for Google and you, that neither China or Russia are in the EU or Us (seeing as it's the EU in the case of TFA and the DoJ has already expressed that they'll be watching Google closely).

By being better? Or, to turn the argument around - the same way that Google ate Altavista's lunch.

Are you sure paying people to be made the default search had nothing to do with Google's rise to power? Or is that only a bad thing when we accuse Microsoft of doing it?

Another outright fucking lie. Unless you think that telling people that they should upgrade from IE 6 is a terrible sin. In which case, you're just delusional.

I also get it when I visit any google site with Camino, certain older versions of Firefox, and at a time current versions of IE.

Yes. God forbid there's some competition in the flight search engine market.

Do you really not see how a search engine embedding flight searches into search results, ahead of competitors is abusive (these embedded results, presumably ignore google's own ranking algorithms)? And you call others delusional? I LOL'ed, really.

Newsflash: having a large market share is not a monopoly.

Newsflash, the rules changed everyone in a hyperdominant position is considered a monopoly.
Protip: microsoft was not a "true" monopoly when they were taken to court over antitrust, either.
Protip: Neither was AT&T the second time around (It had already been split into AT&T, Nortel and Bell)

Furthermore, having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal.

Actually, according to the EU it is.

What is illegal is to turn a non-government sanctioned monopoly into a rent-seeking enterprise by limiting external competition.

So is using your dominant position to gain position in unrelated markets, especially in a way that hurts competitors. Microsoft did it with IE, and Google is doing it by embedding results of their own products in results ahead of competitors, presumably bipassing their own pagerank system to do so.

Now, how exactly is Google limiting competition? People are a click away from Bing. A click away from Facebook. None of the data that Google holds is sticky. There is exactly zero cost to switching to a competitor like Bing. Why aren't people doing it? Tell me, why? Because.... they're Google? That's a circular argument.

They're embedding their own products in search results ahead of comepetitors presumably ignoring their own pagerank system to do so, they're tying all their products together, they're doing things that, while all fine and dandy by your definitions, are very much illegal by definitions that actually matter.

Tell you what, I'll make you a deal. You start posting the same crap in Facebook and Microsoft stories, and I'll pretend that you actually believe what you're posting.

tell you what, you do the same, and I'll do the same.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[bonch]

Microsoft defenders said things like that in 1998.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Rockoon]

You're attempting to fold all of the market barriers to entry into the definition of quality, so that any barrier to entry (like third party application support) is written off as a good quality of the monopolist's product. Which is totally useless when the point to distinguish between barriers to entry and meritorious competition on the basis of price and quality.

It is only a barrier to entry if the availability and quantity of 3rd party applications is a real metric that matters to consumers.

You can't both have your cake and eat it too.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal.

Actually, according to the EU it is.

Actually, no. Please stop talking out of your ass.

they're tying all their products together

"Tying" in legal sense is forcing to buy product A to get product B - if Google demanded to buy an enterprise gmail account to use Google Ads, that would be tying. Please provide examples of Google doing this.

presumably ignoring their own pagerank system

You keep using that "presumably" as if it was "actually". Could you please deliver a proof for pagerank abuse in this case?

All in all, you sound like you just hate Google and know a few competition law related words, but not their meanings.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[hawkingradiation]

Not worth a +5 Insightful. What is wrong with integrating your products. You can offer the customer more features. Microsoft does it all the time and in a monopolistic fashion and in an abusive fashion. Is google supposed to try and keep all of their products separate. I use hotmail and gmail but I use hotmail as my "throwaway" account. Gmail is much better. Google.com is much better, Android is much better, where has Microsoft listened to the average person and not tried to suck up to media giants with DRM: where is Microsoft's answer to youtube? Or anyone else for that matter. The only competition Google has is Apple, and I purchase Apple products because they make a good product, not because necessarily agree with their philosophy, but I don't yet think Google is so dominate i.e. majority in the desktop/corporate operating system market that we have to accuse them of controlling everything. BTW Android is a partnership of companies, but you seem interested in how things "look".

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[shutdown -p now]

The point is that google is funding parts of their company (google+, docs, you name it) by completely unrelated parts (search). Those are unfair practices and are rightfully questioned and stopped by the EU.

I agree, it's so utterly unfair that some guy doing something he's good at can use the money he earns at it to fund a new startup of his.

I would go even further, and say that there should be a law to prevent this kind of thing. We could call it "The Equalization of Opportunity Bill".

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anthony Mouse]

No, but you can define "quality" as "quality attributable to the meritorious conduct of Microsoft" as distinguished from "quality attributable to dominant market position."

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

The harm is that people are blinded from competing products which could have superior privacy policies. (Well anything is better than google's - we will save all your data forever and reserve the right to sell your profile derived from that data because once upon a time it passed through our network) . Why people like you want to help an advertising company like google is beyond me. But it seems like you're getting paid for it. I hope its worth it !

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[sydneyfong]

Care to elaborate; care to explain how Sears will stop you shopping at Macy's?

If Sears became a monopoly, there'd be no Macy's, or at least there'd be very very few of them left. You can't shop at nonexistent stores...

(or have you never seen the Chrome search selector screen?)

Yes. I can't help but be reminded of Microsoft's browser selection screen where they have been ordered to do so. Google is obviously a bit short of having a monopoly in the browser market, but it does suggest they are a bit concerned about being sued for anticompetitive practices...

I'm only talking about the search/web service space here; as an advertiser they do seem to have a aggressively maintained dominance driven monopoly.. But since I think of advertisers as second-class lifeforms I really cant get very worked up about it.

I think that's our main difference. I probably don't dislike advertisers as much as you do. :)

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a link to the integration video you refer to?

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Grumbleduke]

They have the most dominant position to do this too - the largest search engine on planet.

Only if you define the planet by Europe and US.

While Google may not be dominant on the planet, I have a strange feeling that when the European Commission is investigating them for abuse of a dominant position, they'll be limiting their investigation to the EU - i.e. their jurisdiction.

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Branciforte]

You really don't seem to understand how search engines work. You generally get a higher ranking if you are more popular. Google services are more popular.

The search results offered by Google are a reflection of how popular things are on the Internet. Nothing is pushed down because it is a competitor. Nothing is raised just because it is a Google product.

There is no evidence that Google cooks their results. At best, they get a cheap rate on the advertising slots, which are clearly marked as such.

There was a claim recently in the US that Google services always appeared at position number 3. If you look at the evidence, which was offered by Google's competitors (Microsoft), you will see that they ignored results that did not fit their expectations and kept deleting their cookies in order to get Google to randomly assign them slightly different, perhaps experimental, versions of the search algorithm that just happened to return a Google product in the third spot. Once they got that, they recorded that "fact" and continued trying new cookies until the got the next result that they wanted. Does anyone really believe that Microsoft Executives are above that sort of behavior?

Re:Google is not even hiding it anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Might I suggest something to you:

www.bing.com
www.yahoo.com
www.excite.com/
www.dogpile.com

Yes I know that not as many of them are quite as flashy or push results quite as quickly as Google can or does. but let's get real here...these other players have to start re-investing in their platform so they can compete based on a quality product. There is nothing forcing you to use G+, Youtube or any Google product for that matter. If you dislike them so much might I suggest the list above.

Dammit :)

[Anonymous Coward]

You had to put Microsoft in the abstract didn't you. It is not that clear anymore who is bad and who isn't. :)

Re:Dammit :)

[Grumbleduke]

I'm pretty sure they also got the facts wrong about MS. While they may have settled the 2009 Internet Explorer case by adding the browser choice, they weren't so lucky with the 2003/2004 Windows Media Player/Networking case, where the EU fined them:

€497m (in 2004, original fine)
+ €280m (in 2006, calculated as €1.5m per day for non-compliance)
+ €899m (in 2008, for non-compliance)
= €1,676m total. Slightly more than simply adding a browser choice thing. And that doesn't include the 80% of the Commission's legal costs (or MS's own legal costs).

Oh, and MS are still appealing the 2008 ruling - but as they've finally complied with the 2004 one (possibly aside from paying the fine) the numbers shouldn't be going up much any more.

Most of the details, including links to the actual CJ rulings, can be found on the relevant Wikipedia page.

google has changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Their new policy is "do no evil...to our sponsors"

Re:google has changed

[91degrees]

Google's policy has never been "do no evil" but "don't be evil.

It's a subtle difference, but Google's policy allows occasional "evil"

Re:google has changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is that you?

Oh my god the sky is falling

[Colin Smith]

Look. Google is just flavour of the month.

The very things you are worried about are Google's death knell, they are busy dividing and conquering their own workforce and focus, exactly the way previous giants, like Nokia did, so don't worry about it, it's a natural part of executive narcissism. Someone will come along (out of nowhere it'll seem) in a short while and make billions knocking Google off their pedestal into a has-been like Microsoft.
 

Re:Oh my god the sky is falling

[SuricouRaven]

Microsoft is far from a has-been. They still dominate in desktop operating systems, and in all office software for business use. Not doing badly in servers too. Just because their efforts to expand into HPC and embedded have failed dismally doesn't make them a has-been.

End Game

[Totenglocke]

Time to pull out of Europe. They love fining US companies to fund their bankrupt governments.

Re:End Game

[InsightIn140Bytes]

Considering how Google launders its money via European countries to gain 2.4% tax rate, that might be quite costly. And that also means giving up tons of business, revenue, users and future monopoly status on search.

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

While the US love companies who squeeze out every last bit of money, freedom, dignity and personal data out of the people.

Re:End Game

[Dupple]

The US isn't exactly rolling in it or did you forget the biggest national the nation ever had

Re:End Game

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

That was my gut response too, bearing in mind I of course only read the headline and not the TFA. Looks like a European money grab. That said, Google jumped the shark a long time ago.

Re:End Game

[Elldallan]

Oh yes EU is soooo biased against US companies that the biggest fine they've handed out so far was to a European company and the majority of fines they are handing out still goes to european countries...

But yes pulling out of europe is certainly a valid option, the only options they do have is to either obey local law OR pull out of Europe.
Or are you trying to suggest that US companies should be above the law?

Re:End Game

[tsa]

Oh yes, like fining Google for a few 100 million will solve our crisis. Get real. Unlike in the US, corruption is illegal in Europe, and so misusing monopolies is punished like it should be. And companies are obliged to operate by the prevailing laws. That Google is an American company has nothing to do with it. A few months ago a cartel of European manufacturers of elevators was fined almost one billion euros, but since elevators are not as 'visible' as Google you don't know about that.

Re:End Game

[jirikivaari]

Sure. How many companies are you going to pull out? :)

Also, find a stock broker, he can probably help you short these countries. Talk is cheap.

This antitrust legislation is probably quite inefficient and pointless. That I do agree with. Its not European invention though, such regulators are everywhere.

Re:End Game

[Rockoon]

Unlike in the US, corruption is illegal in Europe

Italy and Greece spring to mind as proof that you are full of it.

Re:End Game

[tsa]

I take it you are American.

That corruption is illegal in Europe doesn't mean it doesn't occur. I never said it doesn't. You just don't like to hear the truth. Look at your politicians. They all are owned by the companies who paid loads of money to get them their positions. If that is not legalized corruption I don't know what is.

Re:End Game

[king neckbeard]

He didn't say that American politics wasn't corrupt. He didn't even say that American politics was less corrupt than European politics. The argument he made seems to be that European politics is all kinds of corrupt, which would put the not liking to hear the truth as YOUR flaw.

Re:End Game

[tsa]

What Greece and Itily do is NOT European politics. But I don't blame you for not knowing how European politics works; even Europe's politicians seem to not know how it works. And we're in this big political crisis in which European politics is in the process of being reformed too. These are difficult times.

Re:End Game

[fnj]

Yes. Corruption is the most universal constant there is. The U.S. - corrupt. Mexico, Argentina, Canada, Australia, Europe, Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, India, China, Japan, ad nauseum - all corrupt. All the countries I haven't mentioned - pretty much all struggle with corruption. The Third Reich was corrupt. Fascist Italy. The Soviet Union. Napoleon's Empire. The Roman Empire. The Aztecs. The Egyptian Dynasties.

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike in the US, corruption is illegal in Europe..

Oh I see..that's why Berlusconi was in power all those years.

Re:End Game

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Or are you trying to suggest that US companies should be above the law?

Well, the problem is that ... yes ... we kinda do ...

Above European law ? Yes ... first, isolated from the 56 different conflicting sets laws that govern all sorts of parts of Europe ? Yes, definitely. Able to publish free speech into Europe on areas where European laws forbid it (e.g. criticizing unions, or politicians/institutions, ...) ? Again, yes, definitely
Above Chinese law ? Yes
Above $dictatorship's laws ? Yes
Above muslim countries' laws ? Yes ...
(the list goes on)

I would absolutely HATE to see US companies (any one of them) forced to comply to even a single one of these laws, except where it concerns people on the ground in those countries. But their websites and their business itself should be immune.

Re:End Game

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

So let's focus on the point he *did* make ... is corruption illegal in the US ? Of course it is.

So the "tsa" post is full of bullshit. It is of course not legal in the US for politicians to be corrupt.

Re:End Game

[Registered Coward v2]

Oh yes, like fining Google for a few 100 million will solve our crisis. Get real. Unlike in the US, corruption is illegal in Europe, and so misusing monopolies is punished like it should be. And companies are obliged to operate by the prevailing laws. That Google is an American company has nothing to do with it. A few months ago a cartel of European manufacturers of elevators was fined almost one billion euros, but since elevators are not as 'visible' as Google you don't know about that.

PAre your referring to the 2007 action? If so, a few months ago the EU cut one of the major European company's fine by 33%.

Re:End Game

[Registered Coward v2]

What Greece and Itily do is NOT European politics. But I don't blame you for not knowing how European politics works; even Europe's politicians seem to not know how it works. And we're in this big political crisis in which European politics is in the process of being reformed too. These are difficult times.

I guess Austria, Britain, France also do not constitute European politics either? It would seem that the EU is no more free of corruption and business influence than the US.

Corruption is a universal problem wherever there is money to be made. I would venture to say the US and the EU probably do more to plush it than many countries but neither are pure and virginal either.

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

You can criticize politicians and unions in Europe without any problem. The only thing banned here is when you threaten the democracy or the lives of other citizens, such as Adolf Hitler did (racism, etc.)

I'd hate to live in a police state, which is US is today.

Re:End Game

[sydneyfong]

When you do not obey another country's laws, why should they allow you to do business there?

The fact is, US companies want to do business abroad, and this means they've implicitly agreed to following the laws of the countries they're doing business in.

Unless you're a major shareholder of any company, you can cry all you want about having to follow whatever unjust laws you perceive, but the reality is that shareholders want money instead of the ideological zealotry that you're so fond of.

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like the US doesn't have different laws in different states companies need to comply with. I am also not sure where you take it from that Europeans cannot criticize unions or politicians. Suggesting that European law is in any way or form similar to Chinese laws or laws of dictatorships is disingenuous. And Google does have a physical business presence in Europe, so arguing that it is exempt from European laws is like arguing that European companies with a physical business presence in the US should also be exempt from US laws, which I suspect you would also take issue with.

It is a simple fact of life that if you do business in a particular country, the laws of that country apply to your business operations, and that works both ways. The fact where you seem to think that US has better laws than other countries is very much debatable, but God forbid you would actually know what you talk about.

Re:End Game

[chrb]

That word does not mean what you think it does. Money laundering: the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources.

What Google, and Facebook, and Microsoft, etc. do is called tax avoidance, and (like it or not) it is completely legal.

Re:End Game

[king neckbeard]

Technically speaking, it would seem to be European politics. It is politics, and it is in Europe. The corruption issues may be limited to the national level, so it wouldn't be corruption at the EU level. That said, I'm sure that corruption is quite prevalent at the EU level as well. As I've already said, pretending that it isn't makes you the blind one.

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not money laundering.

Re:End Game

[tsa]

But then again, European politics haven't come up with atrocities like software patents, SOPA and the DMCA either. In other words, I have proof for my claim and you don't have proof for yours. I think the institution of laws like the DMCA and SOPA (which hopefully doesn't happen), which have absolutely nothing to do with liberty and frredom for all but big corporations, is a sign of a level of corruption that even the Nigerian 'government' (which is basically Shell) can only look at in envy.

Re:End Game

[perryizgr8]

yeah this is just ransom money eu takes from every successful non-eu company to allow them to do business there. ever hear of any european company being fined??

Re:End Game

[Totenglocke]

No, the US isn't. However, the US isn't facing a lack of lenders (like Greece & Co are), nor does the US make a habit of singling out successful foreign businesses to charge massive bullshit fines. Though, the real problem is corporate greed - if companies stood up en mass and told places like the EU to go fuck themselves and pulled out, the citizens of those countries would force through a governmental change real quick when they had to start living without things like video games, Android / iOS / Blackberry smartphones, software compatibility with the rest of the world, etc. And yes, I'd support companies from other countries doing the same to the US if the US government didn't want to play nice.

Re:End Game

[Totenglocke]

So you're saying having an opinion contrary to the officially mandated opinion is banned? Didn't the aforementioned Hitler have such a policy? Just saying...

Re:End Game

[king neckbeard]

It's worth remembering that a major component of how the DMCA came to be was saying that the US had to comply with WIPO provisions. Also, a major justification for the CTEA was also to 'harmonize' with European law, and said attempt at 'harmonization' was a large component for why the majority of SCOTUS erred in not striking down the retroactive extensions. Also, for most of the 20th century, US copyright law was much weaker than European law, and there are still some areas where it is more permissive. The solving lining of that godawful CTEA was the Fairness in Music Licensing Act, which allowed small restaurants to play radio stations under certain conditions without paying money to performing rights societies. The European Communities complained that it wasn't in line with the Berne Convention, and we had to pay them a few million to shut up, despite the fact that the radio stations that broadcast the music ALREADY pay those thugs money.

Anyway, getting into a national pissing contest is pointless. Even if you think the EU and your national government are several orders of magnitude more corrupt than the US, your government is still very corrupt and you should be pissed off about it instead of bragging about how your government doesn't screw you as hard as mine does. Personally, I'm quite sure I hate my government more than you hate my government.

Re:End Game

[tsa]

You're right, let's stop. It was fun while it lasted but it gets no-one anywhere. But I don't know if you hate your government more than I hate mine, the Dutch government ;). I guess it's normal to find your government one of the worst in the world. Anyway, Europe and America are still two of the best places to live in on this planet, so we don't have it really bad.

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike in the US, corruption is illegal in Europe, and so misusing monopolies is punished like it should be.

So when do they file suit against Apple? Monopoly in iPod -> leveraged into monopoly on iTunes -> leveraged into monopoly on phone/tablets -> leveraged into monopoly in app store.

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Hitler also thought he was a good artist. What does this say about the majority of pixiv users?

(hint: absolutely nothing)

Re:End Game

[gr8dude]

What about Vatican?

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, it's almost as if there was some sort of inexplicable selection bias where American news was given higher priority in America.

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's effective tax rate is 20%, as you can read in the 10-Q filing with the SEC:
    http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312511282235/d228523d10q.htm

The EU tax rate is 2.4% because the EU has policies that allow tax avoidance, and many companies take advantage of that. After all, when was the last time you paid more taxes than they were legally obligated to? If the EU wants more revenue of income earned there, they can change their policies. If you live in the EU complain to your government, not to the companies operating there.

Anyone living the US that expects a multinational to repatriate profits just so it can pay extra taxes is just engaging in wishful thinking. EU money is far better spent expanding European options (building datacenters nearer to load, local engineering centers, investing in EU companies, etc). How often would it be worth it to take a 35% hit and bring the money into the US?

Re:End Game

[shutdown -p now]

GP's point is that Google will have to stop its use of those convenient tax policies if it were to abandon Europe as a market.

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to pull out of Europe. They love fining US companies to fund their bankrupt governments.
--
Want to get modded down? Promote liberty, personal responsibility, or sound economic policy.

by Totenglocke

Thanks for providing an example of the intellectual decay of the USA, coupled with the rampant victimhood that goes along with it.

I bet the username is a cutsie further example of all that's wrong with America.

Fucking moron (or "moran" to you types).

Re:End Game

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

No, but there's a range of opinions that is banned. Starting with anything that you can identify as "nazism" (which is *a lot*. Anything to the left of stalin has been forced to at least retract a few statements, Police regularly break up parties (yes, youth parties*) because of these laws, hell's angels groups are harassed, ...), several political parties destroyed and broken up, ...

In theory you have free speech. In practice it is the case that a certain segment of lefties have taken to calling everything that doesn't sufficiently agree with them nazist (like, for instance, social democrat parties who felt that men and women should have equal unemployment benefits, I believe the issue was that "sole fathers" would get increased benefits just like sole mothers do, and apparently that's not very socialist).

This has led to sometimes funny situations, like the dutch socialists in Belgium calling the french socialists nazis, *and* vice-versa. It stopped being fun when they involved the justice department though. The french ones won, but it is whispered that may have had something to do with the trial being overseen by a french judge. Keep in mind that the french socialists have been in power in > 60% of the french-speaking part of the country for decades, and thus have had veto rights over judge appointments. If you ever have a rent dispute in belgium and you're a tenant, request a trial in French, you'll be amazed what they let you get away with.

* there's several "neo-nazi" organizations who organize a lot of parties (which really only think that name is somehow cool, they certainly don't follow that ideology. They're very socialist, but much more focused on young people than the mainstream socialists. They're more about scholarships and unemployment and care very little about pensions, for example. They hardly ever campaign outside of discos and the like)

In recent years, further crackdowns have been ordered against anything considered culturally insensitive. Btw : this is not people acting like total buffoons because they perceive something to be racist, this is people ending up in jail because someone managed to build a case that they were insensitive. As an example was a hairdressing salon refusing to hire a veiled muslim woman (3 guesses why they did that, right ? Hair is their business, they don't want to hide it. They made the *big* mistake of telling that woman why they didn't hire her).

Re:End Game

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I do not suggest that European law is similar to chinese laws or islamic barbarism. But it's also very unlike American law, and has no direct right to free speech like Americans do.

Google does not actually have physical business presence anywhere outside of the US (in fact I believe they don't even have that outside of California). They have wholly owned subsidiaries, some of which are physically located inside the EU. Technically those subsidiaries are resellers.

So google's methods of making profit are governed by the laws of the state of California, while google's profits are distributed according to the laws of the British territory of the Bermudas. Read all about it

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Those tax policies only apply to revenue earned outside the US, and can't be used from all countries, thus the vast majority of that low-tax-rate revenue will be from the EU. If Google abandons the EU market there wouldn't be any revenue there to tax. X% of 0 is still 0.

Re:End Game

[Totenglocke]

And that my friend, is a perfect argument for why the citizens of Europe should have fought to the death before giving up their rights to defend themselves. Once the people can't fight back against the government, they can do anything they damn well please with impunity. Sadly Europe has seen this before (especially with Nazi Germany), yet they don't seem to have learned this lesson.

Re:End Game

[Tim C]

except where it concerns people on the ground in those countries

You do realise that Google has offices in the EU, don't you?

Re:End Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there was a policy like that when Hitler rose to power. Needless to say, the nazis, being the young progressive intellectuals party used it well, and scored tons of political victories with it against old "boring" political parties. They managed to expand that law several times and used it against things like newspapers and other political parties (it is absolutely amazing how many political parties Germany had during those times, we're talking thousands. Mostly there was a curious correlation between the number of board members, plus the number of mothers of board members, and the number of votes those parties got in elections. This was true of the nazi party as well for several years)

But if you think that "a law just like this actually helped the nazis rose to power" is a reasonable criticism against this law, you're mistaken. Political parties, especially the "progressive socialists", use it constantly and seek it's massive expansion. After all, you can accuse white males of being hitler without any consequence. Pointing out that the progressive socialist party agenda has about 15 points of the 25 point program verbatim is racism, because they have one pet non-European that's a "member" of the party board. I still have BIG questions how anyone could just happen to arrive at the exact same sentence structure that the NSDAP used by accident.

This is part of how Hitler did it too, of course. Having a huge party board with all sorts of members, from priests, gays to jews (this continued even during the holocaust : for example the "Judenrat" and several like organisations). Not that there ever was the slightest doubt that the public party board had exactly zero power, and that the real power was with what you might call the inner circle. But it apparently raised zero alarm bells that the party board had zero power to vote out the chairman, or even the slightest say in who would be the next one.

Also for some reason if a party like the christen-democrats, or the liberals sue another political party that is enormously criticized within the party to the point that it becomes dangerous for the party leadership. It is been made blatantly obvious that members of the socialist party (not just the progressive socialist party) use any means to get to power. And yes, this has in the past included murder, justified by claims that banks commit murder as well, by forcing people to starve. But things like attacking streets (like the G8 "protests", looks like an atomic bomb was dropped after such protests), blocking companies, smashing property to bits, stealing livestock, sabotaging railway lines, attacking policemen and even rival politicians (sorry the "only thing" these parties do is inciting violence against rival politicians, or at least that's the only thing they were ever convicted for. Not that anyone really believes that of course), ... is a perfectly acceptable means of gaining power inside socialist circles.

Just like Hitler did, of course.

Pointing this out, is like pointing out to an American that there were years when you could not point out the difference between the ku-klux clan and the democrat party, that's how intertwined they were. This remained true until the clan disbanded. Google, for example, "clanbake" for a good starting point. And yet, democrats are the "friends" of minorities ... which apparently are perfectly content with having "if the applicant is member of minority " in laws, as if they don't know how those laws will evolve over time. Democrats are relatively direct populists : they will rapidly implement whatever the population is calling for. The problem with that is simple : sometimes the mob calls for blood ... lots and lots of blood.

And it's pretty obvious what the result is, isn't it ? The population is perfectly willing to stand for this as long as the economy keeps improving. As long as the handouts increase.

It is the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

$3 billion US / year wouldn't go amiss given the current state of affairs on the continent....

As an Italian patriot

[SpaghettiPattern]

As an Italian patriot I welcome fining corporations. I'm sure I speak for many of us when I say "We see this as a minor yet convenient contribution to our nation al debt. Even single digit billions are not to be shunned. And some of it will eventually land in Italian pockets." There must be a way to make it stick and I'm sure we can make the form or shape we find look beautiful, trust me.

Personally I see a dodgy edge on Google but compared to M$ they are saints and I'd be absolutely terrified if Apple were in a similar position. Oh, and "Italian patriot" is a bit of an oxymoron.

Re:As an Italian patriot

[SpzToid]

This is sort of off-topic since TFA is about Google's monopoly power (in Europe), and Google is after all legally enjoying its Dutch Sandwich, but I'm also in favor of the EU keeping more of Google's free lunch to pay EU debts.

Urban Dictionary describes a Dutch Sandwich as follows:

A legal tax dodge also called the Double Irish. Profits are sent to Ireland which has a high tax rate. But, Ireland doesn't tax some payments made to other EU states, so the money is sent to a shell in the Netherlands. The Dutch have very low tax laws, so it is home free. The money is then routed to an Irish-owned subsidiary in Bermuda which is why it is called Double Irish. The corporation has only paid 0.2% of taxes in this process. What a deal!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_Arrangement

Re:As an Italian patriot

[Anonymous Coward]

That's strange... I told my girlfriend I was interested in the "Double Irish" and maybe also a "Dutch Sandwich", and she just slapped me.

Microsoft is a has-been

[Colin Smith]

The desktop is irrelevant now, the world has moved on and Microsoft can no longer dictate anything of consequence. They are losing money all over the place as they try to get out of their fading niche. Again, executive narcissism is going to prevent their success and ensure their continued slide into obscurity.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[InsightIn140Bytes]

Microsoft just reported record fourth quarter and fiscal year 2011 earnings today with yearly revenues at $69,94 billion, representing an increase of 12% from 2010.

If that is losing money all over the place, I wouldn't mind losing it like Microsoft does.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Colin Smith]

Then you need a core cash cow which you can sell to people again and again and again and again. At some point, people wise up and move on but until that happens you'll make money. What you have to be careful of is not losing too much on the rest of your failures while the cow is still producing.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[InsightIn140Bytes]

You mean just like car companies are on verge of dying because someday people could just stop buying new cars and keep using their old ones?

If you also didn't notice, Microsoft has very stable other products too and they tend to take a long term goal with them. Most people tend to bitch how companies don't think long term but just want quick cash. Well, not Microsoft. And at 32% market share in the US, I would say Bing is a really successful product. They're also getting really valuable user and keyword data which will only make it easier for them to improve in the future, just like Google did. And now seeing Google throwing everything they have under the failure that is Google+, Microsoft must be laughing at Google's failed attempts.

Also, what comes to long term goals, that is what most businesses appreciate. If many parts of your business depend on someone else, you want the other company to have long term and you want to know that they will take care of you and the products you use. You can say that about Microsoft, but you can't say about it with Google, because Google tends to cancel failed products left and right and that is going to bite them in the ass.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Colin Smith]

You mean just like car companies are on verge of dying

Strawman. Cars are not software. Nevertheless, go buy some General Motors shares and bonds since you are so sure of their business model.

And at 32% market share in the US, I would say Bing is a really successful product

Bing is losing more than a billion a quarter. Highly successful, if it was a government project.

Google will also lose billions on their own vanity projects.
 

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[JSombra]

The desktop will still be relevant in the workplace for a at least a decade or two if not more

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[InsightIn140Bytes]

And at 32% market share in the US, I would say Bing is a really successful product

Bing is losing more than a billion a quarter. Highly successful, if it was a government project.

Which just shows how committed Microsoft is to think long-term and keep that market share. And do you honestly want Microsoft to pull out? That leaves no other search provider in the US. Google will be only one you can go to.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[khallow]

That's record revenue not earnings. They've earned this much per share last year as well (so 12% increase in revenue with no corresponding increase in income per share? Meh). I notice their stock price is still lower than it was in 2001.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Lehk228]

frankly i don't care if MS exits the search market or not, bing is a horrible product with a horrible name, it's rise in popularity is only because it is the default search in new versions of IE

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[MollyB]

I notice their stock price is still lower than it was in 2001.

I'm no expert, but Microsoft shares split 2 for 1 on Jan. 27, 2003. Does your comparison take that into account?
This info was Scroogled from http://www.microsoft.com/investor/Stock/StockSplit/default.aspx

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Garybaldy]

Stock price has little or no meaning when you don't take splits into account. Just because Apple refuses to split its stock. Sending its price through the roof. Does not mean it is industry standard.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[khallow]

I believe so. I was looking at a Google chart. That usually takes stock splits into account.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Runaway1956]

"just like Google did"

Awesome. Truly awesome. Now, Microsoft and MS phanbois are openly admitting that they want to emulate Google. That's is almost certainly the most awesome thing I'll read in the next several months.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Runaway1956]

ask.com

alltheweb.com

aolsearch.aol.com

hotbot.com

altavista.com

looksmart.com

lycos.com

search.netscape.com

dmoz.org

duckduckgo.com

dogpile.com

I think that it is safe to say, if Google went out of business tomorrow, I could still search the intartubez, without relying on Microsoft. I can avoid Bing, MSN search, Yahoo, and anything else that is in "partnership" with Microsoft. All those search engines work in the USA. I suspect that they all work anywhere in the world. I haven't even done much of a search for other search providers. I'll bet there are one or two in the Pacific, another in Australia, a handful in Asia, if I'm willing to learn Chinese. And, Russia. It's probably safe to bet that Russia has a couple, and the old East European socialist states probably have one or more.

The ONLY reason I would ever have for using Bing, is to help Microsoft lose money even faster. And, that idea isn't appealing enough to permit Microsoft even a snippet of my personal data.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[InsightIn140Bytes]

ask.com

Uses Google back-end.

alltheweb.com

Redirects to Yahoo, uses Bing back-end.

aolsearch.aol.com

Uses Google back-end.

hotbot.com

Uses Lycos back-end.

altavista.com

Uses Bing back-end.

looksmart.com

Is an pay-per-click search advertising company and doesn't have a search engine. Why is it on the list?

lycos.com

Finally we had one that actually runs their own search engine apart from Google and Bing!

search.netscape.com

Redirects to AOL, uses Google back-end.

dmoz.org

Directory, not a search engine.

duckduckgo.com

Uses Bing back-end.

dogpile.com

Oh second!

I think that it is safe to say, if Google went out of business tomorrow, I could still search the intartubez, without relying on Microsoft.

Yeah right. Your "impressive" list came to pretty much nothing after removing the sites that use either Google or Bing as back-end or didn't have anything to do with search engines. In fact, you probably have used Microsoft's products without even knowing it.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Runaway1956]

Nope. I most definitely do not use Microsoft products by mistake. I run a Linux desktop, and I choose Google for my searches. I suppose that I use Microsoft servers while using the web. Some people can't set up a server on their own, so they get Microsoft to do it for them.

Since you did such a good job of picking this list apart http://www.thesearchenginelist.com/ maybe you would like to do the same with this on? http://www.philb.com/webse.htm

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[InsightIn140Bytes]

You do understand that there's lots of Microsoft code in Linux? So you are using Microsoft's product too.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[walterbyrd]

At some point

As I have been saying, for at least 20 years now, I wouldn't write Microsoft's obituary just yet.

You seem to be confusing your expectations for the future, with the reality of the present.

As of today, Microsoft is far from a "has been." MS is easily one the biggest tech companies on earth, and they are posting record profits.

Maybe, someday, Microsoft's reign of terror will be over, but certainly not today.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Rockoon]

dogpile.com

Oh second!

Dogpile uses Google, Bing, AND Lycos for backends. Dogpile does not have its own backend.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Anonymous Coward]

frankly i don't care if MS exits the search market or not, bing is a horrible product with a horrible name, it's rise in popularity is only because it is the default search in new versions of IE

There has been no change in search defaults in IE in many years, they just changed it from Live/MSN Search to Bing. And IE share is greatly declining. This can not be the explanation for Bing query share increase. I find that Bing US is becoming quite capable, and have even introduced several features that Google have later copied (and if you are not talking about Bing US you are not really talking about Bing, but that is a different type of MS screw up)

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[hairyfeet]

Personally i'm damned sick and tired of seeing everyone that doesn't go along with the herd and drink the koolaid like a good little drone being labeled a shill. Name a SINGLE thing that guy posted that wasn't true. if MSFT pulls out of search will there be anyone left to compete? nope as yahoo closed their search division nearly two years ago and are concentrating on their web portal and email which i can't say as i blame them as that is their two biggest products by far.

Lets look at his other statements shall we? does MSFT think long term? Well you can easily know to the DAY how long their products are gonna last, they put up handy little EOL roadmaps which makes it easy to plan a business around. For example XP is EOL in Apr 2014 and Windows 7 is 2020, no just killing products willy nilly here like Google.

Now lets look at yours and the others shall we? "The desktop is a has been" likely written from an iPad. Despite the coming of iJesus computers still sell REALLY well and frankly as a retailer I can tell you the ONLY reason PCs have slowed down is simply because they have reached maturity and are long past "good enough" for the masses. There is frankly nothing the average person does in home or office that doesn't run really well on even a 5 year old dual core, so why should they buy when they don't need to? Pads are a niche product, for Apple its a high dollar niche but its still a niche.

And then of course there is you labeling anyone who doesn't think like you a shill. honestly i have more respect for the trolls that call everyone nigger as they have less of a bad attitude than you do and are more honest. With your type of troll all must think like you or they are one of THEM, just insert the company you don't like into the THEM and lather rinse repeat. One week its Apple, the next MSFT, the one after that Oracle, all except whatever company is "your" company like its a God damned ball club.

So if you don't agree with his opinion while don't you actually do something constructive like make a well thought out argument for your position? Oh right that would mean actually having to think and compare instead of mindlessly following with the herd. I hate to say it but i'm gonna have to agree with old Mikey 400+ accounts that "Slashdot = stagnated'.

Now please waste your mod points for my blasphemy of pointing out mindless constant accusations instead of counter arguments is stupid and pointless, especially in a place that is SUPPOSED to be full of smart tech guys, not mindless fanbois.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Anonymous Coward]

TLDR

but your astroturf looks delicious!

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[NeutronCowboy]

You want a single thing that wasn't true? I have a nice long post that points out exactly where Mr "I-have-a-proper-first-post-within-seconds-of-the-story-without-being-a-subscriber" flat-out makes up shit about Google: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2556346&cid=38249028. And then he turns around and the exact things that are bad about Google are suddenly good about Microsoft.

As for your comment about XP roadmaps: tell me how many people are using XP and what they paid for it, and I'll show you a Google Gears that less than 1% of that number used, and that no one paid for. So yeah. Don't use free shit that someone else has to pay for in mission-critical areas in your business. Is that really surprising?

So we have:
* recently created account - pretty much a day ago or so
* first post within seconds of the story
* nice, grammatically correct post with internally consistent logic.
* flat-out lies about one company
* admiration of its competitor
* posts pretty much restricted to either bashing one company or praising its direct competitor

Yeah, that's a shill. I'm happy to burn Karma to point this out every time, because Frosty Pisses, goatse and Dr. Bob won't ruin Slashdot. Advertising accounts that hide the fact that they're being paid to lie about one company will.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[khallow]

Stock split was taken into account. I was looking at a graph from Google's finance stuff. if it hadn't, then there would have been a sharp jag where the stock split happened.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Stan92057]

"The desktop is irrelevant now" Says who? You? where are the number and facts backing that statement up. I have zero plans to leave the desktop.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Runaway1956]

Uhhhh, yeah, right. Here, have some more Kool-Aid, pal.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Anonymous Coward]

^^This is so fucking ridiculous, it HAS to be replied to.

InsightIn140Bytes is a MICROSOFT TROLL, pure and simple. Move along.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[roman_mir]

What do you mean? Microsoft has a totally ZANY marketing team!

Think about their xlozy product names: zune, bing.... bob. It's inxane!

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Luckyo]

So did xbox division, for a long time. Your point?

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Anonymous Coward]

This post should be modded way up.......

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[hawkinspeter]

Really? Any evidence of that, like a citation or something?

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[hairyfeet]

Frankly you know what? Don't give a shit, DO NOT GIVE A SHIT, you know why? Because we are supposed to be BETTER than the shills and the fanbois and astroturfers, we are SMARTER and have higher IQs and are therefor BETTER than them. you wanna kill a shill dead? drive a stake right into his still beating heart? Then DESTROY what he is shilling for with a well thought out counter argument!

Honestly this is why the Linux fanbois fucking HATE me, so badly in fact i had one follow me around for a month everywhere i posted just so he could post as AC "Die you fat fucker die" and HOW did i get him so pissed? I fucking CRUSHED his arguments with the truth, backed up by a solid list of citations! if you think they are blowing smoke then WALK THE WALK and tear him a new one with a solid argument and citations!

But this mindless endless bleating "shill astroturfer troll" is like "nigger faggot jew" and frankly a waste of everyone's time, i don't give a shit if it turns out the guys is a fucking drone or not! Because everyone sees that shit and they tune it out just as they do all the Goatse links or nigger posts.

We come here for the COMMENTS folks, this USED to be a place where the big brains would tear each other apart and even if you got fucking demolished by a guy that knew 50 times more than you thought you did you know what? you fucking LEARNED!!! I've been witness and part of arguments on file systems and CPU arches here that frankly taught me more than any class ever could, because by arguing their positions everyone brought their A games and dug out facts upon facts and frankly i'm not ashamed to admit I've been schooled here more than once and have been man enough to admit defeat when my position got ripped apart by someone with more knowledge on the subject.

C'mon guys, we're the fucking brains of the outfits aren't we? We the band of battered and abused IT guys and scientists and geeks and nerds and all of us little cogs that keep the train on the tracks? hell look at your post man, if you would have spent HALF the time tearing into that guy's position that you did backing up your shill point he would have left with his tail between his legs and we would have ALL probably learned a thing or two. We CAN do better guys, but this endless flamewar bullshit and screams of "shill astroturfer troll" make this feel more like a damned fansite instead of a place where the smart guys hang.

Re:Microsoft is a has-been

[Tim C]

That's as may be, but personally I've started switching from Google to Bing as I'm getting tired of Google automatically "correcting" my searches for me. 90% of the time I really did mean to type what I typed, and the "correction" brings back irrelevant results. (Yes, I know about Verbatim, but unless it can be switched on by default the extra clicks to enable it *every single time* are just too much for me)

EU Governments need about 3 trillion euros.

[Colin Smith]

Italy alone has to roll 300 billion next year.

Fining Google or any huge multinational corporation is so totally totally totally insignificant in comparison... I think you need to get out of your parent's basement and take a look at the real world to get some perspective.
 

Mandatory Notice

[Anonymous Coward]

Please note that free discussion has ended and this discussion is now being directed and moderated by a Waggener Edstrom Rapid Response team on behalf of Microsoft.

Monitoring conversations, including those that take place with social media, is part of our daily routine; our products can be used as early warning systems, helping clients with rapid response and crisis management.

http://waggeneredstrom.com/about/approach [waggeneredstrom.com]
http://waggeneredstrom.com/clients

Remember when youtube was losing money?

[Kartu]

A while ago a friend of mine, working at myvideo.de, complained, that google kept ads prices too low to pressure competition. Considering youtube was losing money, no one would argue that they weren't too low.

I can't directly relate it to search monopoly, though, since technically Apple or Samsung could buy youtube and play the same "oh youtube isn't profitable" while competitors go bancrupt, but it does feel like abuse.

Re:Remember when youtube was losing money?

[SnowZero]

Ad prices are mainly set by what the advertiser will pay. A site can set a minimum (although if nobody is willing to pay that no ad shows and the site gets nothing), and a maximum (which obviously you want as high as possible). Everything else is up to whatever auctions or contracts you can get with advertisers.

Ad prices are low now because there is excess inventory (place to show ads) and click rates aren't high enough to justify higher payments by advertisers. In that environment, you succeed by getting better click rates or figuring out how to run your service more cheaply, both of which Google is good at.

good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, that's good news, because we're running a bit low on cash here lately.

What, ran out of Microsoft money?

[Altanar]

Hey, EU. You're doing something wrong if you face huge budget shortfalls if you don't get your annual big business fine every year. Fining prosperous companies should not be a major source of income for ANY government.

Re:What, ran out of Microsoft money?

[Anonymous Coward]

The prosperity , our lack thereof, of anyone being fined is irrelevant. Companies who break the law should be fined, prosperous or not.

Re:What, ran out of Microsoft money?

[kanto]

Hey, EU. You're doing something wrong if you face huge budget shortfalls if you don't get your annual big business fine every year. Fining prosperous companies should not be a major source of income for ANY government.

That's actually funny; the US wouldn't be in such trouble if it didn't have this idea that you can't apply laws to business. The 2008 crash was completely unnecessary, but of course whatever happens now is EU's fault. Btw since you still haven't figured out it's not one big country here's the short and sweet of it: Euro-zone != EU and EU != Europe.

Re:What, ran out of Microsoft money?

[perryizgr8]

look around you. its not the us anymore that's in trouble now. its the eu. the us has mostly recovered, because they have people willing to work, not just find new ways to fine smart people.

Re:What, ran out of Microsoft money?

[kanto]

look around you. its not the us anymore that's in trouble now. its the eu. the us has mostly recovered, because they have people willing to work, not just find new ways to fine smart people.

If by mostly recovered you mean the fact that no one is talking about the US, then sure, you're as recovered as most of the EU was a while back; slight growth with hopes for better. Last I heard there were talks of the US maybe losing it's triple A status as it was going nowhere fast with balancing the budget.

Microsoft is copying Google, are copying Facebook

[Colin Smith]

As I said.

Microsoft is a has-been.
Google will be a has-been shortly.

And Facebook is the Tech Bubble 2.0 or Social Whatever Bubble 1.0 if you prefer.
 

Not the issue

[thegarbz]

You're confusing a couple of very different issues here. Google does NOT have a monopoly on search and the EU isn't claiming they do. By the very definition if useful alternatives exist then there's not a monopoly. Naturally they push their other services to existing users. Every company does this. Every company that has some common sense and is likely to be in business next financial year anyway. The key thing that differentiates this from normal practice and abuse of power is if the users have choice or not.

For all users there is a choice. I.e. is shipped out of the box with Bing as the default search engine. When you first start Chrome it asks you what your default search engine is. When you go to Google's home page you get a single bar at the top of the page, that's it. Users can all avoid this (and given the latest search numbers quite a few of them do) and thus it is not an abuse of market share.

What Google does have a monopoly in is advertising. They have the single biggest presence for advertising on the internet with facebook a very distant second, and unlike the general user visiting a search engine there's not the same amount of choice out there for advertisers given that Google's monopoly stretches way beyond the search arena and onto websites of partners around the world.

Re:Not the issue

[Lawrence_Bird]

And whom is compelling those who wish to advertise to use Google? There are other other ad services available which provide the same function. There still do exist newspapers, tv, radio and billboards. This table may help you out

Re:Not the issue

[Rockoon]

And whom is compelling those who wish to advertise to use Google? There are other other ad services available which provide the same function.

I dont think you know what "function" means in this context. If you want a million eyes on your advertisement today, you have to go with Google, and thus you cannot go with anyone else because Google forbids it.

Are you fucking stupid or just a google lover?

Re:Not the issue

[thegarbz]

People who want to reach the largest target audience on the internet by an order of magnitude are compelled to use Google. The existence of alternatives who do not provide the same scale of target audience does not come into the equation as they are in this case not a viable alternative. The existence of alternatives that target a completely different set of people in a completely different way is irrelevant as anti-trust laws look at a specific business, and not an overall industry. That's how anti-trust works. There are viable alternatives to Google in the search arena as Bing is capable of providing the same wide breath and depth of search results. Unless there's another ad provider on the internet that reaches the same number of people across a similarly wide range of services (search, affiliate websites) and with the same level of user targeting then Google has a monopoly as the barriers to entry in this market are high.

Also the word is "who". To help your grammar answer your own question by replacing who with he and whom with him. Assuming you don't get those confused as well.

Re:Not the issue

[Lawrence_Bird]

How many millions of people watch tv every day? read news papers? drive by billboards? It is you who is fucking stupid. And there is no AdBlock Plus for TV, radio, newspapers or billboards. And google is not the only way to serve ads on the internet.

Re:Not the issue

[Lawrence_Bird]

You are not compelled to advertise on the internet. You are not compelled to use Google to advertise on the internet. There are alternatives. And there is NOTHING to stop another company from taking what ever share Google has today. That Google's original model was selling ads that appear with search results and you are promoting Bing as a viable alternative in search, then there is nothing to stop Bing from becoming a viable alternative in serving internet ads. And please stop being a grammar nazi that was old on Usenet in 1995.

Re:Not the issue

[cthulhu11]

This just in: Google responds by accusing Europeans of being tobacco-smoking pussies.

Re:Not the issue

[thegarbz]

You are not compelled to advertise on the internet.

Hard to see how that is relevant when accusing a company of abusing their monopoly in ... Internet Advertising.

You are not compelled to use Google to advertise on the internet. There are alternatives.

See above, and the other people who have replied to your comment. Chances are the 400 page report says more than "everything's fine" or it wouldn't have made the news.

And there is NOTHING to stop another company from taking what ever share Google has today.

It's called barrier to entry. You have 2 choices. Build what will become the biggest website on the internet and serve up ads ala Facebook, or somehow convince the vast majority of the internet to give up their Google contracts in favour of your own.

That Google's original model was selling ads that appear with search results and you are promoting Bing as a viable alternative in search, then there is nothing to stop Bing from becoming a viable alternative in serving internet ads.

Except for the barrier to entry noted above. Bing would need to become bigger than Google Search or it would need to start taking away Google's Adsense customers.

And please stop being a grammar nazi that was old on Usenet in 1995.

It's hard to take someone seriously when they don't type properly and then do the internet equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears going la la la when you reply.

Re:Not the issue

[thegarbz]

And that relates to the point that Google has a monopoly on internet advertising how?

Who can claim the title of being "stupid" is quite clear.

No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[Colin Smith]

The current generation of phones are just about powerful enough to replace the desktop. The next generation will do it. Think a couple of years for market penetration.

Your desktop will be at most a docking station to connect larger displays, better I/O and peripherals to your phone. Why do you think Microsoft paid Nokia to use their mobile OS? Because they know the desktop is irrelevant and they have to get into the phone market as their core income dwindles.

As I pointed out though due to their executive's egos it's certainly too little too late and they are going to be the third placed, or smaller player.

Re:No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[Garybaldy]

people keep saying that. I can only assume that those that say that use computers for nothing more than browsing the web checking email And creating the occasional document. There is no point in explaining the reasons some users would want a more powerful machine. Because those reasons don't exist in their minds.

Re:No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is no point in explaining the reasons some users would want a more powerful machine. Because those reasons don't exist in their minds."

The point is that smartphones ARE becoming powerful enough to do what 99% of people want them to. Sure, you're right, that 1% of others will always exist, but they will be a tiny niche, and will need to pay a lot more for being in that niche, just as happens in other areas. But for the needs of the vast majority of users, smartphones of one or two generations from now will fill every computing need they have. In fact, we're getting close to that point now. I know people who have simply not bothered to buy another desktop PC when their last one died. The combination of a smartphone and an iPad meet all their needs.

Re:No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha, I'll still have my desktop in some from 10 years from now you try working on a phone all day long.

Re:No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[Runaway1956]

When a phone comes equipped with a quad core Opteron, and the graphics to drive any game that runs on Windows at hundreds of FPS, then I'll be interested. Call me a pessimist, but I don't see any phone rivaling the desktop for raw power in the next 10 years.

Go ahead, surprise me. Get someone to produce a smart phone for a thousand dollars or less that can outperform my desktop in all respects, and I'll buy one.

Re:No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[LynnwoodRooster]

I can design a desktop computer on my desktop computer - it runs CAD, FEA, compilers and the like. Does my phone have the horsepower and ability and user interface (like an efficient keyboard and input device) to allow me to design a phone on it?

Re:No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[Belial6]

There is also the fact that if the phone could do that, there is no reason that Windows couldn't run on it. Even if that meant MS had to port it to another processor. If a phone could replace a desktop and sat on the desk with a monitor and keyboard, it would be a desktop. Just as if my desktop were shrunk down, a battery put in it, it had a touch interface and cellular modem, it would be a smart phone. The difference between a smartphone and a Desktop PC is a line drawn in shade a of gray. Much like a TV and monitor, there comes a point that distinguishing between them is pointless.

I doubt that cell phones will replace desktops. I suspect that they will converge. The only question will be whether the dominant players will come from the traditional phone maker side, the traditional PC side, or if it will be a mix of the two.

Re:No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[cynyr]

right, I'll poiint you to 99% of industral parts vendors that do not have selection software for my phone (HTC blahblahblah running CM7). Also have you ever tried to do anything in cad on a 4 inch screen? heck my 23" 1900x1050 dual screens at work are too small.

I'll give you that generally for home use that the phone + tablet will work, but good luck if you want to create and maintain a list of addresses and print them out on envelopes every Christmas (my grandmother is doing that). Want to edit that video you shot and burn it to dvd to send out with the christmas card? yep desktop again.

Hulu on your TV? Rip a CD/DVD? store more than 10GB of music/vidoes? Better have a computer.

Anyways, I expect to see a rise of low powered home servers, with optical drives in them as more people start dumping traditional computers... I should get into that market, but I bet the margins are very low.

Re:No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[Rockoon]

The point is that smartphones ARE becoming powerful enough to do what 99% of people want them to.

Smartphones can do 99% of the things that people want smartphones to do!! oh.. wait.... yeah... fuck...

Tell us Mr Smart Guy, how much of the shit that people want desktops to do will a smartphone be able to also do in the next generation?

Re:No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[anonymov]

... Or just stick your portable device in a Thunderbolt-based dock station with powerful GPU on board connected to 23" monitor and an HDD.

Then you'll just need to solve the problem with people walking out with confidential information, overpricing (a desktop with computing power on par with $600 phone costs about $200-300 now) and, overarching these two, people accidentally dropping their phones.

Re:No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me weird, but I don't want to be holding something equipped with a quad core and a high end graphics card capable of rendering my 3D models and scenes in a reasonable time that close to my head. Nor do I really want to be lugging all of my data with me at all times.

The whole premise of it is just weird. So the phone becomes the desktop when you put it into the dock, which has better IO, more storage, more memory, possibly a discrete graphics card, an external screen, keyboard, pointer, etc. In short your dock contains everything a desktop would except the CPU and OS. What's the point? How's this all that much different that just plugging your existing phone into your existing desktop and synching data back and forth.

The same people saying this about smartphone said this about netbooks when those were the flavour of the day. And it's not even because the concept makes sense or offers any benefit, it's all because it's a means to push Linux to the masses. The fawning over netbooks on docking stations stopped when Microsoft conquered that market, and this phone nonesense about how mobile phones and tablets will kill the desktop only started when Android got a foothold in those markets.

The only honest, sane thing to come out of these people is the admitting without admitting that Linux on the desktop is a lost cause (but it's strong on phones, so fuck the desktop, we'll use our phones for that, and you should too!) Come to think of it, I'm fairly certain the whole obsession with thin clients, which everyone knows has been a solution looking for a problem for the past 20plus years, was purely because Linux is strong on servers, and beyond that that whole delusional obsession with how webapps are going to kill desktop applications despite it just not being feasible to fully offer what a native app can, but who cares, Linux is strong on servers, this will push Linux to the masses!

Think about it for a minute or two, suddenly all those ZOMG MS SHILL!!!!1111eleven types start looking kinda like shills, themselves.

Re:No, the desktop is irrelevant basically now

[CastrTroy]

Not only that, but those fancy dual core phones you can buy cost $500. I can get a quad core laptop with 4 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive for that much. And it comes with a nice big screen and keyboard. And the phone doesn't come anywhere close to having as much processing power as a even the week laptop. If you buy a desktop, you can get even better specs for the same price. Sure you can get a phone cheap when you sign your life away to you wireless carrier, but most people I know don't want to put that kind of money into a phone. They'd rather spend $200 on a phone, and get a real computer that can actually handle running real applications

Monopoly Abuse

[Habberhead]

I thought McDonald's was the one abusing customers with that game...

Now Google ha a version too?!?

I'd fire them then

[Colin Smith]

They forgot to change the thread title and are now simply strengthening search weightings between the words "Microsoft" and "has-been".
 

Re:Microsoft is copying Google, are copying Facebo

[Raenex]

As I said. Microsoft is a has-been.

And it was already demonstrated that they are not. You are predicting that they will be, but until it happens it's just a prediction.

Google will be a has-been shortly.

More worthless predictions.

more gov't intervention

[roman_mir]

More gov't intervention. Sure, Google is a large company, but it's not a monopolist in search.

Besides, it's up to the market to decide whether a company grows or not, whether it's profitable or not. Clearly the market likes Google and the company shouldn't be punished by government, because it's clear that gov't is always wrong in every case of business meddling.

Some people think this is not about corruption? Of-course this is all about corruption, it's all about special interests using gov't to promote their interests. At least Switzerland is doing the right thing with not bothering people about their downloading of whatever.

Switzerland is the sanest country in Europe.

google is getting too invasive

[FudRucker]

i would like to see google taken down a notch, without warning and without asking me what i wanted to do about my email situatyion my ISP transferred my email account to google's gmail, i will be canceling my account with my ISP soon ( i am angry at both my ISP and google)

What harm has google caused you?

[walterbyrd]

Please be specific.

Also, why even use Google? Certainly nobody forced you?

Re:What harm has google caused you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me see if I can help you there with some bullet points and short sentences, since I actually bothered to read the guy's comment.

Why is he angry? His ISP killed their own mail service to use Google Mail. Google is known to datamine mail, so anyone switching to Google is going to have his or her mail read by a third party, and in this case one with whom the customer of the ISP did not choose to enter into a relationship. He's angry at his ISP for outsourcing e-mail to a third party that will read his e-mail, and at Google for reading his e-mail (even though he never elected to use their services).

Why even use Google? He didn't want to use Google; he feared their invasiveness and didn't want them datamining his e-mail. His ISP made that choice for him. He's taking the appropriate action: dumping his ISP.

What harm as Google caused him? Google has by now mined his e-mails for data. His private conversations have been added to Google's eavesdropping stash. His privacy has been invaded, and he never even asked for a Google account. So, unless you believe that "harm" must only be financial in nature (the old Roman law "he harmed my slave" kind of damnum), Google has harmed him by invading his privacy without his consent.

What harm has his ISP caused him? The ISP should probably bear more responsibility for this: they sold out a customer to whom they owned a responsibility of faith and trust. In this climate, that's especially reprehensible: the most important step to rebuilding the economy at this point is reestablishing a badly shaken faith in the rewards-based system of capitalism by building trust between customers and merchants. The ISP is paying the price for their breach of faith, since the customer is jumping ship: the merchant is being punished for failing to maintain the customer's trust, and that is exactly what needs to happen.

That's also what needs to happen to Google. Until Google starts requiring software to encrypt e-mail client-side so that they can't datamine it server-side, ISPs should refuse to outsource to them, corporate customers should avoid them like a plague, and no one should pay them for services. Their free customers don't have nearly as much voice in this, but ISP's and corporate accounts should speak up by withdrawing from their relationships with Google until Google actively takes steps to earn trust. If that's not a proposition that Google can handle financially, and if they can't handle providing services without reading your mail, then you'll see exactly what Gmail means to Google.

A off-the-cuff example.

[Anonymous Coward]

I read your post, and thought who?

So I highlighted Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and since I'm using Firefox, right click and choose 'Search Google for "Dietrich Bonhoeffer"' from the context menu.

I don't think I need to RTFA to understand the concept..

Re:A off-the-cuff example.

[Anonymous Coward]

"What is worse than doing evil is being evil." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Makes no sense, to me

[walterbyrd]

Google is not the only company providing a search engine, and Google cannot vendor-lock anybody. What is the problem?

Also, how come Microsoft has been allowed to get away with brazen monopolistic abuse, 100 times worse than anything Google could possibly do, for decades?

For example, Microsoft was caught, red handed, bribing officials during the OOXML scam; but that's okay?

Re:Makes no sense, to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is not the only company providing a search engine, and Google cannot vendor-lock anybody.

Remember, you are the product. The people buying addspace are the customers.

Re:Makes no sense, to me

[dunkelfalke]

Microsoft was actually fined by the EU a few times.

Just another Microsoft scam

[walterbyrd]

Nothing to see here. Move along.

The probe was prompted by complaints from several rivals including Foundem, eJustice, and Microsoft-owned Ciao, which claimed that Google had unfairly manipulated search results by lowering the rankings of competing services and elevating its own offerings in unpaid results.

Re:Just another Microsoft scam

[sonicmerlin]

This is pretty much it. MS's been doing the same thing in the US, which is partly why Google started to lobby Congress only in 2005/2006.

Just an excuse to raise more $$$ for these beggers

[Anonymous Coward]

These 'violations' are just excuses made by governments around the world to get more money. It's 'legal' extortion and is typical of Socialists everywhere, even here in the U.S. Heck, look at comrade Obama's administration and, oh wait, I see that you're eyes have closed and you have expired. A death tax on you, you pud.

The American Dominance or the European Divisions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple and others: Internet-services-wise (and not only, think of Hollywood and TV productions) the "decadent" US "dominates" Europe.

The saddest part is that Europe may greedily react with as many fines as it wants, but it remains continuously unable to propose and then build functional and successful alternatives (without taking decades to do it).

However there is much geniality in the EU as in the rest of the world, even without mentioning the current crisis: venture capitalism doesn't exits, culture differences and mistrust still form a great barrier. And then social issues (a combination of different legal systems, taxation, red tape) and incapability to decide and actually do together in many countries frustrate positive attempts to go beyond the niches. That's a fact.

Foundem vs Google: a case study in SEO fail

[walterbyrd]

Good article here:

I read the article on the tube, so wasn’t immediately able to check the website in question, but normally when firms blame Google for their problems it is related entirely to their web strategy (or lack of it), as opposed to some outlandish flaw with Google's algorithm. As such I reckoned there would be a problem with the Foundem website, and probably relating to unique content, technology, and a lack of quality links.

It turns out that there are problems in all of these areas...

European publishers

[khipu]

This is largely based on the misgivings of European publishers and European IT companies who missed the boat entirely. For years, they have enjoyed near-monopolies themselves, often aided by subsidies and government-imposed fees and price fixing. Now Google has been eating their lunch with cheaper offerings on books, music, video, news, and they are recognizing that they are becoming irrelevant.

This is only one of many attacks they have attempted; they are throwing out shit left and right and see what sticks. A few years ago, they conned the French and German governments into wasting hundreds of millions of Euros on a "Google killer". They have tried pushing legislation that would give European news publishers copyright over the facts contained in news stories. They have tried to set up complicated rules that make digital publishing costly and cumbersome. They have ensured that they get their cut even for books and content they didn't create. They created an anti-Streetview hysteria. Etc.

If they succeed, the people who will suffer will be the Europeans themselves, who will continue to be subject to price fixing and control of their culture and media by a few European media outlets.

Re:European publishers

[sonicmerlin]

True. In fact this is a great deal like the RIAA passing "anti-piracy" three-strikes laws in European countries. Lobbying politicians to use the law against their competition.

Re:European publishers

[khipu]

Yes, indeed. Just keep in mind that a lot of the RIAA agenda is also driven by European music publishers. I'm not saying that to point fingers, but I think that if we want liberalization of copyright laws worldwide, there needs to be a lot more political activity against this kind of stuff in Europe.

WTF? Those are all legit business practises

[walterbyrd]

OMFG!!! Those bastards!! They are using legitimate business practises to compete fairly, and they are winning over European companies that offer an inferior service!!

From the article "Foundem vs Google: a case study in SEO fail"

I read the article on the tube, so wasn’t immediately able to check the website in question, but normally when firms blame Google for their problems it is related entirely to their web strategy (or lack of it), as opposed to some outlandish flaw with Google's algorithm. As such I reckoned there would be a problem with the Foundem website, and probably relating to unique content, technology, and a lack of quality links.

It turns out that there are problems in all of these areas...

http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/4456-foundem-vs-google-a-case-study-in-seo-fail

In any case, this clearly just another Microsoft scam. From the article:

The probe was prompted by complaints from several rivals including Foundem, eJustice, and Microsoft-owned Ciao, which claimed that Google had unfairly manipulated search results by lowering the rankings of competing services and elevating its own offerings in unpaid results.

Typical, MS using "Tonya Harding" tactics to break the knee-caps of MS competitors.

Anyway, why should Google have to promote Google competitors? NBC does not have to promote CBS.

Seems to me that Google has simply beat the competition, Google should be rewarded, not punished. But, I guess that would be capitalism, and not socialism.

Re:Microsoft is copying Google, are copying Facebo

[Stalks]

Stop defending such a stupid statement.

What a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

The IE search engine preference list has about 16 providers in it. If anything, the DOJ and EU should be investigating Microsoft for patent abuse in the Android extortion debacle.

Whats Europe?

[Phizzle]

I tried Googling it and all I got was :

Your search - Europe - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Try fewer keywords.

Re:Whats Europe?

[roguegramma]

It works fine here.
Are you sure you didn't put a minus sign in front?
I guess europe is on the forbidden word list in your country then..

You are a google shill & full of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you have CHOSEN to go to the Google webspace then yes, you will see the whole Google portfolio; nothing wrong with that, you would not expect to see Macy's products advertised on Sears would you?

Just like people CHOOSE to buy windows machines instead of Mac or Linux desktops? Ofcource thats why Windows rocks. Right? You wouldn't expect Microsoft to bundle Firefox instead of IE right? Ooops.. except thats what the EU wanted. They forced them to promote other browsers in various ways.

. If you install windows and select the default/first option everywhere you end up with bing/MS on everything. and yet: PEOPLE ACTIVELY CHOOSE GOOGLE.

Oh really? You mean how Google pays money to Dell to make google.com the default search engine?

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1032_3-6077051.html

How they pay Mozilla to make Google.com the default search engine? It just goes on and on. If everyone was going to use google anyway.. why waste money? LOL You are a fucking google shill. I hope they pay you well.

Oh my god Europe...

[tbird81]

Stop it... Stop it...

You're a non-elected "government" full of overpaid ex- and failed politicians, and you're still trying to scam more money while Europe burns. Stop with the heavy intervention, you make me sick! Hopefully this EU thing is not going to last - Europe doesn't need dictators.

How is this possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it that a much more abusive monopolist (like MICROSOFT!!! bastards) get a buy and Google gets the shaft? Clearly the mickeysoft people are not against buying votes, and Google hasn't done that. If Google has to pay 10%, then (MICROSOFT!!!, bastards) should have to pay 50%. This is bullshit!

Re:How is this possible?

[shutdown -p now]

Microsoft was actually repeatedly fined by EU for non-compliance with the ruling on the whole browser affair, for a total of something around 2 billion euro. The end result of this case is the browser selection screen that every user sees when they log in for the first time (provided that they are in EU).

Re:Microsoft is copying Google, are copying Facebo

[justforgetme]

I can recall people calling the Internet the tele{something} bubble of the 90s
-memory doesn't serve well since I was quite young back then-
social is an aspect of the human condition therefore it's digitized and networked
counterpart will always be an aspect of the Internet whether it will be centralized
or not. Facebook is not a bubble because it isn't inflated right now. its assets and
production aren't publicly traded, money tanks cannot (proportionately) moderate
it's perceived value.

Re:Microsoft is copying Google, are copying Facebo

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kind of stupid, aren't you?