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French Court Calls Free Google Maps Unfair Competition
jfruh writes "A French court has ruled that Google is unfairly subsidizing its free mapping products, making for unfair competition with paid services. This might seem ridiculous, but keep in mind that Google started charging for use of its mapping API once the free version had come to dominate the market."
Still trolling, I see. A few quick notes:
* Google doesn't have a monopoly anywhere, even in search.
* Google Maps is not given away, it sports ads, and the API costs money to access
* You fail to mention Mapquest, or MS maps. Why just sue Google for its maps? Because it is the best one out there?
* Why should Bottin be kept alive? Why not Garmin?
In short, you're wrong on two fundamental counts: that this is anything but protectionism of the most basic nature, and that somehow Google Maps is both special, and not, in the world of online map services.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
As somebody working on the remote sensing/mapping/gis field for 10+ years. I tend to agree.
It's a long debate, but clearly the new concept of "paid api" it's confusing.
I perceived gmaps as a free tool in the beginning, but now, as they charge, it's no longer a tool, but a competitor.
Many hi definition data available "freely" on google maps/google earth, it's the result of a private customer paying for that data, and the by some weird agreement between the companies that run the satellites and google, the information ended up "FREE" on google maps.
A real life story:
I paid 250+K for 1 meter imagery (ikonos) for a project that was covered in google maps using old 30m imagery (90's landsat). Months later google has the 1m coverage i ordered and paid for, available for FREE to anyone else.
So i'm not only competing against google, but against people who no longer needs to order a quality work, since now it's there FREE.
Duh! That's certainly UNFAIR.
Still trolling, I see. A few quick notes:
* Google doesn't have a monopoly anywhere, even in search.
Google search most certainly is a monopoly. A legal monopoly does not require 100% market share. Companies have been deemed monopolies with under 50% share and Google is way higher then that - go google it if you don't believe me.
Now, having a monopoly is not illegal, but using your monopoly profits to corner other markets is illegal. This is exactly the same thing that MS was convicted of a decade ago. Google it. When MS was killing Netscape it took the authorities years to act and the trial also took forever to end - Google just hasn't been doing this long enough to end in court yet.
You are confused.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market
It became extremely popular, and is still FREE to use for anyone.
No, it's not. Not for DEVELOPERS, which is the entire point of this suit. The Maps API used to be free. Now that they have a dominant market position, it's not.
If you want a really free map source, try openstreetmap.org & some of the apps which use their maps. Still a work in progress, but much improved over even a year ago. If every geek on /. cleaned up their neighborhood map it would be better than the paid maps - I've certainly added features like weird one way streets and things around me which don't show up on commercial maps.
I'm don't know the specifics of French competition law, but if it's harmonised with EU competition law (like the UK is) then the point of law under which Google will have been caught out is on *abuse* of a dominant position. It's absolutely correct to say that having a large market share isn't illegal in its own right, but your behaviour once you're in a dominant position (for whatever reason) can be. Yes, this does mean that (for example) the same behaviour that you've been doing for years is perfectly legal one day and then anti-competitive the next through no fault of your own.
Using profits gained in one market to force out competition in another definitely is illegal under EU competition law (which, as said above, I'm applying by analogy, which may be incorrect). Using it to enter a market is fine - more undertakings in a given market should ultimately be pro-competitive, to the benefit of consumers - but continuing to cross-subsidise to force out competitors can very much be illegal.
It should also be noted that the test(s) used for establishing predatory pricing isn't set in stone as "below cost", but crudely speaking being very close to that point will create the rebuttable presumption of abuse of dominance.
What the hell are you talking about? What ads? There's no ads in Google maps that I'm aware of. I use Google Maps' API on my own little website on one page plus "geoxml" to show some data; there certainly aren't any ads shown. I'm only required to show the copyright notices at the bottom of the map, saying who has the copyright for the map data or images.
Google does use ads for their search engine product, and their Gmail product, but those are separate products and irrelevant to the maps API.