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

[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]

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

[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.

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.

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: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: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: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

[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

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: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.

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?

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: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: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.