Google Accused of Interfering With South Korean FTC Investigation

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Google Accused of Interfering With South Korean FTC Investigation

Posted by Unknown on Monday January 9, 2012 @05:10AM from the only-do-evil-occasionally dept.

New submitter DCTech writes "South Korea's Fair Trade Commission is accusing Google of methodically interfering with an anti-competition investigation into Android. 'Google deleted files and made its employees work from home in an attempt to frustrate the investigation, alleges the commission in an interview with a South Korean newspaper [machine translation]. The non-cooperation allegedly came after Google's Seoul office was raided by the commission's officials in September. The anti-competition probers were looking into whether Google's Android phones unfairly prioritize Google search and are "systematically designed" to make it difficult to switch to another option'. Now the South Korean watchdog is considering maximum fines for Google's non-compliance. Google is currently under investigation for similar anti-competition issues in Europe and the U.S."

18 of 186 comments (clear)

"If this was Microsoft" by bonch · 2012-01-09 05:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

The responses to these stories are always interesting. Because it's Google, there will be criticisms of the South Korean commission and questioning of their claims. If this was Microsoft, however, the accusations would be taken at face value as more proof of Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior. Google is being investigated all over the world for anti-competitive behavior, but you can't even suggest that Google has a monopoly on web search around here without getting pounded with downmods. Even the lead counsel who prosecuted Microsoft in their antitrust case believes Google is a monopoly.
It seems as if some people just can't believe that Google would ever do anything wrong. This isn't the cute little search engine from 2000. They went public and became an ad company; 97% of their revenue comes from web advertising. But I think they're really good at appealing to tech communities, using feel-good phrases like "openness" to make themselves more endearing to those demographics.
1. Re:"If this was Microsoft" by lorenlal · 2012-01-09 05:22 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  1) It took a long time for Microsoft to run through its goodwill and become the monster it is today. We all hated IBM back in the day... Perception changes slowly.
  2) Now that Google has a "monopoly," they're still trying to add products to the marketplace. They're still trying to make their existing products, services, and everything they do better. Compare that to Microsoft and IE6, which set us back at least 4 years in the web space. Name me 1 (as in a single) feature Microsoft introduced to comply with standards or make our lives any better between Netscape dying and Firefox showing up.
  3) Google doesn't have a slimy history of creating contracts with PC makers excluding the bundling of products that aren't made by Google. Microsoft leveraged their market position in search to hold PC makers hostage, and kill products that competed with Office. Show me a case where Google did any of that, and I'll eat my words.
2. Re:"If this was Microsoft" by merchant_x · 2012-01-09 05:24 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Even Google admits that they are probably in monopoly territory. Monopolies are not illegal though. Abusing your monopoly position to inhibit competition is illegal.
  If you don't want to get down-modded perhaps you should point out areas where you think they have abused their monopoly position rather than just say "see, Google is a monopoly!"
  Microsoft are convicted monopolists and there are numerous examples of the anti-competitive behavior. Point to Google's ant-competitive behaviors then perhaps there can be a discussion.
3. Re:"If this was Microsoft" by DCTech · 2012-01-09 05:30 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  3) Google doesn't have a slimy history of creating contracts with PC makers excluding the bundling of products that aren't made by Google. Microsoft leveraged their market position in search to hold PC makers hostage, and kill products that competed with Office. Show me a case where Google did any of that, and I'll eat my words.
  That's what the whole story is about. There's also another such thing, and it's why EU is investigating Google for monopoly abuse. Most slashdotters stupidly think it's because of their search engine and users, but it's not, because you're not Google's customers. EU is investigating Google for disallowing advertisers to run same ads on competing ad networks. Since Google maintains such a huge market share in online advertising, that is outright monopoly abuse. Google is directly leveraging it's market position to kill competing ad networks.
  
  Interestingly, recently Google changed their "Ads by Google" advertisements on websites to AdChoices. This is the very exact "soft" approach Google takes. Use cute and soft names and marketing. Hey, it's AdChoices, so there's clearly choices for advertisers! On top of that they wanted to change it from "Ads by Google" because all those advertisements were hurting Google's image. Not to worry - Just change it to different name and now people don't directly associate with the clean Google anymore!
4. Re:"If this was Microsoft" by slack_justyb · 2012-01-09 05:31 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Actually it's pretty cut and dry here. I really don't see room for question. The main problem that South Korea has with Android is that magnifying glass in the top left corner. You tap it and it seems to only get its results from either local machine or Google.com. The first isn't the problem and neither is the second. What the problem seems to be is that there doesn't see a way to change where Internet results as received from.
  
  Now this wouldn't have been that big a fuss, if someone hadn't made such a big fuss about IE being so tightly integrated with Bing, which it really isn't but I digress; that's really a different conversation altogether. Anyway, so if we are going to slap Microsoft's hands for IE/Bing, then we need to slap the hands of Android/Google.
  
  Also the South Korean office of Google's has been pretty up in arms as of late. Now this one office could or could not be a representation of Google as a whole, again that's up for debate and not really what I came to comment on. However, it is clear that Google's South Korean office has been acting a bit mighty fishy and the one thing police don't like is when people start acting funny.
  
  However, I agree, I think Google should provide some options for changing up the search engine for the search button. It's not like I would ever change it, but it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside when I get options.
  
  Now I know what people would say about Google and Android tied together like they are, but we have to remember, tablet's and phone's are being held as the way casual computing is heading. Now a lot wasn't done until after the fact with Microsoft and ever since their antitrust case, I think people have been trigger happy to protect end-users. When in reality I think that the people who proclaim to be protecting end-users seem to understand computers less. Anyway, this shouldn't come as a surprise.
  
  I'd be surprised if South Korea actually did the same thing to say Apple! Apple usually argues that their stuff isn't a phone or a tablet or a computer. It's an Apple product and changing the options, search, or OS on an Apple product is like asking a microwave maker to provide a method for installing custom software on their microwave.
  
  Anyway, not trying to start a war here. Just wanted to say: 1. Not surprised, 2. S. Korean office is indeed acting fishy which tends to agitate police.
5. Re:"If this was Microsoft" by Smallpond · 2012-01-09 05:36 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  3) Google doesn't have a slimy history of creating contracts with PC makers excluding the bundling of products that aren't made by Google. .
  To catch up, google "skyhook lawsuit".
6. Re:"If this was Microsoft" by AlecC · 2012-01-09 05:46 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The government's monopoly on the use of force. Having competing private armies would definitely be a bad thing.
  Linus Torvald's monopoly on the name "Linux".
  The IETF's monopoly over Internet standards.
  
  --
  Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
7. Re:"If this was Microsoft" by oxdas · 2012-01-09 06:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I hate to reply to myself, but I am mistaken. After further consideration, I think this is about monopolies. This about South Korean search monopolies Naver and Daum losing marketshare because Google Android directs mobile searches through their portal. This is South Korean using the law to try and protect Naver. I wonder what Samsung thinks of Naver pushing around their partner?
8. Re:"If this was Microsoft" by ljw1004 · 2012-01-09 06:22 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  2) I don't know what timeline you want, since Firefox showed up in Feb 2004 well before the end of Netscape in 2008. But let's pick 1998 as your "Netscape" year, since that was when the source code of Netscape was abandoned.
  1999 -- Microsoft introduces "AJAX". It made our lives significantly better. (or at least, it was what turned the Internet from Web1.0 static pages into Web2.0 interactive pages).
9. Re:"If this was Microsoft" by Mr.+McGibby · 2012-01-09 07:31 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Actually it's pretty cut and dry here. I really don't see room for question. The main problem that South Korea has with Android is that magnifying glass in the top left corner. You tap it and it seems to only get its results from either local machine or Google.com. The first isn't the problem and neither is the second. What the problem seems to be is that there doesn't see a way to change where Internet results as received from.
  You're thinking about this backwards. That's not monopoly abuse because they don't have a monopoly in mobile operating systems. You have to be abusing a monopoly position to impact competition. They're not in the case you cited. How exactly are they using their monopoly in *search* to keep Android competition out? If you can't fill in the blanks of "Google is using their monopoly in ___ to keep the competition out of ___.", then you don't have a case.
  
  --
  Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
Corporate Corruption by na1led · 2012-01-09 05:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

It seems that every Big Company eventually turns evil at some point.

--
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Re:Really? by DCTech · 2012-01-09 05:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

It still blows my mind that anyone would want to use Bing anyway.
There's actually many slashdotters who suggest using them. Now, they suggest using DuckDuckGo, but as DDG uses Bing back-end the results are the same. Of course for Slashdotters if it's Microsoft it sucks, but if it's basically the same but they don't figure out it uses MS back-end, then it's superb. Go figure!
Systematically designed? by Chibi+Merrow · 2012-01-09 05:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

That's funny, until I rooted it, my Motorola Backflip would ONLY let me use one search... Bing.
What are these guys smoking?

--
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Android is Open... by jesseck · 2012-01-09 05:30 · Score: 4, Interesting

Since Android is open, the device manufacturers / Microsoft / South Korea / Anyone Else can modify it to not use Google for search results. At that point it may not be "Android Powered by Google", but that seems to be what South Korea wants. So, let device manufacturers modify Android, change the default search provider, and not include GApps. That way, every person who purchases a new phone gets to install a market, search for packages to do what they need, and the world will be happier since the monopoly has been crushed.
Of course this will never happen... South Korea isn't breaking up a "monopoly". They see a chance to extort money from another business, and use the "monopoly" threat to do so. They do this because the device manufacturers won't abandon Google's version of Android- it's exactly what 99% of their (the device manufacturers) customers want. Pre-installed apps, GMail, Facebook, and the Google Marketplace so they can easily find the latest app their friend told them about./P.
1. Re:Android is Open... by anonymov · 2012-01-09 07:04 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Google, by tying together search and access to the android store, is doing "bundling"
  Motorola Backflip is an Android device, uses Bing as default search and has Android Market. Your argument is invalid.
The proof is in the possibility by Saishuuheiki · 2012-01-09 05:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

"Google denies that its employees deleted documents or that it instructed them to work from home in order to impede the investigation."
Only evil corporations have their employees work from home...
And everyone knows the damning evidence wasn't there because they deleted it.
If there were real consequences this might matter
Re:Really? by Idbar · 2012-01-09 05:55 · Score: 4, Funny

And, since Bing uses Google's results, everyone uses google anyways. Go Figure! ;-)
Re:AJAX According to WIKI by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-09 08:03 · Score: 4, Informative

Also according to Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

The concept behind the XMLHttpRequest object was originally created by the developers of Outlook Web Access (by Microsoft) for Microsoft Exchange Server 2000.[4] An interface called IXMLHTTPRequest was developed and implemented into the second version of the MSXML library using this concept.[4][5] The second version of the MSXML library was shipped with Internet Explorer 5.0 in March 1999, allowing access, via ActiveX, to the IXMLHTTPRequest interface using the XMLHTTP wrapper of the MSXML library.[6]
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest