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EU Offers Google Chance To Settle Prior To Anti-Trust Enquiry
Fluffeh writes "The EU has accused Google of abusing its dominant position in advertising to benefit its own advertising services at the expense of competitors. In a twist however, rather than initiating formal proceedings, the EU has given Google a chance to settle the whole matter without much fuss. They outlined four changes that Google can make that will put it firmly back in the good graces of the EU. Google has been given 'a matter of weeks' to propose remedies to the four issues — which all tie in with how search results are displayed, their format and their portability to other platforms. This matter has come before the EU based on complaints by a few small companies and Microsoft."
The four issues: Displaying results to their own services specially, use of user reviews from other sites in search results, Advertising "...agreements result in de facto exclusivity requiring them to obtain all or most of their requirements of search advertisements from Google," and concerns that Google is imposing "...contractual restrictions on software developers which prevent them from offering tools that allow the seamless transfer of search advertising campaigns across AdWords and other platforms..."
That said, "slight" might be worth millions to Google / its competitors, especially as smaller firms have complained as well as Microsoft.
There is no need to block Google. We can just keep fining them until they comply. If they refuse to pay the fines or comply, we will close their offices and order banks to stop money transfer to Google. As EU is huge revenue source to Google (unlike China where they were losing), Google will comply in seconds if that happens.
I can easily be described as a google fanboy - I have (and love) my Android Phone (a Galaxy Nexus, in fact). I signed up to Gmail back when it was invite-only and people only had about 6 invites to give out (or sell/trade, as was the case back then) and I even use Google+. However, I completely agree with what the above poster is saying. Fanboyism aside, no company should be able to abuse its position in the marketplace. Even if Google isn't entirely guilty or found to not be doing anything deliberately that harms competition, its still absolutely appropriate that they're investigated and regulated accordingly.
The same should apply to any and all businesses with a large hold on the market, be they software companies, banks, pharmaceuticals, governments and so on.
I like Google on the whole and I genuinely believe that the founders were genuine in their model of "Do no Evil", but its a huge company now with a lot of power - I find it hard to believe that every single employee, every manager, every executive is entirely altruistic and doing what's best for everyone rather than what's just best for them/Google.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
First, the EU begins their second assertion by not being sure. Are they serious? Emphasis is mine:
Our second concern relates to the way Google copies content from competing vertical search services and uses it in its own offerings. Google may be copying original material from the websites of its competitors such as user reviews and using that material on its own sites without their prior authorisation.
Then they base their next point on this unsubstantiated assertion...again, bold is mine.
In this way they are appropriating the benefits of the investments of competitors.
To make matters worse, they conflate the two issues to emphasize another point, this time focusing on the possibility. Again, emphasis mine.
We are worried that this could reduce competitors' incentives to invest in the creation of original content for the benefit of internet users. This practice may impact for instance travel sites or sites providing restaurant guides...
Here is the question:
Was any investigation done? Doesn't sound like it!
Google is intentionally abusing their position to promote their own products and hide competitors. Yes, this thing matters.
LMFTFY:
Google is intentionally abusing their position to improve the overall user experience. Yes, this thing matters.
There, that's better.
When I do a search from JFK to LAX, guess what - it is NICE that Google immediately knows that I am interested in a flight and shows me prices. It is NICE that they will show me a map and photos of my destination. It reduces the number of clicks and get gets me what I want faster. The same can be said for all of Google's optimized in-line services. Furthermore, I have never in my life ever heard of evidence showing that Google actually hides the result of a competitor... do you have any evidence to back that up (that is not already refuted)?
Google is very upfront about everything they do, and there are ample other search engines you can use as a user, and that people can advertise on as well.
Another case in point is the exclusivity agreement in AdWords. If you want to use AdWords (and you often have to because it's the prominent player and they also own Doubleclick since long time ago), you cannot run your ads on competitors services. It is prohibited in the terms. That is just monopoly abuse.
Mind providing a link to this point? I work at Google, more on the client side-- and have never heard this issue come up, which I find rather odd given that a lot my clients certainly do it. Not saying you're wrong, but I find it hard to believe.
Are you kidding? They kicked Microsoft's ass and fined them almost 1.5 billion dollars -- even for Microsoft that's big. Since then they have this browser ballot screen and special Europe-only versions of Windows etc..
To Google, so far, they have written a letter.
There's no link because the point is bogus. https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/adwords/select/TCUSbilling.html
The forest for the trees is that a: microsoft does this and b: they're the ones leading this campaign against google and encouraged others to campaign against google. But nice try.
changing search engines is exactly true, and you *can* do that. However, scraping data from "competitors" (which they aren't) - scraping data from sites with good data to aggregate their reviews is not an abuse of position. It's aggregation of information. Taking yelp reviews for google maps reviews is an agreement google had with yelp. That's not discrimination, that's a strawman to call that "competition" or abusing competition.
The adwords thing is something stupid, but it's not any different than Microsoft getting entire corporations to sign up for using windows and requiring that they do not support any other OS (yes, this is in every company wide subscription based windows 7 deployment/office365 agreement).
Nice try to mislead the entire issue, step by step, along with a similar reply. from Neokushan. Can we stop with the obvious shills to just make this sound like it's a real problem? the "I love (thing), but (comments of hate for a product)" is a really old shill technique and we're bored of it. It's like "I'm an MSCE and love windows and do windows deployments all day, but microsoft is evil". We're tired of that kind of shit.
If you had linked to a real article covering the matter you'd see that the EU is just telling google to comply before they look to press charges.
I have a feeling that if it was a French or Danish firm, we wouldn't see half this amount of noise from the EU throne.
This old caveat again, the fact still remains that the biggest fine EU has handed out so far was against an European company(Siemens I think)
And well if I remember correctly Google is incorporated in Ireland(because of the low corporate tax) so I guess technically Google is an European company...
Considering the sort of actual real privacy rubbish that say Facebook, or Apple engage in, I'm perplexed why they don't hit the headlines as much.
I don't know that Apple or Facebook is considered large enough in a specific market to be covered by the antitrust legislation, that is possibly why. But the European Council is preparing legislation that forbids Facebook to sharing user information with advertisers etc, without the users express permission. The Council is apparently also investigating whether Facebook's facial recognition system is contradictory to EU privacy legislation.
Personally I think it's good that there is at least one Governmental organization that doesn't instantly roll over whenever big corps complain.
Another case in point is the exclusivity agreement in AdWords. If you want to use AdWords (and you often have to because it's the prominent player and they also own Doubleclick since long time ago), you cannot run your ads on competitors services. It is prohibited in the terms. That is just monopoly abuse.
There is no such clause in the AdWords terms of service or in the guidelines. You can check it yourself:
https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder
http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/static.py?hl=en&guide=1316546&page=guide.cs&rd=2
I've been advertising on AdWords for 10 years.. I have never seen such a policy, or heard of such a policy with regards to AdWords.
AdSense does have that policy. IE: if you place google ads on your website, you cannot place bing ads on your website also.
ADSENSE != ADWORDS.
Completely false.
The EU has initiated anti-trust action against just as many European companies as foreign companies. Look at the mobile phone market for example, European companies like Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile etc. have been under a constant barrage of regulation from the EU for years over roaming fees etc.
Also your first example doesn't even make any sense whatsoever, AMD isn't even a European company, it's American.
Part the reason for Europe being quite good in this respect is because it is not one country, there's a lot of inter-country rivalry in the EU itself - you can guarantee a British judge wont rule in a French company's favour against a US company for example because of some feeling he must protect a European company because the Brits generally love the French about as much as they love the Germans - i.e. not very much. Similarly you'll get the same sentiment to various other countries in Europe, from their own neighbours. There just isn't some feeling of a European superstate that must trounce outsiders at all costs. Successive British and Czech governments for example have aligned far more closely with Washington than they have Brussels. There just isn't some grand European patriotism for your theory to work out.
The fact you've no idea whatsoever about the topic you're conversing about doesn't make you right, it just makes you a tit. Please, do Slashdot a favour, don't jump into conversations you don't have the foggiest about and assert that you're right and no other suggestion could possibly have any validity.
The biggest irony of it all is that the only reason you're complaining about it is because you yourself feel it's your patriotic American duty to stand up for American companies.
If only you knew which companies were actually American. That would be a start.