EU Antitrust Chief: Google "Diverting Traffic" & Will Be Forced To Change

Dupple writes "It looks like the EU is coming close to a decision regarding its investigation of Google. While saying he's 'still investigating,' the head of the European Union's antitrust regulatory body has said that he's convinced Google is 'diverting traffic' and that it will be forced to change its results. From the article: 'Despite the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's move earlier this month to let off Google with a slap on the wrist -- albeit, a change to its business practices, a move that financially wouldn't dent Google in the short term but something any company would seek to avoid -- the European Commission is looking to take a somewhat different approach: take its time, and then hit the company hard.'"

Comments

nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell do they mean by "diverting traffic", and why would it not be allowed?

What, exactly, does Google have a monopoly of, and how are they abusing monopoly power in any way?

TFA suggests they have a monopoly on "search" which is nonsensical, since there are many competitors and no barrier to entry, and they give the "product" away for free, so it would hard to claim any monopoly pricing power is even being used or existing.

A more sensible allegation would be that they have some kind of monopoly on advertising or user data collection, since that at least they charge for, except, that as far as I can tell, they don't have that either.

So, all in all, it looks like either a blatant cash grab by the EU, or a bullshit legal attack funded by the likes of Microsoft.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[hinchles]

I believe they mean stuff like putting "favoured" search results at the top in return for cash. Either their own or partner/advertiser sites

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

So exactly what every search engine has done since the dawn of time.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[rossdee]

And The EU has no authority over what google.com does, since its not based in the EU
They have some jurisdiction over the european subsidiaries like google.fr b ut don't most searches go through google.com anyway? Except for those people who want to use a foreign language, and a lot of eurpeans are fluent in english anyway.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Europeans are good Engrish speekers.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[sFurbo]

They do have authority over the Google offices in Europe.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

What the hell do they mean by "diverting traffic", and why would it not be allowed?

It looks like they're talking about doing stuff like including results from Google Maps in your web search results (whilst not doing the same for results from Bing Maps, etc.).

What, exactly, does Google have a monopoly of, and how are they abusing monopoly power in any way?

They are the dominant search engine, and the EU appears to be deciding that they are using that dominance to help gain dominance in other markets (e.g. the aforementioned maps, amoungst others).

TFA suggests they have a monopoly on "search" which is nonsensical, since there are many competitors

They are the dominant search engine. I think you are misunderstanding antitrust legislation:
- Antitrust legislation doesn't care whether or not you have competitors, it only cares whether you are the *dominant* vendor. As a well known example, Microsoft was found guilty of antitrust violations in their operating system business, but there have always been other operating system vendors. The key was that they were the *dominant* vendor.
- Antitrust legislation doesn't say there's anything wrong with being the dominant vendor (or even the only vendor). All it says is that if you are dominating the market, you're nor allowed to use that dominance to help you gain dominance in other markets. So going back to the Microsoft example, they were dominant OS vendors, and by shipping certain freebies with the OS (e.g. a web browser) they were unfairly using their existing position to gain dominance in the browser market. Netscape, on the other hand, could never have hoped to do this since they weren't shipping anything which already dominated the market, with which to bundle their browser to compete. The EU is saying Google is using their dominance in the search engine market to push their other products in a way that is unfair to their competition.

and no barrier to entry

There's always a barrier to entry - setting up a search engine is going to involve R&D and then a hell of a lot of time and bandwidth to spider the web. However, that isn't what this is about - this isn't about Google doing anything to stop people competing in the search engine business, this is about using their existing search engine position to make it harder for people to compete in other sectors.

and they give the "product" away for free, so it would hard to claim any monopoly pricing power is even being used or existing.

No one said anything about pricing. It isn't relevant to this discussion.

So, all in all, it looks like either a blatant cash grab by the EU, or a bullshit legal attack funded by the likes of Microsoft.

Or the EU is trying to level the playing field for the smaller businesses. Whilst having everything run by a single megacorp is convenient, historically it has always been better for the consumer in the long run to have many smaller businesses offering services. The EU usually takes the attitude that a bit of short term pain (inconveniencing people by preventing the "convenient" integration of services from a single vendor) is better than the long term pain of having a single megacorp in control of huge markets and no chance for a smaller business to survive.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[KingMotley]

Correct, and what makes you think the EU won't try and make a cash grab from every search engine including now defunct ones?

1. Declare normal business practices illegal.
2. ...
3. Profit!

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to see an explanation of how other search engines different from Google.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Rix]

But if they push too far, Google has the option to close them and nope itself outside of their jurisdiction. They'll still be able to sell and display ads to Europeans, safely on the other side of the internets.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[ashkante]

Exactly this. While I do agree that Google is perhaps not quite as bad as some others, current trends suggest they could end up there, or worse. Things like this might (at the very least) slow them down a little.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[sFurbo]

I think the EU could make it hard for Google to accept payment from European countries for ads shown in Europe. And if they really want to push it, forcing the EU ISPs to reroute DNS for google.com and youtube.com could be possible. But that runs the risk of enraging the population, depending on how much of a smear job against Google have been done before.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Dominant Market Position and Monopoly means different things. IF article use word "monopoly" then it is wrong.

Microsoft was accused from Monopoly but you need to know how.
Microsoft was newer accused from Monopoly on operating system market but from "Monopoly at intel based personal computer market" what was about PC only, not on all personal computers like macintosh and unix systems with a AMD cpu.

Microsoft was found quilty to have Monopoly on PC but not all personal computers are PCs so Microsoft couldnt show "there are others so we cant be a monopoly." because there were no others on PC market at all. Linux and others were at post install and not working on the market because every PC came with a MS Windows as PC compatibility demands it.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[jonbryce]

My searches go through google.co.uk. If I visit google.com, I get redirected to google.co.uk. I believe there is a way to override that, but it isn't straightforward.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the UK. If I try to use google.com the url is automatically rewritten to google.co,uk

The US has been asserting legal authority over any site that uses .com tld regardless where the site is hosted. By that logic the EU has legal authority over all sites that use EU tld's.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

> no barrier to entry, and they give the "product" away for free,

I think that you need to think about those two statements, and how they relate to one another.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[jonbryce]

Their product is selling advertising to European businesses, and it is very difficult for anyone else to sell advertising because of Google's monopoly.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, there is no such thing as billboards of tv commercials in Europe, because all advertising goes through Google's advertising monopoly.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA suggests they have a monopoly on "search" which is nonsensical, since there are many competitors and no barrier to entry

The same was true of Microsoft in the 90's. Has that ever stopped anyone on /. believing they had and abused a monopoly? Different matter when it's the company of which you're a fanboi, is it?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

No Country Redirect: www.google.com/ncr

Re:nonsensical allegations

[aaron552]

IIRC, the problem is that Google's own services appear to be favoured in search rankings over competitors. I would think that this is primarily be because they're significantly more popular than the competitors, though, and not due to any bias on the part of Google.

A search for "email" on Google returns Hotmail as the first result and "web browser" gives an ad for IE, the wikipedia page for "web browser", Opera, and Firefox before Chrome appears. There doesn't seem to be anything particularly shady on there based on my rather unscientific test.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[aaron552]

If it's to do with advertising, I guess it's because they use exclusively Google-owned advertising networks for on the pages for their own services. I honestly don't see the problem with this (doesn't Microsoft do the exact same thing with Bing?)

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

So exactly what every search engine has done since the dawn of time.

Doesn't mean that it is legal.
I don't think this would have been a problem if it would have been clear to the end user that the top results is payed for rather than being "most relevant" to their search.

What if I was running a "free" advertise funded dating service and claimed that all matches was made by an algorithm that matched peoples interests. Then I would run another service where people could pay to the matched with a person of their choice in the database. Those using the first service would assume that the match is done from interests and what I would be doing would be considered fraud.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[mumblestheclown]

the eu has made ruling after ruling that amount to little more than cash grabs from american companies. when it was the nonsensical browser bundling allegations against microsoft, most slashdotters "piled on" with their usual anti-MS bias even though the facts on the ground showed that the basic substance of the EU complaint was baseless - the browser landscape shifted because of market and technological pressures and the alleged "bundling" over which the EU was prepared to extract hundreds of millions in fines was a non-issue (and, because the world of law is slow and absurd, you still have lawyers collecting paychecks trying to justify that plainly nonsense old contention and to squeeze more money out of MS based on what anybody with eyes can now see were nonsense charges).

And now that google is the target? well, slashdotters are finally catching on that the EU's actions are basically dishonorable. sorry, but the EU has for whatever reason failed to produce major internet companies (sorry, but it's true) or the cmopanies that it has produced have been sold to US firms relatively early on. So, the EU adopts another tack - simply tax American companies' success with nonsense suits. As much as I like the EU as an entity in general, here they are so in the wrong.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

But then they have to start paying taxes.... And the tax break they get laundering their money through Ireland an the Netherlands is a lot bigger than a possible fine...

Re:nonsensical allegations

[clickclickdrone]

>And The EU has no authority over what google.com does, since its not based in the EU Alas that sort of thinking doesn't stop the US trying to do the same thing and enforce its laws all over the globe.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Genda]

I just did a search on just "Beer" and the first thing to show up was "Sam Adams", I'm guessing that right there would be enough to start a war with the German's and we all know as goes Germany so goes the EU...

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the filter bubble anyway. It shows Hotmail first for YOU. It actually shows Gmail first for me.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[LordLucless]

So? Even if they were, why is that a problem? A search engine exists for end users to find what they're looking for, not to give commercial entities some sort of equal platform for advertising. I ask a question, Google tells me what it thinks the best answer is. What does the EU want? The ability to vet Googles' search algorithms?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

that's fukcing stupid. if they act bad, then they should be punished when they do so. Punishing someone when they haven't did anything wrong yet is a retarded way of solving problems. It's like hitting your dog because you dog MIGHT steal some food from the table later

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell do they mean by "diverting traffic", and why would it not be allowed?

It looks like they're talking about doing stuff like including results from Google Maps in your web search results (whilst not doing the same for results from Bing Maps, etc.).

This puzzles me.

So, they're saying that when I use Google to search for a place, Google isn't allowed to respond with a map showing the place because there are competitors who also offer a map application.

At what point does a relevant way of returning a meaningful result become an anti-competitive product-boost? If a company that provides online maps can say Google is violating anti-trust rules by using their own map, how's that different from a company that makes money from referral links saying "Hey, Google's search results provide hyperlinks to the sites they find! WE supply links to websites, they should have to offer the option of supplying OUR links instead of using their own!"

Not trying to pick a fight here, I genuinely don't follow the argument that Google should have to use someone else's maps in returning their own search results.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Google trades internet advertising, were it does indeed have a huge majority, especially now that it owns doubleclick. The only alternative I remember seeing recently is porject wonderful, but that's hardly comparable.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

EU competition law doesn't work in terms of monopolies like its US equivalent, but rather dominant market positions. I.e., anyone with 50% or more of any given market is subject to regulation to ensure thst position does not give them an unfair advantage over competitors. This certainly does apply to google.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Per Abrahamsen]

They don't have a dominating market position. Same reason Microsoft are being punished for stuff Apple does routinely.

Different (stricter) rules apply once you achieve a dominating market position.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

safely on the other side of the internets.

Didn't work for Megaupload...

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you use gmail, if so that may be why.

I never log into Google on my computer, with my gmail account being purely for my android devices, and I block google's tracking as far as I can without using a VPN, my results in this order are Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and a Wikipedia article. If it is at all relevant (probably not because I don't let Google track me), I use Yahoo and my ISP for email and not Hotmail, so I don't think my results are biased by a filter bubble effect, but they could be biased by location, I'm in the UK.

So, that's two results with Hotmail first, and one with Gmail.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again I am pointing out a Troll that got moderated to +5 Insightful:

Poster said:

nonsensical allegations

Both the European Union and Google's own American Government said that they were breaking the law. I take it these super powers have lawyers, economists and stuff like that making arguments based on international law and trade agreements. NOWHERE, and I mean no where in your post do you point out what is a "nonsensical allegation". You don't cite any law, any United Nations charter, any trade agreement, you don't even cite a verse from the Bible (which I was half expecting from you).

Poster said:

What, exactly, does Google have a monopoly of, and how are they abusing monopoly power in any way?

You use the word "monopoly" throughout your post. In fact your entire post is based on YOUR claim that these unfair, greedy Europeans want to make money off of Google because it is a "monopoly". Unfortunately for people who are interested in the TRUTH, the source article by ZDnet does not mention anything about a monopoly or anti-monopoly legislation. So your whole argument is based on a lie and yet you get up-moderated to +5 (I'm hoping and expecting this will change as newer Moderators see through your Bullshit... as is often the case).

Just out of Interest the comments on ZDnet are highly biased against the EU as well. I get the feeling that most Americans feel that if some negative judgment is made against one of their Corporate status symbols, that this is somehow anti-American, and the result of people who are obviously more stupid than Americans. I will give examples:

The EC should shut up...
and follow the American leadership

and

... and Google should being immediately blocking all EU IP's from accessing their system.

and

Why is Almunia talking to the press like this ? Abuse of Power or did promises of a large amount of money loosen his lips?

and

The EU will use whatever tactics they believe will extract funds form internet companies. If they can't manage to tax them they will fine them to get the money.

  Oh yes, unfortunately I see the same type of people posting the same types of arguments on Slashdot as well. Too bad.

Unlike the parent poster (who got moderated to +5 Insightful!), I will supply you with a reference to my evidence:
http://www.zdnet.com/eu-antitrust-chief-hints-at-forced-changes-for-google-7000009665/

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Redirecting searches through Google instead of going directly to the page, appending user tracking information to the URL parameters for the redirect. Redirecting mobile phone traffic to Google formatted pages first, again instead of just going to the page.

Any questions?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[thegarbz]

In other news Microsoft Internet Explorer defaults to Bing for search, the cook book that Nestle offer is full of recipes which directly call out Nestle's chocolate bars, BP sells Castrol (part of the BP group) branded oil at their petrol station, and every other company in the world which is remotely competent at marketing will also promote their own products when offering a related service.

This is just normal business behavior. I'm surprised there's not a list of all Google services at the top of every search result, not just the related ones. I struggle to see how this can be subject to an anti-trust claim.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[edumacator]

I think it has more to do with Google's Map showing up in the sidebar when searching for a location or restaurant.

I just did a search for "breakfast" and Google Maps shows up beside the search results.

I still don't see that as favoring search results, but maybe I'm missing something.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Annirak]

It would seem to me, then, that the charge should be fraud, not antitrust.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[theVarangian]

So? Even if they were, why is that a problem? A search engine exists for end users to find what they're looking for, not to give commercial entities some sort of equal platform for advertising. I ask a question, Google tells me what it thinks the best answer is. What does the EU want? The ability to vet Googles' search algorithms?

What does the EU want? It wants Google, a company that has a monopoly on the search engine market, to stop abusing it's dominant positon which it is allegedly now using to try and kill off competitors by wilfully burying results that link to their (competing) services. I don't think the EU gives a rat's ass about what is in Google's blackbox as long as you can put in your search term and get output int the form of fair and balanced search results. I watched a documentary yesterday where an industry observer described Google as an 'adolescent' and postulated that we have not yet seen the real giant that Google will become. Now if somebody had taught Microsoft some manners back when it was still a teenager perhaps we would have been spared a whole lot of pain over the years. Microsoft was only taught a modicum of manners (by the EU) when it was far too late but perhaps we can avoid the mistakes we made with MS by teaching Google to behave before it is once again too late and the damage is done.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

This is ridiculous. You don't need to search Google to find their services: they are all listed at the top of the page. Perhaps, that European drone should indicate it more clearly that he uses his own head.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[thegarbz]

It looks like they're talking about doing stuff like including results from Google Maps in your web search results (whilst not doing the same for results from Bing Maps, etc.).

This is not an antitrust violation. It's normal business practice for every search engine.

I think you are misunderstanding antitrust legislation:
- Antitrust legislation doesn't care whether or not you have competitors, it only cares whether you are the *dominant* vendor. As a well known example, Microsoft was found guilty of antitrust violations in their operating system business, but there have always been other operating system vendors. The key was that they were the *dominant* vendor.

You're misusing the Microsoft example. Microsoft wasn't just the dominant vendor, they were actively engaged in anti-competitive practices. At the time they got slapped with antitrust fines you could not buy a computer without windows. It wasn't possible. Any computer you purchased from a store came with their system preinstalled. This is quite the opposite from someone firing up their computer and oh look Internet Explorer is the default browser and Bing is the default search engine and the end user is forced to make an informed choice.

The EU is actually unique in the way that its antitrust law is based on dominance. Most of the world requires actual corporate power (i.e. Monopoly, Duopoly, or Oligopoly) in a market before one can be guilty of being anti-competitive. Last I checked www.bing.com wasn't blocked from any common computer as a result of Google's doing.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you define "market" and "product"? Consider antivirus software. Why in hell should Microsoft be obliged to leave its OS unprotected, just to allow a bunch of other companies to cash in on that problem?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[LordLucless]

I don't think the EU gives a rat's ass about what is in Google's blackbox as long as you can put in your search term and get output int the form of fair and balanced search results.

What's a "fair and balanced" result? Wouldn't a search engine returning what it thinks is the best results be "fair and balanced"? Is there any evidence that any of these services being returned aren't what consumers are looking for? Is Google supposed to artificially promote a bunch of crappy map services so it can be seen not to favour its own? Wouldn't that just piss off consumers who are trying to find a good service?

It's bollox. Search stands or falls by it's results. If Google starts doctoring results, then people are going to stop trusting it. What the EU seems to be demanding is that Google doctor its results to fit the EUs opinions on what should be returned.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

yahoo is first for me (hotmail is 4th, behind gmail and wiki)

which is pretty scary. how the bloody hell does google know the only mail i've logged into on this pc (or from this ip for that matter) over the last month IS yahoo mail....

(and that's with adblock, noscript, refcontrol, etc.. cookies deleted on browser close.. not logging into anything google in months.......)

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

And The EU has no authority over what google.com does, since its not based in the EU They have some jurisdiction over the european subsidiaries like google.fr b ut don't most searches go through google.com anyway? Except for those people who want to use a foreign language, and a lot of eurpeans are fluent in english anyway.

Google has a presence in Europe, it has to do so for business resons. It also makes billons of dollars off of 550 million EU citizens. That gives the EU a whole lot of leaverage. Google can go to war with 27 nation states by telling them to go fuck them selves which would probably cost Google a whole pile of money, or Google can try to resolve the situation without it's profits taking a massive hit. Which do you think is more likely to happen?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[iserlohn]

I'm logged into Gmail and the search still shows Hotmail as the first result.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is location-based. For me, the top two results were the wiki page for Beer (the drink) and Beer (English village). And no, I am not using the UK version of Google either.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

It looks like they're talking about doing stuff like including results from Google Maps in your web search results (whilst not doing the same for results from Bing Maps, etc.).

This is not an antitrust violation. It's normal business practice for every search engine.

Firstly I'm not saying it is an antitrust violation (IANAL and don't have any particularly strong opinions either way anyway), I'm just explaining what the EU appears to be saying.

However, I'm not convinced that you can say its completely innocent behaviour either. A search engine is supposed to find the most relevant results for what a user is searching for. Google is intentionally adding in results relating only to their own services, even though similar services exist from other companies. Using the maps example, if I search for a business then I'll get:
1. that business's home page on the web
2. people talking about that business on the web
3. a link to google maps showing me where the business is
In the case of (3), Google has intentionally included a link to a relevant page on a separate service that they also own. They haven't provided a similar link to other map services, such as Bing, Openstreetmap, etc. Whether this is right or wrong is debatable, but it is clear that they are using their search engine to promote their own maps service over their competitors', and this search result appears amoungst all the normal results, not as a "paid advertisement" (which is what happens to all the other artificially promoted responses).

And yes, you can say that other search engines do the same, but the point is that other search engines aren't in the same dominant position and therefore antitrust legislation doesn't apply to them. This is the same as pointing at things Microsoft isn't allowed to do and saying "well Apple/Ubuntu/Fedora does them" - dominant companies have to play by different rules to everyone else in order to keep the playing field more level.

You're misusing the Microsoft example. Microsoft wasn't just the dominant vendor, they were actively engaged in anti-competitive practices. At the time they got slapped with antitrust fines you could not buy a computer without windows. It wasn't possible. Any computer you purchased from a store came with their system preinstalled.

This is untrue. You have *always* been able to buy computers without Windows. There have been several antitrust cases against Microsoft; the one you seem to be referring to was where MS were pressuring OEMs to only supply machines preinstalled with windows by offering them substantial discounts for doing so. There were ways the vendors used to get around this, and so you could still buy machines without Windows, but it was more difficult to do so than it should have been.

More recently, there was an antitrust case against Microsoft because they shipped IE with the OS by default, in a way that prevented the OEMs from removing it and replacing it with a competing browser. The EU decided that this was unfair since MS were using their dominant position in the OS market to push their browser in detriment to other browser vendors. This is very similar to what the EU is suggesting that google is doing - using their dominance in the search engine market to bundle other products at the detriment to their competitors.

This is quite the opposite from someone firing up their computer and oh look Internet Explorer is the default browser and Bing is the default search engine and the end user is forced to make an informed choice.

In your example, someone made a choice to buy a Windows machine and found that IE and Bing were bundled by defaults. So long as they stick with Windows, they have to go out of their way to use a different vendor's browser or search engine.

Similarly, someone made a choice to use Google and found that Google Maps, etc. were bundled into the search results by defau

Re:nonsensical allegations

[theVarangian]

What's a "fair and balanced" result? Wouldn't a search engine returning what it thinks is the best results be "fair and balanced"? Is there any evidence that any of these services being returned aren't what consumers are looking for? Is Google supposed to artificially promote a bunch of crappy map services so it can be seen not to favour its own? Wouldn't that just piss off consumers who are trying to find a good service

An unfair and unbalanced search result is one where Google is modifying search results to assure that it's services are hight on the results list but those of competirors are buried on page 8. If Google is doing that they are engaging in anti-competitive behaviour because they are conciously trying to drive comptetitors out of business like Microsoft did with Netscape.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Sponsored results are usually marked as being separate from the "real" results of the search query, at least in my experience. Google used to but changed that at some point so it's hard to tell the difference.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[LordLucless]

An unfair and unbalanced search result is one where Google is modifying search results to assure that it's services are hight on the results list but those of competirors are buried on page 8. If Google is doing that they are engaging in anti-competitive behaviour because they are conciously trying to drive comptetitors out of business like Microsoft did with Netscape.

So what you're saying is, if Google is just using an algorithmic search method, and it happens to select their own sites because they are popular in their own right and legitimate results, they're not doing anything wrong?

Is there any evidence of this not being the case? email, , maps, videos, calendar, search - all of these have competitors on the first page, and half of them have the non-Google service as the first result.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think this would have been a problem if it would have been clear to the end user that the top results is payed for rather than being "most relevant" to their search.

You mean if they'd put a different coloured background under the sponsored results and adding the text "Ads for [foo]"?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Google includes Google maps in their results to make their results as useful as possible. If the EU makes that a crime, I would hate to have to use whatever search engine that the EU thinks is ideal. Because my bet is that it wouldn't be very useful.

If Google makes their site less useful, they will lose market share fast. Perhaps that is the EU's goal? It's hard to imagine how that is good for consumers though.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[cdrnet]

Google.com has customers in the EU, so EU law applies as well. This is also true the other way around, and enforced by the US on a daily basis.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like they're talking about doing stuff like including results from Google Maps in your web search results (whilst not doing the same for results from Bing Maps, etc.).

Microsoft does the same thing with Bing Maps. They show a Bing Maps popup in Internet Explorer for addresses in web pages.
Microsoft is lobbying here because the clown Ballmer is so obsessed with destroying Google.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Blackajack]

I get yahoo as a first result also. The weird thing is that I don't think I've actually accessed any yahoo content from this device(maybe I've clicked on a link to a news story once or twice.. And I haven't used any of their services since whenever(several years). The location does not explain(Finland, yahoo's not a very big thing here..) Curious.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Nerdfest]

Google's own American Government said that they were breaking the law.

Actually, I don't believe they did. The FTC were looking into whether they were or not, apparently due to heavy lobbying from Microsoft. I was under the impression that Google voluntarily changed a couple of practices and the probe was dropped.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[ConfusedVorlon]

the argument is that google has a monopoly on search and they are using that to lock other people out of other online businesses. (or at least to unfairly disadvantage them)

Expedia are one of the companies that complained.

Imagine that every time you searched for a flight on google, all Expedia results were completely ignored, and Google simply showed at the top of the page in a big box, the results from their recently acquired travel company.

It's pretty clear that in this case, they'd be abusing their dominance in search to push their travel company.

The allegation is that to a lesser degree, they are doing exactly this with Maps, Shopping, Travel (possibly others). Not excluding competitor results, but giving their own results unfair prominence.

It seems like a reasonable complaint if true. The 'if' is important.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[VortexCortex]

The track you by timestamp and IP and OS, etc. Even if (especially if) you're not logged in, so of course it doesn't matter if you're signed in or not, the profile they have on you is the same.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

don't most searches go through google.com anyway?

Not from Germany and I'd guess not from a lot of other countries except the US either. Here, google.com redirects to google.de. (You can still get to google.com with a specific path but I doubt a lot of people go through the trouble - google.de finds english content just as well, I use it all the time.)

.com domains are rather unpopular in Germany and are generally not as well trusted as .de domains, especially if the site is trying to sell something (probably because there are a couple of requirements if you want to set up a shop on a .de domain) My employer owns several internet based services and all but one are marketed with their .de domains.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I'm the parent poster. Since there are vindictive Americans with moderator points I will point out some more fallacies of the pro-American gp. The more I get down-moderated for pointing out BULLSHIT, the more I will post evidence of ignorant Red Neck behavior. You cannot stop me: I am a super-hero of truth and fairness. Little understood and much maligned, I will defend against the tyranny of political correctness and the common sense of the status quo.

So I will point out something else that I missed. Since I got down-moderated for pointing out the GPs fallacies and prejudices, I figure I have nothing to lose by pointing out another stupid thing that the poster who got moderated to +4 for saying:

And The EU has no authority over what google.com does... Except for those people who want to use a foreign language, and a lot of eurpeans are fluent in english anyway.

I suppose I shouldn't have to point out why this statement is ignorant and prejudiced and just down right stupid. But I guess I have to:

I actually met people from Europe (and Asia, and Africa, India and Australia), this is because I live in a big cosmopolitan city, and not some small Bible Belt American town. Yes, in most places in the world, the upper classes do learn how to speak English, but if you have ever had to phone tech support (i.e. use a corporate call centre), you should be aware that learning a language in school and being comfortable enough to use it as your defacto language because some American says so, is not going to happen. Just like Americans will not generally want to learn Spanish, or the native languages of their country, so too most Europeans will prefer to converse in their own language. This isn't just a preference, this will be a pragmatic decision because they will be far more fluent in their native language. And for those Americans who did bother to learn a second language in high school, how many do you think will be fluent enough to actually use it on a daily basis when they visit Paris, or Montreal? It's a rhetorical question: speaking a second language in a foreign country is like a right-handed person trying to use his left hand for everything. So in other words: the gp stating that Europeans can just use English because he heard somewhere that Europeans use English is a VERY ignorant and prejudiced thing to say, isn't it? And it is also highly inappropriate for him to get moderated Insightful for saying this, isn't it? People, please tell me that you agree with me and that you are NOT going to down-moderate my thoughtful and long-winded analysis because I am against pro-American biases.

And lets be honest with ourselves. This statement is NOT Insightful:

And The EU has no authority over what google.com does, since its not based in the EU

Well actually, the EU does have authority of Google business practices that take place in the EU. If they didn't, then Google wouldn't give a shit about what the EU says, and there would be no story here.

So I don't really give a shit. Mark me as a troll. You will only make me angry. Remember the Incredible Hulk: when people made him angry he just got bigger and more aggressive. Remember when Darth Vader killed Obi-Wan Kenobi? It just made him immortal. Do you want to make me immortal? I'm asking you:

  "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[jkflying]

The barrier to entry is for the *customer*, not for the *competitor*. It can be difficult as a customer to change operating systems due to compatibility of applications etc., so MS can ream you through lock-in. It is easy to change search engines - just type "search engine" into google and they themselves will give you a whole host of other options.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

and a lot of eurpeans[sic] are fluent in english[sic] anyway.

Yeah, right. And what about Brits and Irish, uh?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[peppepz]

This is just normal business behavior.

As long as you haven't a dominant position. Otherwise, it results in decreased competition, which is objectively bad for everyone. That's why Microsoft was forced to give other browsers the same chances as IE of being chosen by Windows users.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

Sponsored results are usually marked as being separate from the "real" results of the search query, at least in my experience. Google used to but changed that at some point so it's hard to tell the difference.

I think the issue here isn't the "sponsored results" (which are marked as such) but the results that are pulled from google's other services and therefore artificially promoted over similar services run by other companies without being marked as such.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[peppepz]

I suspect that the antitrust commission has more precise and incisive instruments to find out if anything's wrong, than doing a couple of web searches. They're a serious institution and I think that Google have good lawyers.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[peppepz]

IE bundled with Windows is useful. Windows preinstalled on every PC is useful.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

So what you're saying is, if Google is just using an algorithmic search method, and it happens to select their own sites because they are popular in their own right and legitimate results, they're not doing anything wrong?

No. If you go to google's web search and you search for a local business, amoungst all the search results, fairly near the top, it will give you a link to Google Maps showing you where that business is. It won't give you a link to bing maps, openstreetmap, etc. This isn't because google maps is more popular, its because google integrate their own mapping product with their search engine but don't integrate competing products with it. Google *could* provide an API to allow other services to integrate, but they don't.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that the antitrust commission has more precise and incisive instruments to find out if anything's wrong, than doing a couple of web searches. They're a serious institution and I think that Google have good lawyers.

I am out of mod points, so posting instead.

LOL

Re:nonsensical allegations

[peppepz]

The EU antitrust commission fines companies from all around the world, and plenty of european ones. See for yourself http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/closed/en/ind1990.html .

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

This puzzles me.

So, they're saying that when I use Google to search for a place, Google isn't allowed to respond with a map showing the place because there are competitors who also offer a map application.

No, its saying that when you search for a place, other vendors should be considered to be at a similar level to google. So if you search for a place that google maps doesn't know about but bing maps does, it would show you a link to bing maps. Scraping map data from other sites to include in searches isn't as simple as scraping web pages, but Google could provide an API to allow other vendors to publish their data to Google. Google's search results are supposed to show you the most relevant results for your search, yet google maps is artificially placed higher in the search results than other mapping sites, because it is google's not because it necessarilly has more relevant results.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen brother, I couldn't believe that such uninformed garbage with get a single up vote.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

Google includes Google maps in their results to make their results as useful as possible. If the EU makes that a crime, I would hate to have to use whatever search engine that the EU thinks is ideal. Because my bet is that it wouldn't be very useful.

On the contrary. If, instead of displaying a Google Maps link, they displayed a link to a mapping site that has a result that is more relevant to my query then I would say that's an improvement. I don't think anyone is saying that Google shouldn't display relevant links, they are saying that links shouldn't be considered more relevant just because they are operated by Google themselves.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Sudline]

Google is not a monopoly for users, who could choose their search engine, but it is a monopoly for other websites because 90% of searches are made here and they can not change it.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[phayes]

Sponsored results are usually marked as being separate from the "real" results of the search query, at least in my experience. Google used to but changed that at some point so it's hard to tell the difference.

I think the issue here isn't the "sponsored results" (which are marked as such) but the results that are pulled from google's other services and therefore artificially promoted over similar services run by other companies without being marked as such.

When using Google to search for stuff I expect & want google's associated services to come up as they are also generally the market leaders. The EU seems to think that is is unfair that badly known competing services do not come up first in Google's results which shows only that they badly understand how people want search to work.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

If I want Bing Maps, why wouldn't I go to Bing? I come to Google for Google.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[bhagwad]

This is a self correcting situation.

1. People use Google because they think it gives the best results
2. If Google promotes its own products, it either makes their results better or worse
3. If it makes their results better, no one complains
4. If it makes their results worse, customers shift to another search engine (no barrier or lock in remember)

What exactly is the problem here?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

Microsoft does the same thing with Bing Maps.

And is Microsoft in a similarly dominant market position to Google? No? Then antitrust legislation doesn't affect them. Exactly the same reason as Apple gets away with stuff that Microsoft can only dream of.

Microsoft is lobbying here because the clown Ballmer is so obsessed with destroying Google.

[Citation needed]

If you're going to make crazy conspiracy theory claims, you're going to need to produce some evidence to back them up, otherwise you just come across as a crackpot. The EU has a history of going after big corporations that they think are abusing their position, no lobbying required.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[bhagwad]

But there's no lock in or barrier to switching. In such cases, having a monopoly is meaningless. If customers don't like Google promoting its products they move to another search engine.

This situation is self correcting.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA suggests they have a monopoly on "search" which is nonsensical, since there are many competitors and no barrier to entry, and they give the "product" away for free, so it would hard to claim any monopoly pricing power is even being used or existing.

There is a huge barrier to entry in the search market : the cost of the technical infrastructure to process the huge amount of data and provide search results. Barrier to entry is not just about legal restriction it include all means you have to acquire in order to get a significant market share.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[bhagwad]

Microsoft was making it difficult for a customer to purchase a PC without Windows installed. It was also making life difficult for third party browsers. All of which limited customer choice.

In the search market, customers have all the choice in the world. No lock in. No costs of switching. Nothing.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[phayes]

Please stop spreading falsehoods.

The EU is not claiming that Google has a monopoly on search. They are saying that they are abusing their dominant position in the market. Calling Google a monopoly is incorrect & only wastes everyone's time.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

When the story was originally submitted, it didn't point to ZDNet. It pointed to the Financial Times and Search Engine Land

Re:nonsensical allegations

[argStyopa]

So the lesson here is that if you build a business, develop something that's really awesome and becomes the go-to choice for nearly everyone on the planet, your reward is to be considered a monopoly and regulated as a utility?

That's brilliant.

Let's remember that antitrust legislation was about PRICING. If I drive all my competitors out of business, I can then charge anything I want. Presumably, barriers to entry in terms of capital, etc. are too high for free-market competition.

However, what is google CHARGING? And last time I checked, I can develop my own search algorithm and put up my web page. If it's better than google's, that will quickly be evident. Now unless google is ACTIVELY diverting traffic away from its competition, I don't believe antitrust legislation here is anything but a punitive slap to a business that has been successful.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[fnj]

But it's not a profile on "me". It's a profile based on the IP I happen to be using. An IP does not have a 1:1 relationship with a person.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[paiute]

I just searched 'shoes'. First three results were on a light violet background marked 'Ads'.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

When using Google to search for stuff I expect & want google's associated services to come up as they are also generally the market leaders. The EU seems to think that is is unfair that badly known competing services do not come up first in Google's results which shows only that they badly understand how people want search to work.

No, I think the EU probably understands things quite well. When I use a search engine I expect & want the most relevant results to come up. Something doesn't suddenly become more relevant to me just because it is also a property of the same company that owns the search engine I'm using. If I wanted to search Google Maps, I'd go to Google Maps, but for the generalised search function I want relevant results from *anywhere*.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the mnay valid answers may be the EU simply wants to show it can! After all its been a valid American response for years.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Searching in germany (with a german IP) the first two links are to the english and german wikipedia page of beer and the third link is "Beer in Germany" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_in_Germany

Im ok with that.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

So the lesson here is that if you build a business, develop something that's really awesome and becomes the go-to choice for nearly everyone on the planet, your reward is to be considered a monopoly and regulated as a utility?

Your reward is that you have a business that is worth billions. There is a very minor penalty that you have to adhere to slightly stricter regulations as a result. Its good for the consumer for the dominant company to have to work at staying dominant rather than sit back and stagnate since no one can compete.

There are always penalties associated with being successful, but the success generally outweighs the penalties. Or are you going to complain that successful high-profit companies shouldn't have to pay more tax than low-profit businesses because that would be a penalty on their success?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you!

Re:nonsensical allegations

[TapeCutter]

Marketing and economics are inexact "sciences", it's close enough to 1:1 for what they are doing.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Hunter Shoptaw]

You mean except for the top ones that state "Ad related to"? Yeah, they should definitely make that clearer, maybe put a big pastel yellow box around it or something.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Hunter Shoptaw]

I should read the later comments, apparently you beat me to this point.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

If I wanted to search Google Maps, I'd go to Google Maps, but for the generalised search function I want relevant results from *anywhere*.

Anywhere... including google maps? Circular argument much?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that the antitrust commission has more precise and incisive instruments to find out if anything's wrong, than doing a couple of web searches.

If you believe that then you've been drinking the EU-brewed koolaid too long. I almost guarantee you that the "investigation" is a bunch of unpaid interns hammering away at keyboards searching random topics.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Google does provide an API to allow other services to integrate Google Maps.

I suspect you meant to say that they could integrate other competing products into their search results, however how fucking stupid is it to pay another company licensing fees to do that when you have the same (superior in most cases) service already available to you within the same company? Even if you go with something free like OpenStreetMaps, is that anti-competitive behavior as well? Do you have to provide the option to choose between all of your competitors? What about quality control? Demanding that Google show Apple maps as well is just fucking stupid, since we all know how reliable that service is.

As the OP said, fucking cash grab by the EU.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[jkflying]

My university proxy has 1 IP for ~30000 people. IP tracking in a situation like that is pretty hopeless.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[jkflying]

They built an in-house solution instead of using a commercial solution. I fail to see how this is a problem.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA suggests they have a monopoly on "search" which is nonsensical, since there are many competitors and no barrier to entry, and they give the "product" away for free, so it would hard to claim any monopoly pricing power is even being used or existing.

I'm fairly sure this is the dumbest thing I'll read today.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

You went to search trough google and you expect google to offer you maps using bing.
IF you want map data from bing then you need to go to bing.com.

As MS dosnt allow map data to google, it is so because Nokia doesnt license map data to google, you think google is bad because it shows generic location data using own mapping search results.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[moronoxyd]

What does the EU want? It wants Google, a company that has a monopoly on the search engine market, to stop abusing it's dominant positon

Google doesn't have a monopoly on search.
There are other search engines with relevant, if smaller shares of the market.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[drolli]

It looks like they're talking about doing stuff like including results from Google Maps in your web search results (whilst not doing the same for results from Bing Maps, etc.).

I dont think that that MS would allow to include bing results in the same way than google does with google maps.

Ultimatly, google searches googles databases. They should not be obliged to provide interfaces to other databases.

I just tested it. Googling for terms where they could get a advantage by placing their own products usually brings up competitions products first.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[jrumney]

and "web browser" gives an ad for IE

Would that be the same ad "for IE" they were running around the time IE9 was released?

> Download Internet Explorer 9
A Browser With a Clean & Simple Design Made for Users. Download Now
www.google.com/Chrome

Re:nonsensical allegations

[bluefoxlucid]

Yeah the Germans famously do not have a sense of humor.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[jrumney]

It actually shows Gmail first for me.

I see the same here. And for the web browser search, I see an ad for Google Chrome the first two times, then no ad at all after that.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

I see that as the equivalent of Walmart puttings its "Great Value" merchandise in the prime spot on shelves in stores. Annoying, but not exactly illegal.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Likewise, just below the result from Google Maps, it will give you the results from Googles web crawler. Not from Bings web crawler.

Funny how when you go to google.com to search, the search results come from Google... Where as if you go to bing.com, you will get search results from Google.

I used to use Google, because they had the best search results. Not anymore, their search results have become crap. However, every competitor I have tried had even worse search results (or a crappy interface), so I use Google because the alternatives are worse. If Google was forced to integrate Bing maps, where would I search, when I don't want Bing search results?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[cdrudge]

But what Google is doing is no different than what other search engines are doing. If I search for "Starbucks" on Bing, I get the web results I'd expect. I also get a Bing Map for Starbucks in the area. I also get Bing News results for articles about Starbucks.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Their competitors search results are even worse.

Seriously, Google search results have become crap over the last years, but somehow their competitors manage to still be worse.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[aaron552]

Nope

Ad related to web browsers
Try Internet Explorer® - Get an Even Better Web Experience.
www.microsoft.com/AU/Internet-Explorer
Download a Fast, Easy Web Browser!

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nonsense,

You want google to integrate something like mapquest or bing maps into their search results instead of their own mapping service that know inside and out and have full control of. Ridiculous I say. It is not googles reponsibility to find out how all the other map systems work to automatically put in links to addresses or something. Not to mention other sites seem to get uppity when Google does things like that.

Also Other people can embed google maps in their websites if they want, they do provide an API for that.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[jrumney]

Geolocation affects the filter bubble quite a lot. Here I see Gmail, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Yahoo, and mail.com as the top 5. mail.live.com is the sixth result, but the hotmail domain/branding is nowhere to be seen on the first page.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Rich0]

It looks like they're talking about doing stuff like including results from Google Maps in your web search results (whilst not doing the same for results from Bing Maps, etc.).

Well, if they "fix" this I SERIOUSLY hope they make it an option to "unfix" it. If I search for something and a map is relevant I'd like to see a map, not just a bunch of SEO'ed sites. Oh, and I'd like the map to be google maps, not flybynite maps.

Maybe they can configure it so that if an MP runs a search they get Apple maps. Would serve them right...

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

I dont think that that MS would allow to include bing results in the same way than google does with google maps.

Possibly not, but at the moment they don't have an option (and we're not just talking about Microsoft - we're talking about *all* google's competitors, some of whome might want their results to be included).

At the moment, if you run a website, you have a choice about whether or not you are included in the results (set up a robots.txt or use Google's webmaster tools), and if you are included then your website is (theoretically) considered at the same level as Google's websites. If you run a mapping service, you don't get any kind of a choice, you are automatically excluded, meanwhile Google's mapping service is automatically included towards the top of the search results.

Ultimatly, google searches googles databases. They should not be obliged to provide interfaces to other databases.

Why not? If Google is artificially pushing their own products over their competitors because of the design of their software, this seems like something worth fixing, given Google's position in the search industry.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

But what Google is doing is no different than what other search engines are doing. If I search for "Starbucks" on Bing, I get the web results I'd expect. I also get a Bing Map for Starbucks in the area. I also get Bing News results for articles about Starbucks.

Yes, and the point of antitrust legislation is that if you get big enough to unfairly distort markets then you have to play by different rules to ensure you don't distort the markets. Google is far more dominant than Bing, so they get hit with the antitrust stick for their troubles. Guess what? Apple gets away with stuff MS could only dream of because they aren't the dominant player.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

Well, if they "fix" this I SERIOUSLY hope they make it an option to "unfix" it. If I search for something and a map is relevant I'd like to see a map, not just a bunch of SEO'ed sites.

Isn't "being part of Google and therefore being automatically shoved to the top of the results" basically the ultimate SEO?

Oh, and I'd like the map to be google maps, not flybynite maps.

Why? If flybynite maps happens to have more useful and relevant results then why not use them? You do of course need some kind of quality control, but the assuming that Google products are always the most relevant ones seems bogus. (For that matter, Google's pushpins for local businesses are frequently extremely inaccurate, so its not too far of a stretch to imagine that another mapping service might have better results).

Do you support the notion that Google web search should only show up results from their own properties because other websites are always going to be less relevant? No? Then why are maps any different?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[jrumney]

If I want Bing Maps, why wouldn't I go to Bing?

Perhaps because bing serves up Google Maps first in a search, followed by other competitors, news articles and a Wikipedia link before finally listing Bing Maps. YMMV depending on how they tweak their algorithms for location, known history etc, but bias for Microsoft services seems to be something that bing cannot be easily accused of based on the quick searches I've made for terms appearing in this thread (web browser, email, maps...)

Re:nonsensical allegations

[MacGyver2210]

I don't know about other languages and countries, but in the US we have this little "Sponsored Results" label. Barring some large shift in English vocabulary, "Sponsored" is quite equivalent to "Bought and Paid For".

It also hasn't been illegal to have paid-for results top your search: as a search engine their algorithm and results sorting, etc, are all proprietary. They can keep them as black-box as they like, and as long as the product functions as they want it to, they aren't doing anything wrong. It is THEIR BUSINESS, and is not up for some money-grubbing politicians to cry foul about ad revenue 10 years after the fact.

So sick of software patents, EU regulation nonsense, China vs Japan, Fiscal Cliffs, Republicans, China vs US, all this crap. Someone start a war against aliens or robots or something, so we can act like one large compassionate human population for a change. It works in the movies....aww, who am I kidding.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just silly. Just consider
a) Every additional search engine knowing that you searched for "gorilla porn", not just a single one
b) All those search engines choking after suddenly getting Google-scale traffic
Last, but not least:
c) Likely resolution is just "could be that Google makes it far clearer that the search company is using its own services -- such as Maps, Shopping, Travel, and others -- just how it labels its own branded advertisements", so it could be just that all those big companies like Micros^W^W^W^Wconcerned citizens gave us a lot of nice crunchy evidence, so we've got to do something. Even if it's just for the looks.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[MacGyver2210]

If I wanted to search Google Maps, I'd go to Google Maps, but for the generalised search function I want relevant results from *anywhere*.

Fine, but when you go to GOOGLE and search for MAPS...don't piss and moan when the first result that comes up is Google Maps. Not only are they the most popular mapping service by a mile, but it is owned and promoted by GOOGLE...the search engine you are using at the time. Of course Google is going to put a little map in your results and say "Hey, we've got this map service...".

Don't be surprised when you have to scroll a bit down to find Mapquest or other 4th- or 5th-ranked map providers: if you want a different, less-popular map provider, search by name. Better yet, stop using Google as your address bar like my grandmother, and type the address in the correct place at the top of the browser window.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[MacGyver2210]

A company that uses its own advertising subsidiary to advertise? Oh my...how absurd!

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

They are the dominant search engine. I think you are misunderstanding antitrust legislation:

I think YOU are misunderstanding antitrust legislation. Antitrust is a US notion & US law. The EU has very different laws on monopolies & cartels.

For example, OPEC is one of the biggest cartels in the world - they try very hard to avoid competition, and they are headquartered in Austria.

De Beers, the diamond cartel, is currently headquartered in Luxembourg. They were previously based in the UK.

All part of the EU.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[MacGyver2210]

So instead they use MAC tracking, cookie tracking, toolbar tracking, Android profiles, gmail accounts accessed, etc. I would be lying if I said I hadn't seen some off ads based on the network I was connecting on, but it's pretty damned good at figuring out who you are in a matter of moments: especially if you have cookies enabled and log in to a service they own.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[MacGyver2210]

I, also, am curious when "Fair and Balanced" became a legal requirement for search engines. As far as I knew, all search engines can put whatever results they want in the list, and it's fine since it's THEIR COMPANY and THEIR ALGORITHM and THEIR SERVERS doing the ranking and listing.

The fact that Google has gained the #1 spot and enjoys excellent popularity should not exempt them from the freedom to run and manage their product as they see fit - it is a PRODUCT and a SERVICE not a democracy.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

Fine, but when you go to GOOGLE and search for MAPS...don't piss and moan when the first result that comes up is Google Maps. Not only are they the most popular mapping service by a mile, but it is owned and promoted by GOOGLE...the search engine you are using at the time. Of course Google is going to put a little map in your results and say "Hey, we've got this map service...".

When you go to WINDOWS and open the BROWSER...don't piss and moan when it starts IE. Not only is it the most popular web browser by a mile, but it is owned and promoted by MICROSOFT...the operating system you are using at the time.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[microbox]

I'm logged in, in chrome, and a search for "email" shows "yahoo" first, and "gmail" second. I /never/ visit yahoo, and use gmail all the time. Go figure.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[MacGyver2210]

That's like saying "When I go to Mapquest and type an address, why doesn't Google Maps come up?"

You are going to a company's website. Why would you expect them to offer other companies' services through their own site? If not for actually hindering their own advertising/promotion/business model, it also brings up copyright issues, where if Google is just serving up Bing maps and results without any attribution(free advertising for competitors) they can get in trouble for plagiarism, fraud, and far worse things than this retarded EU commission seems to think they do.

Don't be a complete retard like these EU folks: If you want Mapquest, go to Mapquest. If you want Bing, go to Bing. If you want Google, go to Google. If you can't understand this, stay the fuck off the internet.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[microbox]

An unfair and unbalanced search result is one where Google is modifying search results to assure that it's services are hight on the results list but those of competirors are buried on page 8.

Agreed.

But how do you tell if consumers are getting google searches because that they legitimately don't want to know about the crap on page 8. Mmm??

Re:nonsensical allegations

[squiggleslash]

This is nothing like what Microsoft did with Netscape. Microsoft bundled IE, a system that competes with Netscape, with Windows. They did nothing in doing so that harmed the utility and usefulness of Windows to an extent that it would drive people away from Windows, indeed, they made it more useful.

If it were true (and it clearly isn't, it's an all-out lie that's disprovable simply by using the search engine) that Google was burying search results for competing products in their search engine such that they're hard to find, then it would harm the search engine's utility as a result. Google's marketshare for some of these supposedly promoted products might increase, but the number of people using Google would decrease as it would be harder to find the information Google users are looking for.

There are rival search engines, most of which are excellent. Bing's major problem is that everyone knows its from Microsoft, which makes it "uncool", it's a search engine that's at least as good as Google's in practice. It's well advertised and people can and would move to it if Google's search was crippled in the way the EU (and Slashdot's legion of Facebook/Apple shills) is/are claiming.

The same was not true for Windows, where getting out of Windows meant locking yourself out of the infrastructure that most of the world was using, preventing access to content and communications with most entities you would interact with to live your life. Even for the tiny minority that were impacted negatively by Microsoft's decision to bundle IE (again, for most Windows users having a browser pre-installed was a net positive even if you and I roll our eyes about IE's poor security at that time), picking an alternative was not an option.

The situations are completely unlike one another. Google's search engine is harmed by doing anything remotely resembling what the EU claims, Windows was not harmed by bundling IE. And people can switch from Google easily and quickly. In the late 1990s, Windows users couldn't switch from Windows without severe consequences.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[hinchles]

install adblock+....... what ads?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally agree. EU it seems like that EU is crapping on google simply because they are better than all their competitors. There is zero friction in using a new search engine if Google really is bad, the fact that people keep using them is indicative that they are simply better than the alternatives. Being better than everyone else should be a liability.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[squiggleslash]

Also Google makes use of the Google sponsored jQuery, rather than offering a choice of competing Javascript DOM manipulation libraries, when building the search results page. This is terrible and Google should be fined one gajillion euros a minute until they offer a choice of Javascript DOM manipulation libraries.

Seriously, you're complaining that Google shows a map when displaying local search results using their own technology? What. The. F---?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is the dominant player because they are better than Bing. That shouldn't be a liabilty for Google, its not google's fault that bing sucks.

Google even goes out of there way to ensure that users are not locked in to them by providing data dumps for them via Data Liberation Front effort. This is nothing more than an EU cash grab. Google is doing nothing anti competitive, unless you call being better anti-competitive.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can compete with google. Google is doing nothing to prevent that, not even on there own site. If you look up search engines they will happily give you a list. The only thing anti-competitive about what Google is doing is consistently being better at making a product that people want to use.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[oldlurker]

Microsoft was making it difficult for a customer to purchase a PC without Windows installed. It was also making life difficult for third party browsers. All of which limited customer choice.

In the search market, customers have all the choice in the world. No lock in. No costs of switching. Nothing.

All the choice in the world? How many full-functional general purpose search engines do you know that don't get data from either Google or Bing?

The barrier to competition on search is not the cost of switching to users, but the insane cost of building something that competes with Google. This is today a really hard problem, and Microsoft is spending billions of dollars per quarter on it.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[MacGyver2210]

I think the EU commissions severely underestimate the disturbance it would cause to just Nope all Google services, including Google Maps, Search, Mail, Docs, Calendar, and the rest. Just gone. No more for the EU.

I would really love to see what they did then...it would make a great movie.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

That's like saying "When I go to Mapquest and type an address, why doesn't Google Maps come up?"

Last I checked, Mapquest wasn't a web search engine. If I go to mapquest, I expect it to give me results from mapquest, if I go to google maps I expect it to give me results from google maps, and if I go to google web search I expect it to give me results from *the web*, not results from google's random other products promoted above everything else.

Why would you expect them to offer other companies' services through their own site?

Because thats what web search engines do - they search the web (i.e. other companies services). The problem isn't that Google is offering links to their own services, it is that they are artificially placing them towards the top of the results based purely on the fact that they are Google products.

Its basically product bundling - they have a popular product (web search) and are leveraging it to make their other products more popular. That's fine until the product you are leveraging becomes dominant in its market, then you have to comply with antitrust legislation to prevent you using that position to muscle your way into other markets.

it also brings up copyright issues, where if Google is just serving up Bing maps and results without any attribution(free advertising for competitors) they can get in trouble for plagiarism, fraud, and far worse things than this retarded EU commission seems to think they do.

If they were so scared of copyright, plagiarism, fraud, they wouldn't offer a web search either. Time and time again its been shown that offering a service to search other people's data is legal (especially if you give them a way to stop you doing it).

Don't be a complete retard like these EU folks: If you want Mapquest, go to Mapquest. If you want Bing, go to Bing. If you want Google, go to Google. If you can't understand this, stay the fuck off the internet.

Not once have I said that what Google do is wrong, I'm simply explaining why the EU has a problem with it. I can certainly see the EU's point, but I have no strong opinions on it either way. I do, strongly, disagree with the the idea that the EU are "retards" though - the EU have laws and it is up to Google to comply with them if they want to do business in the EU. A government is not "retarded" for investigating a company operating in the local economy for a possible breach of local laws.

As for what I *personally* want:
1. I want a web search engine to give me *the most relevant* results for what I'm searching for. For me, "the most relevant" isn't the same as "is another property of the company that runs the search engine". This isn't some entitlement thing - I don't believe I'm entitled to that, and I don't believe (in the general case) governments should legislate for vendors to provide that service. It's just what I, as a consumer, would like.
2. I want a competitive market across the board. Products should be competing on their their own merit, not just succeeding because they're being pushed by a big popular brand. This is something I believe should be regulated in order to prevent a megacorp from cornering markets and pushing out other businesses. I don't know whether Google has crossed the line - I have no particularly strong opinions on it at the moment, but I do see why the EU are investigating and I support the investigation of this sort of thing (note: investigation is not the same as enforcement - just because you're investigating a company doesn't mean they've actually done something wrong and need to be punished, it just means you're keeping an eye on them and are ready to act in case they do cross the line).

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Dasuraga]

I would think that this is primarily be because they're significantly more popular than the competitors, though, and not due to any bias on the part of Google.

A while ago there was a whole thing about how this wasn't the case. I think it was maybe for Picasa, among other things, where related terms were making it show up in the top non-advertised slot despite the fact that related websites were much more in use, leading to allegations of google manipulating the results. As said in other threads, this seems to be a fraud issue, since google presents their system as working one way yet manipulates it in a completely different way in some cases.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[bhagwad]

So? Google can hardly be held responsible for search engines being hard to build. And anti trust is meant to protect customers and consumers - not competition.

Bottom line - if customers don't like what Google is doing, they can move away at the click of a button. What more is there to be said about this?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[oldlurker]

So? Google can hardly be held responsible for search engines being hard to build. And anti trust is meant to protect customers and consumers - not competition.

Bottom line - if customers don't like what Google is doing, they can move away at the click of a button. What more is there to be said about this?

I wasn't really arguing anti trust or not. Just pointing out that there is a problem with the "move away at a click of a button" argument if there is nothing to move to. I do believe people very seriously underestimate the insane table stake investments needed to build a competitor, even if Google did slack of and deserve competition. Again, not saying this alone is reason for anti trust regulation.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Viceice]

How is this bad? I sometimes exploit this by typing a location into the general search bar, fully expecting a google maps result to click on.

If i wanted BingMaps i would have used bing instead.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be that you are not using Google.com? If i go to google.com it redirects me to google.co.il, from there the first result is Gmail. if I go to google.com/ncr it does not redirect and shows the first result as hotmail. That happens in both normal mode and incognito. Meaning that for me at least the gmail showing as first is a result filtering for the whole country and not me specifically.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[mcgrew]

Yeah the Germans famously do not have a sense of humor.

Q: How many germans does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Das ist nicht lustig, du Arschloch!

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is ad-supported. An ad for their own service is not out of place. We are expected to pay for our operating systems, the promotion is inappropriate.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

How is this bad? I sometimes exploit this by typing a location into the general search bar, fully expecting a google maps result to click on.

If i wanted BingMaps i would have used bing instead.

Its bad because it has the potential to kill off competing businesses.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, you mean if you log into a Google service they're good at figuring out who you are? Are you saying they shouldn't be?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[phayes]

No, I think the EU probably understands things quite well.

When the EU starts trying to prevent me from getting the results I want from Google by making some pissant mappy result come up first rather than the market leader which is Google Maps, then No, the EU does not understand!. The EU's problem is not that Google is not giving the most relevant answers first but that the most relevant answers are also from Google. The browser selection menu imposed on MS shows just what the EU is searching for: "fairness" not for best results. They want a system where search results will come up in a random order weighted by market share.

The EU may indeed know what they want search to become, but I want no part of this "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs" search

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what google is alleged to be doing. They're pissed off that when doing things like searching for "Map of Washington DC" Google shows a Google Map on the result page in addition to links to other map services. Or "Images of kittens" brings up a link to Google Image Search.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

When the EU starts trying to prevent me from getting the results I want from Google by making some pissant mappy result come up first rather than the market leader which is Google Maps, then No, the EU does not understand!.

Who said they were going to do that? Do you want the most relevant result, no matter where its found on the internet, or do you only ever want to see content hosted by Google?

The browser selection menu imposed on MS shows just what the EU is searching for: "fairness" not for best results.

Are they not the same thing (at least in this case)? If all sites were treated by Google in a fair way then that would seem to satisfy both "fair" and "best" unless your definition of "best" is just "must be owned by Google".

They want a system where search results will come up in a random order weighted by market share.

[Citation needed]

The EU just want things to be fair across the board here. That simply means that Google shouldn't give their own products special treatment compared to similar products from other vendor. That doesn't mean that everyone must have an equal change of appearing at the top, it just means that google can't use the "stick it at the top if its ours" criteria.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

They also have their Google Analytics and Doubleclick trackers pretty much everywhere (including this page). Even if you never use Google's services directly, they have a pretty good idea of who you are, what porn you like, and what you might be interested in buying.

Yeah, noscript blah blah blah.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the problem is, that EU wants and needs some additional funding.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no. Either there is one law for everyone or there isnt.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[mjr167]

If I wanted a Bing map to tell me where the business was I wouldn't have gone to Google's website. That's like complaining that a pub serves beer they brewed themselves instead of the beer brewed next door.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

If I wanted a Bing map to tell me where the business was I wouldn't have gone to Google's website.

Where would you go if you just wanted the most relevant result instead of having the results filtered based on who owns the website they are pointing at?

That's like complaining that a pub serves beer they brewed themselves instead of the beer brewed next door.

Only if the pub happens to be the world's most popular place to drink - if it is then you might have a point (and they might be being investigated for similar reasons - using their position as the most popular pub to muscle in on the brewing market, at the expense of other brewers who don't own any pubs).

Re:nonsensical allegations

[FireFury03]

That's like complaining that a pub serves beer they brewed themselves instead of the beer brewed next door.

Oh, and for the record I do tend to stick to free houses because I value choice in beer.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you anonymize the remainder of what they can fingerprint then no, they can track you.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[greg1104]

Google shelters enormous amounts of their profits through Ireland and the Netherlands. Since they're evading taxes using EU countries, they can't claim they're not bound by the rules of the EU.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[phantomfive]

Unfortunately for people who are interested in the TRUTH, the source article by ZDnet does not mention anything about a monopoly or anti-monopoly legislation.

Do you understand that anti-trust laws deal with monopolistic practices? If English isn't your first language you might not understand that, but monopolies are what they are talking about, even if they don't use that word exactly.

these unfair, greedy Europeans want to make money off of Google

It's not like it would be the first time. You don't believe that government officials are bastions of justice and honesty, do you?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[hexagonc]

There is no generic "browser" request on Windows. You click on the icon (or nowadays, live tile) for the browser you want and it opens. If I clicked on the Firefox icon and IE started up then I would be right to piss and moan. If Windows could understand speech commands and I said "open browser", I wouldn't be too surprised if IE came up and there wouldn't much to complain about. Since the command was ambiguous anyway, I wouldn't be surprised for them to promote their own browser, all things being equal.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[AyCarumba]

The EU is good at waiting for something bad to happen to a global company (primarily US-based) and then getting on the badwagon to cash in. Facts don't mean much when that much cash is on the line.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. Because Google can do no wrong!

What, exactly, does Google have a monopoly of

Web search.

how are they abusing monopoly power in any way?

You could look up their treatment of Yelp, for starters. Or their news aggregation. Or their prioritization of G+ results over other more relevant services, such as Twitter and Facebook.

since there are many competitors and no barrier to entry, and they give the "product" away for free

Microsoft had many competitors too. They were still held to be a monopoly. Giving the product away for free is a pretty bad example, as many antitrust regulations also have a thing or two to say about the practice of dumping - that is, flooding a market with cheap or free products in order to drive out competition and raise barriers to entry. How is Google offering all of these wonderful services for free? By leveraging their dominant position in internet search, to maintain or increase their lead in other markets unrelated to search. How are they doing that? By subsidizing their services and giving them away for "free" using profits from their dominant web search & advertising business.

This isn't hard, you know. Well, at least it's not hard if you're not covering your eyes every time Google's name is mentioned in a less-than-glowingly-favorable phrase. Google has been abusing its market position for a while now. I'm glad to see the EU at least is taking it seriously.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[AyCarumba]

You do know that in Windows you can type a URL without opening a browser first, and it opens a browser, yes? So, yes, there is a generic browser request. :-)

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Americano]

Yes, and that one, single law says that "once you achieve a dominant market share, you must abide by certain rules that prevent you from abusing your dominant market share to neutralize competition."

That one law applies to both Apple and Microsoft. It's just that Microsoft achieved a dominant market share, and abused it; Apple hasn't achieved a dominant market share, but if they do (let's say Android implodes tomorrow and all the devices running it disappear in some sort of amazing electronic Rapture), they will be required to abide by the same rules. If Apple reached the same amount of market dominance MSFT had, you'll see the complaints of their practices (esp. wrt their App Store policies) get a lot more traction.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[ganjadude]

you mean how it says "sponsored result" is not good enough?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Aighearach]

The MS browser war monopoly stuff wasn't about MS setting their own defaults, of course they do. It was about them using their power of contracts and their monopoloy position to force other companies to give preferred positioning to IE and not to remove it or replace it with another option.

Notice the difference here, Google is not accused of even trying to compel anyone to do anything, nor of interfering with any other business. They're accused of putting a map widget from Google Maps next to a search result when it thinks you're searching for a location. It does NOT, for example, distort searches *for maps* to hide or reduce other map services. This is about Google being able to use their own service to promote their own product, which apparently MS has convinced somebody in the EU is illegal.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Aighearach]

Sounds like you didn't recall at all, but made a random (wrong) guess.

This is about searching for a location and getting a Google Maps widget at the top of the page next to the search results. Note that if you search for maps, you get results from map competitors. They're accused not of any favoring in search results, but of putting their own relevant widget on the screen at the same time.

Apparently if they just had a perma-ad for Google Maps in that part of the screen, there would be no complaint.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[houghi]

With the censorship, it is better to go via google.co.uk anyway.

And the have serveral European offices including some in the EU.

There are not only offices for business puposes in Europe, but also a lot of hardware. So they can either close shop in Europe and let their servers do everything from outside Europe, or they can comply to the law.

What will happen is that they will comply with the law after they (tried to) edit it to their advantage.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[sFurbo]

It would be close to MAD, so it won't happen. Anyway, until now, the EU seems to be sane and have teeth in regards to monopolies. That is more than you can say for ... any other area of the world. I would like to see that continue, it is really nice to have someone qith power be on your side for a change.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Aighearach]

Google doesn't try to track devices, they track people that are logged into google services and who hand out cookies to the google analytics code on most of the sites you visit. If you're not logged into any devices, there are two things that matter: location, and IP address.

People get themselves all worked up and confused based on their imagination of what could be collected, without considering that bad data means that poorly done tracking gives worse results than just straight location-based. These are experts in online tracking, they already know, unless you're logged in they're not sure who you are, and they don't need bad data. They have a glut of high-quality data from people who ARE logged in. Using poor quality data there would degrade their results. Plus, they can still use that data in aggregate, which is actually where it is most useful when people aren't logged in.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Aighearach]

[citation required]

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Aighearach]

Except that isn't what they're accused of at all, and any simple test will confirm that competitors results are NOT "buried."

They're accused of displaying a google map widget next to search results when they think you're searching for a location. They are not accused of favoring their own service when you search for a map.

I don't see how that harms their search competitors. As for their map competitors... presumably those companies do various promotionals too, and don't mention google maps at all in their own advertising.

There are 2 ways to give the EU what they want here, one is when people search for locations, just pretend you don't know it is a location or that they could benefit from seeing a map, and only show text results. Or, they could just show a whole screen full of maps from different companies. I don't see how either result would save a "competitor" who is suffering, or help people get honest search results.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[mjr167]

Some questions only have one "relevant" answer because they are not subjective. If you type 5 + 5 into google, it will tell you "5 + 5 = 10". It does not suggest that I go and use the windows calculator or ask bing. It just answers my question. Same thing if I ask it for a location. It just answers the question. If google's answers started telling us to go drive 30 miles into the Australian outback, people would stop asking it those questions and would instead ask bing.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

You know how I know you don't know what you're talking about? You say crap like that.

Antitrust is not about protecting other businesses at all. Never has been, never should be. It's about protecting the consumer. Are consumers being harmed by Google's practice of using the data they have available (because they own it/control it) to answer the search queries? If not, then that's the end of the discussion. Having searches for "Canon 5D" show places to buy the camera is good. Having searches for Canon 5D show reviews, and manuals, and canon's page about it, is also good. Having searches for "Canon 5D" show sites like nextag is *weird*. You didn't ask for "price comparisons on canon 5d". You searched for a product, and now you have to go to another site to get the actual shopping results you wanted. No one wants that extra click. Protecting nextag's search engine optimization should never ever have been raised as a possibility, let alone something desired.

So you say to yourself "Well, then I should be able to choose who I want to manage my shopping results on Google!" Well, that's fine, except how does Google know when to show shopping results? It would have to show your query to *every subservice*. Search for herpes treatments? Well, nextag has some data about that. Searching for Canon 5D? Well, I'm sure bing maps would have something to say about that. Now Google has to order the results - who's to say that bing maps *isn't* the best result for "Canon 5D"? It'd have to be Google making that decision, and if nextag disagrees with it, then they sue Google. It's a huge mess, and it would slow Google down to the slowest of any of your sub-providers. Ta-da, you've just screwed the consumer.

So then you're like "Ok, Google gets to be 10 blue links, and that's it! That's all I wanted anyway!" Well, you're in the minority. People want what they searched for; if they search for a product, there's a good chance they want to buy it, so showing them places to buy it from (and a purchase-oriented search experience) helps a lot. If you restrict Google to 10 blue links, then everyone goes to Bing, which has the integrated search experiences. Eventually, Google loses the dominant position, Bing becomes dominant, and then we get to repeat this dance all over again - Google gets to offer specialized searches, and Bing has to stop offering them. People abandon Bing and go back to Google, because they're the ones providing a search experience the people actually want. Congratulations, you've just screwed over the consumer, again.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Cederic]

Top result for a search for "maps":
Google - Google Maps
Bing - Google Maps
Yahoo - Google Maps
Hotbot - Google Maps
Galaxy - Antiquariat Reinhold Berg
Lycos - Google Maps
Alexa - Mapquest

(search engines delegating to any of the above have been omitted, unless I didn't know they delegate)

I put it to you that Google's ownership of Google Maps is not the reason they put Google Maps at the top of their results list.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Cederic]

The EU has no jurisdiction of the .uk domain. Nominet is subject to UK law.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Cederic]

And is Microsoft in a similarly dominant market position to Google? No? Then antitrust legislation doesn't affect them. Exactly the same reason as Apple gets away with stuff that Microsoft can only dream of.

Legislating against someone for adopting standard practices within the market place had fucking well better change those practices for everybody.

Or is there some magical fucking market share at which Microsoft have to turn off their search engine functionality, where Yahoo have to get on their knees and beg, where Hotbot continues to do what it wants because it never actually gets used?

If everybody in a market place does something, the dominant player should not be penalised for doing the same thing. Especially when they happen to do it better than the rest.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Maps are not a 'separate market' from search results, anymore than advertisements or calculators are. Gates insisted IE was part of the OS because the definition of "market" underpins the abuse of market dominance. Gates was clearly wrong and cynically claiming convergence to leverage the monopoly. If Google was playing the same game they'd leverage search to force adoption of Chrome saying it was an "integral" part of the search experience, or some such...

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Cederic]

Thanks, that's the first useful response I've read.

The lack of straight URLs is a real pain, especially when the search result is a PDF document and you can't just copy the URL to send to a friend.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it's not always a good decision.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Pseudonym Authority]

MAC addresses are not sent over the internet. MAC addresses are not sent past the nearest router.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

So wait, lets take this to the level of brick and mortar stores...

If I own a store front (physical) that is 100% open to the public, I am not allowed to advertise my store brand as I choose fit?

Best Buy + Insignia is probably the best example. You have best buy almost everywhere, 100% open to anyone (and no one is forcing you to go in), but if they suddenly start putting up physical signs by the entrance about their new Insignia 55" TV that is illegal somehow?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Rich0]

I'm more than happy to have alternatives supported, and will likely try them.

What I don't want is for me to have some random less-useful service appear, just so that somebody can be happy that it isn't Google. Let me have the choice - I'm the consumer.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that it IS clear- the results are posted as ads, if they are paid for.

I am not sure why a co. that spend all its efforts on a business model is suddenly being questioned on the model itself. Just because they happen to be the most popular search engine.

I would like to see the EU force MS to ship a linux distribution branded as windows. Or even openoffice as ms office- I will take that !

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

It was an anti-trust issue even here in the US. A federal court ruled that m$ abused their monopoly but they merely received a slap on the wrist.

Moreover, it is a pattern of behaviour on the part of m$ towards competition. The result is here to see- in any market that they do not own or any competitor that they cannot roll over, they just cannot compete with.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Erh.... Why not same time make that Google needs to offer API for Microsoft and Yahoo so their web index is shown in Google web search?

I can not see anything wrong Google offering a SEARCH tool what Google is. If you are searching something like "new store here", I really want to know WHERE it is on map, not just the address.
And I don't really want to go check maps.google.com for that.

If I want Navteq maps, then I go to maps.bing.com and I check from there that.

Google doesn't need to show any content from others, because you need to go and type Google.com in first place to your address bar.

Microsoft Windows is forced to nearly every PC even today (some comes FreeDOS, few with Linux distribution) and Microsoft has total monopoly in most towns and big stores where 95% of people buy their PC.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

So, all in all, it looks like either a blatant cash grab by the EU, or a bullshit legal attack funded by the likes of Microsoft.

Because, you know, the EU and Microsoft have such a friendly history (think: DOJ/EU lawsuits against Microsoft). Of course in a way you're right - Microsoft paid billions in fines so I guess they are funding it.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you understand that anti-trust laws deal with monopolistic practices?

It doesn't matter. The OP was talking about a "monopoly". Those are his exact words. He chose them for a reason.

For me, I am much more interested in Anti-Monopoly, no matter how fanatical corporations or Congress may be to try and punish me:

This week, game players and enthusiasts from 40 countries will descend upon Las Vegas to compete in the Monopoly World Championship, held roughly every four years. The winner of the Hasbro Inc.-sponsored tournament will take home $20,580 -- the precise sum stashed in the title's make-believe bank.

But one man who is perhaps the game's most obsessive follower won't be attending.

Ralph Anspach, an 83-year-old economics professor, spent decades locked in a real-life battle with Monopoly and its corporate owners. The campaign dented his finances, sent him on a nationwide trek for intelligence and sparked a legal case that reached the steps of the Supreme Court.

Prof. Anspach's woes began with a real-life trademark fight for the right to sell his own game, called Anti-Monopoly. Along the way, he says he helped to publicize the little-known origins of the classic American game.

The official history of Monopoly, a version of which appears on Hasbro's Web site, describes how Charles B. Darrow developed Monopoly during the Great Depression. Parker Brothers, which was later acquired by Hasbro, bought the impoverished heater salesman's patent in 1935 and registered the Monopoly trademark. Since then, the company says, an estimated 750 million copies of Monopoly have been sold worldwide.

The Monopoly "legend," as Hasbro calls it, "is a corporate fairy tale," says Prof. Anspach, who argues that the company fails to acknowledge key players in the game's genesis.

Prof. Anspach flew across the country more than a dozen times to research the game's origins. His logic: If he could prove that Monopoly was widely played as a folk game decades before the Darrow patent, then he could argue that his game didn't infringe on Parker Brothers' trademark.

The real story, he says, began in 1904 with a patent from a Quaker named Elizabeth Magie. Her invention, "The Landlord's Game," spread as a folk game, designed to show the downsides of capitalism. The Atlantic City Quaker School simplified it, making it more accessible to children. Game historians widely believe that this simpler version was later shown to Mr. Darrow by a friend in the early 1930s.

In an email response, a Hasbro spokeswoman said that "any information about the origins of the Monopoly game comes from the memories of people other than Darrow recorded long after the event." She noted that "Magie and her game are discussed in Phil Orbanes' book, 'The MONOPOLY Companion,' which was licensed by Hasbro."

Staid board games inspire high drama for a reason. Even in the worst economic times, titles such as Monopoly, Operation, Scrabble and others -- most of them owned by Hasbro -- tend to fare well. U.S. sales of board games rose 8% from August 2008 to August 2009, according to data from NPD Group, a market-research company. Hasbro, which doesn't release sales for individual game titles, said earnings rose 8.8% in the third quarter from a year earlier.

Prof. Anspach played his first game of Monopoly as a child in the mid-1930s in Czechoslovakia. In 1938, his family fled Europe to America on the cusp of the Holocaust. Years later, he earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and began teaching at San Francisco State University.

One day in the 1970s, Prof. Anspach tried to explain oil cartels and the downside of monopolies to his 8-year-old son, William. The economist searched toy stores for a more philosophically pleasing alternative to Monopoly, but found nothing.

He then set out to create a game that would be a sort of "Monopoly backwards," in which players compete to break up existing monopolies rather than creat

Re:nonsensical allegations

[phayes]

You really need to pay more attention to what the EU has been saying. The EU has already admitted to being against google being able to promote other google services through the search site. Full stop, no qualifiers. Thus the EU doesn't care whether or not the secondary sites are the best match to the search terms, google returning their own services is being presented as being an abuse in and of itself.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti trust and monopoly have always been fear mongering tools of those who actually do seek non-competitive forced association privileges. Those anti trusts cases have always been less competent but well connected businessmen ganging up on the most productive industry leader. Justification for regulation as a foil for monopoly omits the fact that monopoly is a function of protectionism.

Even disregarding the historical facts, we can recognize these actions by the EU as pure evil just through simple reasoning: it is such insane doublethink to witness an institution with a monopoly on the permitted use of violence pointing fingers at a peaceful organization that voluntarily offers its services. It would be less ridiculous if a mass murderer went on a moral crusade against some kid who racked up virtual kills in some video game. The fact that so many people accept this madness at face value makes me feel like I am in the twilight zone. I guess it is a testament to the power of officiousness; if a large enough and powerful enough institution spams these kinds of mentally contorted ideas over and over again, they have so completely dominated the framing of even the most basic ideas that people can't even think about these things on the axis of truth, let alone find the right solution. I imagine it would be like witnessing people argue over the way in which to beat their wives or whip their slaves or spank their children so as to achieve compliance; it so entirely goes down an insane route of investigation that the truth isn't even possible to be sought out let alone found. It is no different than wondering what sort of legal action to take against google and it is pure evil.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[SolitaryMan]

US.

Top result for me is Wikipedia page for beer. (not surprised here at all, my primary use of google is to search for wikipedia articles), then some beer news (WTF) then some places nonsense and then some results I don't understand what they are (didn't bother clicking through). Sam Adams was on the first page though.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[SolitaryMan]

Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

Re:nonsensical allegations

[thegarbz]

False. As long as you don't have a dominant position and aren't engaged in anti-competitive practices.

Simply being the biggest is no cause for an anti-trust suit when alternatives are freely available. Microsoft was forced to give other browsers the same chance as IE because it was impossible to buy a computer without Windows on it, the very definition of being anti-competitive. Yet there's nothing stopping someone from typing www.bing.com into their address bar.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is, if Google is just using an algorithmic search method, and it happens to select their own sites because they are popular in their own right and legitimate results, they're not doing anything wrong?

Yes.

All Google need to do is show this is the case.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

And if they weren't breaking the law, why would they have had to change their practices to satisfy the FTC, again?

Re:nonsensical allegations

[chrismcb]

Fine, but when you go to GOOGLE and search for MAPS...don't piss and moan when the first result that comes up is Google Maps. Not only are they the most popular mapping service by a mile, but it is owned and promoted by GOOGLE...the search engine you are using at the time. Of course Google is going to put a little map in your results and say "Hey, we've got this map service...".

This was a very bad example.
go to bing and search for maps... you get google maps
go to duckduckgo and search for maps, and you get google maps
go to goole and search for maps, and you get google maps, WITH no indication that google is saying "hey we have a map service"
As far as "using it as an address bar" what if I'm using chrome? My address and search bar are one and the same

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Which in turn is subject to European law.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't bother. After nearly 500 years the average American still hasn't mastered English yet.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[chrismcb]

What the hell do they mean by "diverting traffic", and why would it not be allowed?

It looks like they're talking about doing stuff like including results from Google Maps in your web search results (whilst not doing the same for results from Bing Maps, etc.).

Searching for Maps in Google gives me, Google Maps, Mapquest, some lock map stores and Bing maps 9th.
Searching for Maps in Bing gives me Google Maps, Mapquest, and Bing maps in 5th.(well to be honest, bing maps is 5th, but a local map using bing is 3rd)
Ohhh the horror, and shame on Google for providing some local map stores! If it wasn't for the 6 local stores, bing would be 3rd. Maybe if bing was more popular it would be placed higher. Shoot it is at best 3rd in Microsoft's own search.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Bengie]

The EU just want things to be fair across the board here. That simply means that Google shouldn't give their own products special treatment compared to similar products from other vendor.

I'm pretty sure that's what Google is already doing. EU wants something else.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[hawkingradiation]

So, where does Google state that all of its results are algorithmically generated? Obviously they are not because sometimes when I go to google.com on a non-Chrome browser, I get a link advertising "download Chrome" which is there because google wants it to be there. Did you sign an agreement with Google that states that "all results we will provide to you on the condition that they are algorithmically generated". Quit your whining and accept the fact that it is Google's search engine, and they can put whatever links they want. If they are putting pay-per-link links, then they will be damaging there own product, then people can go and use something else. When you assume you make an ass out of u and me.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[hkmwbz]

Google has a web search monopoly. You don't need 100% market share to be a monopoly according to law. Nor is being a monopoly illegal in itself. Abusing that monopoly is illegal.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[hkmwbz]

Oh yes, the EU dos indeed have authority over google.com. If Google wants to keep doing business in the EU, one of the most profitable areas in the world, they will have to comply with EU rules and regulations.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[hkmwbz]

If they are doing cash grabs from American companies, they are doing a very crappy jobs at it. The amount of cash from American companies is tiny compared to European companies being held responsible for anti-competitive practices.

If your completely idiotic conspiracy theory was to hold water, one would expect American companies to make up a significant portion of the companies fined for anti-competitive practices in the EU.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

From reading TFA, it appears that the EU kangaroo court that constantly attacks Google serves one purpose: US bashing. Anti-American sentiment is popular, justifies the EU's existence, and gives them funding. Instead of cleaning their own house, going after the evil American companies is always a hit with the populace, and Google or Motorola is an easy target.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Search and Maps are not products that Google sells to users. Rather, they are tools that Google purchases to help acquire more of their product - the end users - so they can sell this product to their customers - advertisers. Google found it cheaper to build their own tools rather than pay for another tool like Bing.

The other major map tools are simply there to provide added value for other walled gardens - Microsoft's Bing maps is Bing and Apple's Maps supports iPhone and iPad devices. In this anti-trust mitigation phase would Google be forced to enable use of Bing maps? Would Microsoft be forced to let Google use Bing maps for a reasonable price, or would Microsoft be allowed to use Google maps for a reasonable price? I don't think any of the major players in Maps software even want to touch each other's products or let their products be touched. Would Google's ultra-simplistic homepage be cluttered with ballot boxes? I do not see a solution here that makes any sense.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Both the European Union and Google's own American Government said that they were breaking the law.

Google is based in the country of Ireland, not in the United States.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

First Google does have a monopoly, However, the type of monopoly Google has can't be avoided. It's called a natural monopoly, the same kind your power company has. The only crime Google is guilty of is not holding back, when they began gathering users from other search engines they didn't purposely skew their results to let the other search engines keep their user base. It's the equivalent of saying the when people began buying their product they didn't purposely make it worse so that their competitors products would continue to sell. it's not Google's job to make sure that other companies products are competitive. This is like penalizing Google for doing a good job.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the basis of your argument. But IE is NOT the most popular web browser anymore. Chrome is.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you can fucking pay Google for the tool they provide. Until you do that, you can quit your fucking whining about it not being exactly how you want it.

Re:nonsensical allegations

[q.kontinuum]

Hm. You do have some valid points (I live in Germany, visited France once in a while, and most people on the streets are rather uncomfortable speaking English. Also many people using goolge are looking websites in their own country, be it governmental websites, offices, local shops, or even web shops - for some legal reasons many web-shops like e.g. Amazon have country-specific versions, which are obviously in the country specific language as well. Therefore even those who are able to communicate fluently in English will use google.de when looking for these things in German.)

But I'm afraid glorifying yourself as fighter for tolerance and warnings not to anger you won't help your credibility, nor the rating of your post...

Re:No google for u!

[FireFury03]

The EU apparently don't need the internet.

Yes, because the Internet doesn't exist without Google... </sarcasm>

Remember Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this going to be the same ridiculous thing as the last one with Internet Explorer?

Re:Remember Microsoft

[mumblestheclown]

the only difference will be that because google is a company that slashdotters like (google) as opposed to one they don't (ms), they will argue against the EU in this case. not because of principle, mind you.

Re:Remember Microsoft

[Nerdfest]

Well, either that or they're wrong, or being lobbied by Google's competitors as happened in the US. Regardless, there's no problem with them looking into their behaviour, although I would suggest a few other companies that are deserving of an examination as well.

Re:Remember Microsoft

[serviscope_minor]

People like you kinda annoy me at times.

You like to think you're above everyone else, the hive mind or whatever and are in the know and superior and etc.

Then you post this:

company that slashdotters like (google)

If you pulled your head out of your ass and actually read the comments instead of sewing in your own superiority, you would notice that there has been pleny of dislike for google on slashdot recently.

Re:Remember Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because its a site we use (Google), we are worried that they will make it even crappier than it already is. Some people are already suggesting that they should be forced to include Bing results (e.g. results from Bing Maps), and for those of us that still use Google (others use Duckduckgo or Bing), we are doing so because we don't want Bing results. Nobody uses Google because the results are good, because they haven't been for years. People use Google because the competitors results are even worse.

If I wanted Bing results, I would go to bing.com. Tried that, didn't like it. So I still go to Google to get my non-Bing search results.

I'm regreting the death of other search engines

[Grayhand]

I'm into Heirloom fruit and vegetable seeds. After the first of the year I noticed a shocking change in search results. Most heirloom seed companies will give you a list of a list of one to four dozen results for things like bean seeds, Some sites are two to four times that. Some heirloom seed companies are over a hundred years old and most are over a decade old. These are people that grow their own seed and know the subject. Since the first of the year I find the first few pages of search results are what I call scam sites. These are businesses that buy in bulk and sell to yuppies. A year ago the first two pages were virtually all legit sources with maybe one company that bulk sells in the results. Companies that had been in business since the 1800s were showing up on page two or three of the search results. Basically the scam sites were paying a bundle to show up on the first few pages in the search results. I panicked and emailed myself my bookmarks so I could find my favorite websites no matter what happened. Heirloom seeds have become a profitable business so only the ones willing and able to pay the Google search tax even show up on the search results. You may have had a million web hits last year but this year you are five pages in because some start up paid Google to front their site. As a Google user I'm furious and considering any and all options but most of the sheep will simply use the sites willing to pay the blood money to Google. The web is rapidly becoming a place where corporate scam sites are the norm and anyone expecting more is a fool! Just sad to see search engines reduced to advertising and little more.

Re:I'm regreting the death of other search engines

[Anonymous Coward]

Some companies are doing "Google optmization". It is one reason why Google do not want to give too much information on their ranking system but unfortunatly some people are smart and some technics to skew the results are pretty well know. Google is improving all the time his ranking system but the bad guy are fast to update how to cheat also. I will not put the blame on Google on this point.

Re:I'm regreting the death of other search engines

[flabbergast]

These are businesses that buy in bulk and sell to yuppies.
Heirloom seeds have become a profitable business so only the ones willing and able to pay the Google search tax even show up on the search results.

Lets not be so hasty to jump to the conclusion that Basically the scam sites were paying a bundle to show up on the first few pages in the search results.. You stated that those businesses are selling to yuppies and heirloom seeds have become a profitable business. This would indicate to me that yuppies have jumped into your niche, which you are very knowledgeable about. But, isn't it just as reasonable to jump to the conclusion that a large number of what you call "yuppies" have decided those "scam sites" are legit and have been posting images and links to their product all over on Pinterest, Google Plus, Facebook, tumblr, etc, etc? And that's driven those up the rankings? That those you deride as "yuppies" are really driving this new interest in seeds and therefore because of their far reaching followings on Pinterest, drive the search results? In essence, all those "sheep" are actually driving the results now rather you. Google may not have sold out, rather your voice has been drowned out.

Re:I'm regreting the death of other search engines

[Guppy]

I panicked and emailed myself my bookmarks so I could find my favorite websites no matter what happened. Heirloom seeds have become a profitable business so only the ones willing and able to pay the Google search tax even show up on the search results.

Any chance you'd be willing to share those links you've got bookmarked? My father's into gardening and he might be interested. Plus maybe a few links from Slashdot might boost their rankings ever so slightly, especially if people here also bookmark and Google +1 them.

Re:I'm regreting the death of other search engines

[MyKal_White]

Can you email you bookmarks to me?

Re:I'm regreting the death of other search engines

[MyKal_White]

After consideration, your hypothesis seems unlikely, although there is no way to prove or disprove it.

Re:I'm regreting the death of other search engines

[Lehk228]

Go away paid bing shill. Google does not accept cash to raise search positions

Re:I'm regreting the death of other search engines

[MyKal_White]

unfortunatly some people are smart and some technics

Yes, if only there were more smart and technics people around...

Re:I'm regreting the death of other search engines

[knarf]

Uh, nice try but no cigar.

A few things:

because some start up paid Google to front their site

That is not the way Google works... and you actually know it isn't so why say it in the first place?

most of the sheep will simply use the sites willing to pay the blood money to Google

You are seriously starting to show your colours here...

You know what? If all what you say is true there is an easy way out. Just search for those things on Bing. Or Yahoo. Or DuckDuckGo. Or Baidu. Or any of the other search sites - there are plenty after all.

What? You get the same scam sites listed first there? Then surely those scammers have paid off Microsoft, Yahoo/Microsoft, those idealists behind the Duck site and even the Chinese government as well. Ghee, I never knew there was so much money to be made in selling Heirloom seeds...

Of course the *real* story here is that you came to this site with a mission. That mission was to spew garbage about Google. Someone paid you to do that, yes? Might that someone be connected to, say, that other search engine I mentioned? The one with the funny 4-letter name? Run by a company well-known for the shenanigans you accuse others off?

Re:I'm regreting the death of other search engines

[heypete]

I was under the impression that money paid to Google was for the advertisements at the top or side of search results, and did not affect the position in the search index.

It's more likely that the shady sides are doing sneaky things like SEO that result in higher listings. Google tends to frown on this and have seriously penalized sites in the past for doing sneaky SEO stuff and it's only a matter of time until they refine things further.

Google has a vested interest in you finding what you're looking for: if you don't find what you're looking for, you're less likely to come back to Google in the future and see their ads.

Re:I'm regreting the death of other search engines

[phantomfive]

This isn't a problem of paid search results, Google doesn't do that.

The problem you are describing is a direct result of the rise of SEO, and it's a darn shame. But it happens with all search engines.

Serious?

[Aeros]

These are just two guys running a simple home grown search engine in their dorm room in college. Give these poor guys a break. Freakin' EU!

EU'S MAN IN CHARGE !!: BEN DOVER !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks a bit like Tex, too !!

Occam's Razor

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively, those 'scam' sites may do what they do- a great deal of search engine optimization. It was merely a niche market that isn't re-spidered and indexed very often and it's turn came up at the first of the year, no doubt along with many other niche search terms. The index was updated and tada! now all those old, reputable, and not very SEO savvy businesses get to go for a swim in the search results while the modernized middlemen rise to the top.

Re:Strange thing

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not like having a non-banned Youtube account.

Re:Thanks Government

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 8 (!) Internet access providers where I live, all of whom provide cheap uncapped bandwidth.

Not one of my friends in the US has more than 3 and none of the ones I talk to on a regular basis has access to cheap uncapped bandwidth.

I can buy any mobile handset and use with any carrier. I buy a "Samsung" or a "Nokia" not a "T-mobile" handset.

The reason we have this freedom is because we take free markets a bit more seriously than you colonials do and we actually enforce the freedom of the market, something a free market is incapable of doing itself (although it does a number of other things very well).

Free markets are not free by virtue of design. They are kept free by regulation.

Re:No google for u!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bing is useless.

Re:No google for u!

[Thantik]

The internet still exists, it's just awfully hard to find.

Just like Apple v Samsung and the USA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the government wants to give it to a private company rather than reduce tax burdens to everyone.

Google should start supporting web search again

[kasperd]

Web search was Google's primary business, which is why they stopped doing it. Sounds strange? Nevertheless that is roughly what happened.

Initially there was google.com, and it was a web search engine. Later Google started introducing other kinds of searches, which would be hosted on subpages/subdomains of google.com. Since web search was the primary business, it remained on the front page.

At some point Google thought it would be good for the users if they could type in their search query in one place and get merged results from all of the different kinds of search, which Google is offering. That was introduced a few years ago, and it was considered such a great idea, that it would go on the front page, displacing the web search.

All the other kinds of search still had their own URLs, on which the individual kind of search could be used. But Google websearch never had such a page in the first place, because it had been on the front page. So now Google is no longer offering websearch alone.

Google should reintroduce the websearch on a subdomain like web.google.com or similar. And it should also introduce a subdomain for the merged search like everything.google.com (or something shorter). Having those existing as separate pages allowing you to search them separately is both a service to the users, who sometimes want to search specific kind of content, and also clears up some of the confusion leading to stories like this one.

Once those two kind of searches each have their own page, the remaining question is which of them users should see when they just go to google.com. At that point authorities will sound even more stupid, once they come and say, you are not allowed to show all search results from the front page, only web search. But it would be less of a problem for Google to comply, because even if it does comply, the search page with all results, which users prefer, will still exist on a slightly longer URL.

While they are at it. I think they should also introduce ads.google.com or something like that, where you can go if you specifically want to search in ads. Payment rules should be slightly different for such a page. A larger percentage of users are likely to click on an ad on such a page, and the price per click should be adjusted down accordingly. Additionally those are users who want to see the ads, and thus should be shown any appropriate ads, even if the advertiser is out of budget.

Re:Google should start supporting web search again

[jafiwam]

Web search was what they did for a while.

The goal always has been, and will be, showing ads and getting companies to pay them to show ads.

Everything else follows from that. The search is not the product, the eyeball using the search is.

Re:Google should start supporting web search again

[coofercat]

That's not what this is about at all.

Google can do whatever they want on their search results. However, they're *not* allowed to (say) push Maps at the expense of Bing and others, solely because of their dominant position in search.

Someone like, duckduckgo can push duckMaps all they want (if there was such a thing) - hell, they completely remove bing.com from their results, whilst pushing duckMaps on every single search result if they want. That's okay because they're not dominant in search.

Whilst this case isn't without its controversy, the regulators are actually a lot clever than you seem to give them credit. Their aim here is not to kill off successful products, but instead to ensure that the end users always get left with a choice. The Microsoft case gives a good example - it didn't stop Windows being sold in any way, but it did give users a choice of which browser they were going to get (how effective that really was is up for debate, I'll grant you).

Re:Google should start supporting web search again

[Sockatume]

I'm not sure what you want them to do with ads. They can't make ordinary Search ad-free because ads on the search parge are where almost all of their money comes from.

Re:Google should start supporting web search again

[swillden]

Web search was what they did for a while.

The goal always has been, and will be, showing ads and getting companies to pay them to show ads.

Everything else follows from that. The search is not the product, the eyeball using the search is.

This is actually precisely backwards from how Google employees and the company leadership -- all the way up to the CEO -- see it.

Google started as an idea for searching the web, implemented on donated and scrounged hardware in a dorm room and using the university's Internet connection. Eventually traffic rose to a point where it was causing problems for Stanford, so it had to move out, which meant it had to find a way to fund itself. The founders were opposed to using advertising as the revenue source, but couldn't find anything else workable. Even then they didn't find advertising acceptable until they realized that advertising can be useful to the user, if it's relevant and not obnoxious.

That attitude is still what drives Google. The goal is all of the products that users use. When new ideas come up, the first question is whether or not it's cool and will improve peoples' lives. Whether or not there's a way to monetize it comes up much later. Of course, if there isn't a way for it to be profitable Google probably won't do it, because the bills have to be paid, but generally any product that's sufficiently useful to a sufficiently large number of people will have some way of paying for itself and generating a profit. Advertising is a monetization approach that works for many products, doesn't create a large barrier to usage, and often creates revenues that grow naturally alongside usage (and therefore cost), so it's widely used.

The point, though, is that products are the goal, and advertising is (usually) the means.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not as a spokesperson. The above reflects my view of the company's motivations from my perspective inside the company, but is not any sort of an official position.)

Re:Google should start supporting web search again

[swillden]

He's proposing a service that searches only for ads. Regular search would still include ads as it does now, but this other notional service would not include any web search results, just ads. I could see myself using that from time to time when I'm looking to buy something.

Re:Google should start supporting web search again

[kasperd]

Google can do whatever they want on their search results. However, they're *not* allowed to (say) push Maps at the expense of Bing and others, solely because of their dominant position in search.

When you type a search on google.com, it will perform a search in both Google websearch and in Google Maps (as well as other Google search engines) and merge the results together as a single result page. Some say doing this is pushing Google Maps at the expense of Bing.

As far as I know Google does not have a feature allowing users to chose to get results from Google websearch mixed with search results from Bing Maps. I don't even know if Bing has an API that would permit this in the first place. Moreover Google wouldn't be able to give guarantees about the reliability of such a service. My guess is that if such a construction was ever introduced, Bing would frequently fail to provide an answer within the very strict latency limits that Google enforces internally. The result would be that the Bing Maps search results would frequently disappear from the search results because they simply hadn't arrived before the result page was sent to the user. That would in turn lead to people making up stories about Google applying censorship on Bing Maps results.

The same sort of timeout issue could also happen with search results from Google Maps. But it is less likely due to both services being hosted within the same production environment. There are actually Site Reliability Engineers at Google responsible for dealing with such situations, and they have access to loads of detailed timing information that will allow them to pinpoint the cause of any such problems and fix them. Doing the same across two different production environments run by two different companies can never achieve the same level of transparency for the people running the systems. And I can assure you that the Site Reliability Engineers at Google don't want to be bothered every 15 minutes with reports of results not being delivered within the deadline, when they have no way of pinpointing the cause of the problem let alone do something about it.

In short if Google search wanted to display Bing Maps results on equal terms with Google Maps results, then Microsoft would need to hand over all the data to Google such that the Bing Maps search could be executed within the Google production environment. I don't think either company want that to happen.

So is a product, which merges Google websearch results with Google Maps results, allowed to exist in the first place?

Re:Google should start supporting web search again

[kasperd]

They can't make ordinary Search ad-free because ads on the search parge are where almost all of their money comes from.

Of course I am not suggesting that they remove all ads from their free products. I know that is not realistic, and in most cases those ads are actually relevant. (With the exception of most of the ads in YouTube, which are very obnoxious.)

I was suggesting that in addition to their current ad placements, they have a service where you can search only in ads. That service is obviously not going to have as many users as their primary search. But it is a service that would not require many users to be profitable.

People who choose to go and search in just ads are much more likely to click on an ad, than users who use the standard search. As such the price per click doesn't have to be nearly as high in that section. Queries that on the front page would get only a single ad could give a lot more results in the ads only section. In that section the page should display all the matching ads (up to 10 per page) regardless of how low their bids are. Minimum prices per click shouldn't apply in that section, so the lowest bid (placing in the last position of the results) would actually get the clicks for free, if users choose to click it.

In other words, in that section lack of budget from the advertiser shouldn't prevent their page from being reached by a user, who is truly interested in following that ad.

That suggestion isn't very related to the thread. The only connection is that both my websearch suggestion and my adssearch suggestion involve creating a new subdomain for the specialized search. Though there may be users interested in being able to do a websearch without any ads at all, I don't think there are enough who are really willing to pay for it. And personally, I wouldn't even want such a page, even if I could get it for free. I like having the ads on the search page, though I would prefer if they'd all be moved back to their original location to the right of the search results.

Re:Google should start supporting web search again

[tlhIngan]

Even then they didn't find advertising acceptable until they realized that advertising can be useful to the user, if it's relevant and not obnoxious.

... not anymore. You do realize that Google owns most of the advertising market on the Web, and not just through Google AdSense, but through ownership of such fine ad purveyors like DoubleClick, too right? And DoubleClick is well known for their obnoxious ads.

And there are more ad companies Google owns -so while Google AdSense may be least obnoxious of them all, Google effectively makes money on obnoxious ones as well - companies well known for blinky/flashy/popunder/popups/noisy ads. Of course, they don't do business as Google, and Google branding is kept away from them for obvious reasons, but still owned by Google.

Re:Google should start supporting web search again

[Aighearach]

That's what google product search was, until a few months ago, but it got very little use and so they changed it to a store where companies pay to have their products listed.

Re:Google should start supporting web search again

[swillden]

That's what google product search was, until a few months ago, but it got very little use and so they changed it to a store where companies pay to have their products listed.

That's not exactly the same thing, in my mind. In fact, I'd say that what it changed to is closer to an ad search than what it was before.

Re:Google should start supporting web search again

[swillden]

Cite? I'm not saying you're wrong, but my understanding is that Doubleclick has been forced to tone down the obnoxiousness of its ads.

Re:No google for u!

[FireFury03]

The internet still exists, it's just awfully hard to find.

I know this might be hard to believe, but Google isn't the only search engine...

Re:No google for u!

[TheRaven64]

I've been using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for about 18 months. If it can't find what I need, I try Google. In the last year, Google has only once found something that DDG didn't find. If Google decided to pull out of the EU, I think it would hurt them a lot more than it would hurt us...

Re:No google for u!

[iserlohn]

If you use DuckDuckGo, you might as well just go to the source and use Bing.

I did test your keywords and they give google 1st

[aepervius]

email in google :

https://www.google.de/search?q=email&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

first result :
Gmail: Email from Google
mail.google.com/ - Cached
10+ GB of storage, less spam, and mobile access. Gmail is email that's intuitive, efficient, and useful. And maybe even fun. âZGmail - âZSign up - âZWelcome to Gmail - âZMobile
second link: Email - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

definitively an ads for google email

web browser give me wiki first , opera second chrome 3rd. then a shitload of web laden site like cnet, then at the second page firefox. How comes the popular browser is so far behind ?

maps google maps appear first twice wiki third only :
Google Maps maps.google.de/ - Cached - Similar Karten anzeigen und lokale Firmen im Internet suchen. Google Maps maps.google.com/ - Cached - Similar Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps. âZStreet View - âZMaps for mobile - âZGoogle Maps API - âZMaps Help Map - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I call that preferential treatment.

Keep on dreaming

[dutchwhizzman]

Google has a profile on you and they have your android device(s) and your home ISP perfectly matched up to that. Even if you don't own android and don't have a google account, they have a "virtual profile" on you. Not only that, but even if you never use google services even as an anonymous user, they probably have your home address and telephone number in their database, including an IP address for your home computer. Yes, thank the people you gave that information to that put it in their android device, which get synced, how conveniently, to Google's cloud.

Google may not be actively telling that they have this information nicely catalogued available to themselves. They may not even have all their internal applications linked exactly this way, but we all know it would be trivial for them to come up with the queries to produce the information I just described. Once there's profit in doing so, they most certainly will do it in a heartbeat. Since several large companies (the "Target knows you're pregnant" article comes to mind) have already admitted they profile their customers/users this way, it'd be very unrealistic for Google not to do this. If even a grocery store can make money on this, a company that makes their money on selling user demographics would most certainly profit from virtual profiles and linking based on probability.

Re:Keep on dreaming

[Aighearach]

If they're not telling us what information they have nicely cataloged... how did you know? Did the aliens tell you? We all know it would be trivial for them to know about it.

Re:Keep on dreaming

[Pseudonym Authority]

Oh my god! Google is allowed to have access logs and keep the data that is sent to them by android? When will this madness end!?

Ordering a Big Mac at Burger King?

[louic]

If I go to Burger King, should I complain that they don't have a Big Mac on the menu? When I go to Google, I go there because I WANT a Google Maps result!

Re:Ordering a Big Mac at Burger King?

[FireFury03]

If I go to Burger King, should I complain that they don't have a Big Mac on the menu?
When I go to Google, I go there because I WANT a Google Maps result!

I don't. I go to Google because I want relevant results. I don't want to have to redo my search on several sites because they are all arrogant enough to each consider their own services to always be the most relevant results.

Re:Ordering a Big Mac at Burger King?

[zafayar]

If you think that google is not doing a good enough job of providing your the most relevent results, you are free to go where ever else you want. You are also free to build your own search engine that will give you "relevent" results for yourself. I just dont get the "entitlement" that you think that you have on something you have not build, not paid for and are not forced to use. It's their castle and hence their rules - if you dont like it, get out and never come back.

Re:Ordering a Big Mac at Burger King?

[FireFury03]

If you think that google is not doing a good enough job of providing your the most relevent results, you are free to go where ever else you want. You are also free to build your own search engine that will give you "relevent" results for yourself. I just dont get the "entitlement" that you think that you have on something you have not build, not paid for and are not forced to use.

Hold on there, when did I say I was entitled to anything? The original poster said "when I go to Google I want $foo" and I replied with "when I go to Google I want $bar" - neither of us said we were entitled to either $foo or $bar, we just expressed what we wanted out of the service. No different from someone saying "I want cheaper bandwidth from my ISP" or "I want a cup of tea" - they aren't saying they are entitled to it, they are just saying what they would *like*.

It's their castle and hence their rules - if you dont like it, get out and never come back.

It is indeed - I don't make their rules. Similarly, they are playing in the EU's castle and hence need to abide by the EU's rules. If they don't like it they can get out and never come back.

Re:Ordering a Big Mac at Burger King?

[Anonymous Coward]

And when people bought a Windows PC it was because they WANTED all the bundled software that came with it.

If they didn't, then they would have just bought a Mac or something, right?

Re:Ordering a Big Mac at Burger King?

[phorm]

So if you want Bing maps, go there and use that mapping service. How is Google supposed to determine who has the most relevant results on a map system?

Re:No google for u!

[sacrilicious]

Not according to DuckDuckGo itself. If you have citations to offer, I'd be curious to see them.

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[Doctor_Jest]

When I search web browser, I get the wikipedia entry, Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari in that order. I found it strange that I had Firefox as my 3rd entry, but then again, I am running Iceweasel (Debian). If I were to search "web browser" from Chrome, would I want an ad for Chrome at the top? Search engines are smarter these days. :) Not too smart, though.

Your search habits give you these results, I'm guessing. They're different for everyone, so that means they aren't giving preferential treatment... unless you mean preferential treatment to your tastes.

Re:No google for u!

[sacrilicious]

ixquick is also excellent, and very privacy minded.

Re:No google for u!

[Bengie]

Too bad DDG doesn't track me like Google does. I get much better results from Google because it tracks me and integrates into gmail and G+. I don't see it as much as a privacy concern as much as I do an optimization. Data collected from tracking is highly relevant to my search results.

Why use Google directly?

[L4t3r4lu5]

I understand that this is probably regarding Google directing people to their own services when searching for competitors (Google+ when searching for Facebook, for example), but I'm going to take the opportunity to go off-topic and mention two providers who use Google results without giving them tracking information.

https://www.duckduckgo.com/
https://www.startpage.com/

The results are slightly off sometimes, but that only goes to show that Google really does its profiling of you very, very well indeed.

Re:Why use Google directly?

[Anonymous Coward]

except that it doesnt, as is very easily testable. searching for facebook on google gives me the facebook site first, the rest of the hits on the first page are all about facebook (wikipedia, ..). There is no link to google+ at all in the results.
I find this worrying. I (and a lot of people) use google because we think they are doing a good job on the search results. I would hate to see this messed up, because of some crappy competitors whining that they are not placed wel in the ranking, and EU listening to them.

Good questions versus being uninformed

[golodh]

Like most slashdot articles, this one doesn't exactly help you understand what's going on. Unless you click on the links, read the articles referred to, and do a little research on things that remain unclear.

So, like most of us, you don't know. Fair enough, but please don't confuse your lack of background knowledge and your failure to do any background research for being able to tell whether or not the allegations are "nonsensical".

A few second's Googling would have given you this link: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-responds-to-eu-antitrust-concerns-2012-07-02 which explains the term "diverting users". The ZDnet article the slashdot article links to is simply unclear about the matter, I agree with you there. The terms seems to mean: redirecting users looking for a specific topic to Google's own "vertical" search engines, thereby throttling traffic to competing vertical search engines. That in itself could be an issue for a search engine provider, especially if it doesn't clearly mark such results as 'advertising our own services'.

In addition not even the article refers to "monopoly", which Google hasn't; instead it refers to "dominant market position", which it definitely has.

At the latest since the mainstream media coverage of SCO versus IBM and SCO versus NOVELL, people ought to know that what an article claims isn't always a reliable indicator of what the ones being quoted actually said.

So: why not either go to the actual text of the Financial Times interview and base your "it looks like" opinion on that?

So it looks like it's a little early in the day to bandy words like "blatant cash grab" about, yes?

Google isn't a public utility

[gelfling]

The EU doesn't seem capable of grasping that.

Re:Google isn't a public utility

[Sockatume]

I don't think you understand what antitrust law is for.

Re:Google isn't a public utility

[gelfling]

So in Europe when you buy a cell phone is the vendor required to push every other brand at you particularly the ones they don't sell in the name of fairness? How about when you buy an airline ticket? Is the airline required to highlight all the OTHER airlines tickets ahead oi their own? If yes then that's fine.

Re:Google isn't a public utility

[Anonymous Coward]

So in Europe when you buy a cell phone is the vendor required to push every other brand at you particularly the ones they don't sell in the name of fairness? How about when you buy an airline ticket? Is the airline required to highlight all the OTHER airlines tickets ahead oi their own? If yes then that's fine.

No because they haven't market domination.

We should be worried

[ctrl-alt-canc]

One day they will investigate Slashdot as a site that focuses web traffic on specific targets, instead of diverting it.

Re:No google for u!

[Anonymous Coward]

They're the only one worth using. Bing is a joke.

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me try that.

Web Browser
1: Wikipedia article "Web Browser"
2: Wikipedia article "List of Web Browsers"
3: Web Browsers Downloads for Windows - CNET Download.com
4: Opera
5: .Net documentation (System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser class)
6: Firefox
7: whatbrowser.org
8: Python documentation (webbrowser module)
9: Webopedia definition of "browser"
10: browserchoice.eu

So we have a mix of information about web browsers in general and links to some of the most popular ones, with no mention of Chrome at all on the first page.

I repeated with "email" and "maps" and got exactly the same types of results except this time Google's service was the first result each time, which makes sense because it's by far the most popular so for it not to be there would make me suspect tampering of the results. But Google Maps and gmail get mentioned only once, followed by links to their major competitors and wikipedia articles on the relevant topic.

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[aaron552]

It varies by region also. This is what I get for email, in order: hotmail, gmail, yahoo mail, bigpond mail (I live in Australia), wikipedia

For maps: Google Maps, whereis.com, NBN Co rollout map (Australian), travelmate.com.au, wikipedia

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[Anonymous Coward]

When I search for email, I get hotmail.com first, gmail second. If you insist on calling that preferential treatment, you're claiming that Google is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft.

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[CrimsonAvenger]

email in google :

And when I did a similar search, Yahoo's email came out on top. Gmail came in second. Wikipedia's article on email came in third.

No, I don't use Yahoo's email.

Nor do I use gmail.

Nor have I ever used either, for anything...

On the other hand, I do use wikipedia to look things up from time to time, so Google is OBVIOUSLY being paid by wikipedia to pad the results in their favour

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[CrimsonAvenger]

When I search web browser, I get the wikipedia entry, Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari in that order. I found it strange that I had Firefox as my 3rd entry

I get the same result for that search.

And I'm running Firefox, and have been for about as long as Firefox has been around.

Re:No google for u!

[MacGyver2210]

Well, I suppose you could use Bing, but Bing just steals results from Google anyway.

http://www.webpronews.com/cutts-last-time-i-checked-bing-was-still-using-google-as-a-signal-2012-09

Re:No google for u!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad DDG doesn't track me like Google does. I get much better results from Google because it tracks me and integrates into gmail and G+. I don't see it as much as a privacy concern as much as I do an optimization. Data collected from tracking is highly relevant to my search results.

Parent post should've been moderated "Funny", not "Interesting".

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[MacGyver2210]

definitively an ads for google email

I think you're confusing a search result for their product with an ad. Yes, they are promoting their email product: it happens to be the most popular free email service in the entire fucking world. Would you rather they put mail.com(ranked much lower in the world) first? How is that accurate and unbiased results? Let's also consider that the link you provided shows your browser type and encoding which gives even more information about you, that you're into FREE and OPEN SOURCE products, like Firefox. I would wager there is some part of the algorithm that takes that into account - otherwise why would it send that information? Try the search again on IE: does it bring up Hotmail first? Still google? Yahoo mail? What?

Let's consider Maps. Would you rather they put the 4th or 5th ranked sites like Mapquest or ads for mapping Apps for iPhones as the first result instead? They served you the world's most popular mapping service as the first two results. Seems correct to me.

If you want to criticize the internet, don't be a retard and learn how it works first. Of course if you go to Google, and search Maps, you will get... SHOCK Google Maps... Or if you go to Google... and search for Mail.... you will get SHOCK GMail(Google Mail)!

Nuts

[microbox]

No. If you go to google's web search and you search for a local business, amoungst all the search results, fairly near the top, it will give you a link to Google Maps showing you where that business is. It won't give you a link to bing maps, openstreetmap, etc.

That's because people like google maps. And they don't like bing maps, etc. Gee.... how do you tell a successful product from wanton abuse of the search system? That's that point. In my opinion, google maps is way better then bing maps, and integration into the search system is part of the search system. I'd expect Bing to do the same -- to add value to their services..

This isn't because google maps is more popular, its because google integrate their own mapping product with their search engine but don't integrate competing products with it. Google *could* provide an API to allow other services to integrate, but they don't.

And you know this because it sounds like a neat argument? Go learn something about what your talking about and get back to me.

Re:Nuts

[FireFury03]

That's because people like google maps. And they don't like bing maps, etc.

Do they? Personally, so long as I get the most relevant results to my query, I don't care where it comes from.

how do you tell a successful product from wanton abuse of the search system? That's that point. In my opinion, google maps is way better then bing maps, and integration into the search system is part of the search system. I'd expect Bing to do the same -- to add value to their services..

Well yes, that's the problem - it's a fuzzy line. Thats why the EU are *investigating* rather than just slapping them with a fine - its not clear cut and needs due consideration from the governing body, and negotiation with Google to come to a mutually satisfactory answer.

You can take the "how much integration is too much" to the extremes. Lets take an operating system vendor, for example: Is integrating a web browser into the OS "too much"? What about integrating anti-virus software and a firewall? What about integrating a top of the line word processor? How about integrating a professional quality photo editor? You can keep going and going - in the case of relatively small-time OS vendors, bundling all this stuff together is fine (indeed, most Linux distros do exactly this). On the other hand, if a company such as Microsoft started doing this, many would argue that they had completely crossed the line because they would have put a whole load of vendors out of business in one go purely because they are able to leverage their dominance in the OS market in order to encroach on all of these other markets.

Integration is good in the short term in terms of the user interface; but putting everyone out of business and ending up with a single megacorp in control of everything is very very bad in the long term. Historically the EU have shown that they are happy to create short term pain in order to protect the consumer in the long term.

And you know this because it sounds like a neat argument? Go learn something about what your talking about and get back to me.

Would you like to calmly explain what was wrong with my comment rather than just making vague attacks against me because I happen to have a world view that doesn't entirely line up with yours?

Re:No google for u!

[hEpen]

However this "optimization" can also lead to shallow, distorted view of what information you have immediate access to when searching.

I can't believe you trust a public corporation to create that bubble around you.

Re:No google for u!

[oldlurker]

Not according to DuckDuckGo itself. If you have citations to offer, I'd be curious to see them.

The first listed source on that page is Yahoo, which is Bing.

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[squiggleslash]

FWIW, my first Google search result on "email" was Yahoo Mail, which makes me wonder if Google randomizes the order of certain search results.

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[microbox]

Gmail comes up 5th for me, after a bunch of services that I've never seen before.

Next step: changing books' content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why only Google should be to change content of their website?
Make it possible to change content of already published books if someone says it should be written otherwise than the author thinks! Welcome to year 1984...

Re:No google for u!

[Runaway1956]

Google's tracking gives you good search results? Funny, I've found that permitting tracking often causes ridiculous search results. One of my purchases, for instance. I bought a scarf - nice wool scarf, long and wide, perfect for wrapping around your neck to cover the bare spot between your motorcycle helmet and your armored jacket. One of the tags associated with that scarf was "fashion".

As a result, I get various search results associated with "fashion", but I don't see "motorcycle" or "cold weather gear", or "wool", any any of dozens of more applicable things.

I may not be the very last guy you would ask about fashion, but I'm pretty damned close to whoever is last.

To be fair, I block a lot of tracking, including much of Google's own tracking. All the same, I have NEVER performed a search that included the "fashion" tag. Never, ever, ever, not once. I have done countless searches with the words wool, motorcycle, Honda, GL500, Twisted Twin, and more. I get no results in my everyday searches associated tith those terms, or others that I commonly use.

To be clear - those "fashion" hits never appeared on my search pages UNTIL I purchased that blue and white checkered scarf.

Re:No google for u!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad DDG doesn't track me like Google does. I get much better results from Google because it tracks me and integrates into gmail and G+. I don't see it as much as a privacy concern as much as I do an optimization. Data collected from tracking is highly relevant to my search results.

I guess that feature is useful if you have a one track mind.

All search engines distort

[DragonWriter]

However this "optimization" can also lead to shallow, distorted view of what information you have immediate access to when searching. I can't believe you trust a public corporation to create that bubble around you.

Any time you use any search engine, you are trusting a -- probably largely anonymous to you, whether or not its a public corporation -- outside party to populate an immediate-access bubble for you. The fact that the engine supplier doesn't use information about you doesn't stop it from being a shallow and distorted bubble, it just makes it less likely that the distortion aligns with your preferences.

Petition

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello
What about making a petition to support google? I like their services and I'm willing to support them.

To be honest I'm not sure if I, as an European citizen, don't trust Google more, then the EP, EK and EU as whole.

Re: No google for u!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the first listed source is duckduckgo's own bot

Re:Thanks Government

[CannonballHead]

Question - how do the different ISPs utilize the same infrastructure? Technically, I mean. Or are they all on different infrastructure, except perhaps for the "last mile" ?

Re:No google for u!

[hexagonc]

If only more people believed this. Then you couldn't accuse Google of having a monopoly since an alternative is merely a free click away.

Guilty until your rivals are "convinced" otherwise

[miltonw]

A response from the commissioner is understood to be imminent, after Almunia's office told Google in mid-December that it must convince its rivals that it competes fairly in the web search market or else it could - within months - face sanctions for alleged "abuse of dominance".

I found this statement very strange. Especially in light of the principle of "innocent until proven guilty". Apparently, the EU doesn't have to prove Google broke the law. Even stranger, the EU is not asking Google to prove that they didn't break the law.

No, it seems to be much worse. Google must "convince its rivals that it competes fairly" or face sanctions that its rivals desperately want.

It just boggles the mind.

Re:No google for u!

[FireFury03]

If only more people believed this. Then you couldn't accuse Google of having a monopoly since an alternative is merely a free click away.

I'm not accusing them of having a monopoly, nor is the EU. They are saying that Google is in a dominant position in the search market, which I don't think anyone is really disputing - they *are* in a dominant position for whatever reason, and that doesn't mean there are no/few alternatives, it means that not many people are using the alternatives.

Furthermore, the EU is investigating the possibility that Google is leveraging their dominant position in the search market to give them an unfair advantage in other markets, which is illegal. This isn't completely cut & dry, which is why the EU has been investigating for some time.

Re:No google for u!

[Stan92057]

I use duckduckgo an "absolutely hideous name btw" and i find everything i need to find. Its not perfect its not the best but so far they haven't been sued or fined for bad business practices. That will come after they go public

Any Resemblance

[TechyImmigrant]

Any resemblance between the actions of the European Commission and due process is entire coincidental.

The European Commission gets to act as investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner, with no oversight.
It's then left to the courts to clean up, years after the self serving commissioner has moved on from his or her round robin appointment at the commission.
 

Re:No google for u!

[DaFallus]

I hear a lot of praise about DuckDuckGo here on Slashdot. I had Linux Mint installed on one of my laptops. The version of Firefox that comes with Mint hits DuckDuckGo if you use the URL bar to enter search queries. I fucking hated it. DuckDuckGo easily took at least 10 times longer than Google to return results for me. Even if DuckDuckGo gave you absolutely perfect results (which from my experience is no more accurate than Google), I could search Google enough times to find the answer I'm looking for before DuckDuckGo ever responds. I'll stick with Google since their engine returns accurate results quickly.

Re:No google for u!

[steelfood]

I see you find getting moisturizing hand lotion results when searching "STD homeopathic remedies" real helpful.

Re:Guilty until your rivals are "convinced" otherw

[miltonw]

Google: "Gee Microsoft, what would it take to convince you that we compete fairly?"
Microsoft: "Die! Google! Die!"
EU: "You didn't 'play fair' and die, Google, it looks like we'll have to sanction you."

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[adolf]

From your link, in order of appearance (Firefox, adblock, USian):

https://email.t-online.de/
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Mail
www.gmx.net/
web.de/
mail.google.com/?hl=de
www.hotmail.com/ - Diese Seite übersetzen
www.freenet.de/
de.mail.yahoo.com/
www.emailn.de/
www.email-verzeichnis.de/

*shrug*

Re:No google for u!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello DDG Marketing Associate!

Envy

[argStyopa]

"...There are always penalties associated with being successful..."
And the fact that you believe this is pretty damn sad.

In my view, that's naked envy.

It's a fairly clean identifier, I'd guess, of which side of the political spectrum you belong on: "Should there be a penalty for success?"

Honestly, that concept is fundamentally reprehensible. Next time my kid wins a game of checkers, I should slap him? Or maybe just make him do the dishes? Or sit in an uncomfortable chair to teach him that "...There are always penalties associated with being successful.."?

Wow.

Re:No google for u!

[SolitaryMan]

... UNTIL I purchased that blue and white checkered scarf.

You shouldn't have bought such a fashionable scarf then.

Re:No google for u!

[hexagonc]

Sorry, I didn't mean "you" as in "you" personally. I meant "you" as in "anyone" or "one".

It's pretty simple

[Anonymous Coward]

If google have a code fragment like

if site == google*
    then
        site.rank+=2000;
    else
        site.rank-=100l

then they are fine.

If they have that, then they are in trouble.

Abuse of dominance?

[dgharmon]

"Mr Almunia explained the rare divergence with Washington on Google by the differing legal standards for abuse of dominance, as well as Googleâ(TM)s stronger position in Europe, where it handles more than 90 per cent of searches.

End users are totally free to choose what search engine they use, as are organisations free to not be indexed on Google. The EU has no business telling us what search engine to use ...

They are dominant, as you agree.

[Anonymous Coward]

You AGREE they are dominant.

Doesn't matter why.

But if Google are found not abusing that dominance, the are fine with even 99.99999% dominance.

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[chrismcb]

I all fairness, you can't really look at what Google is doing, but what other search engines are doing.
For example searching for "maps" returns google maps on google, bing, and duckduckgo. This implies Google Maps is popular.
But searching for "email" returns yahoo on bing and duckduckgo, but gmail on google.
Searching for "web browsers' is more interesting. Bing returns wiki, firefox, laptopmag.com, opera, free-web-browsers.com, cnet. Duckduckgo returns cnet, top 10 browers, web browser list, best web browsers, about web browsers, and several more lists. Google returns wiki, wiki, firefox, opera, chrome
It may be that Google is weighing some of their pages more, but I don't see much evidence that they are placing their stuff on top. Google listed gmail first and yahoo second, bing listed yahoo first and gmail second. But I bet I can find hundreds of other web pages that are listed like that between those two engines.

Re:No google for u!

[sacrilicious]

Yahoo is *not* first, but what does order matter anyhow?.. this isn't a food labeling issue where ingredients are listed in order of proportion. There are ten sources listed explicitly, and the page says that those are ten of nearly 50 sources. I'm going to have to conclude that for some reason you want to equate DuckDuckGo with Bing, but you don't have the goods. Thanks for playing.

Re:No google for u!

[toddestan]

It's not like it's terribly difficult to run a few searches on DuckDuckGo and Bing (and/or Yahoo) and compare the results to see that they don't give the same results.

Besides, it's not like Bing isn't any worse than Google nowadays.

Re:I did test your keywords and they give google 1

[TheFirebyrd]

Same here. The only weird thing to me is that Opera is second. I've been running Firefox so long it was named Firebird when I started with it. Competitors aren't getting buried in my experience.

Re:No google for u!

[rdnetto]

I'll second this. I was buying a new laptop recently, and I'd have been perfectly happy to put myself on a list (temporarily) to get emails, ads, etc. about laptops. The main criticisms of ads are that they distract from the content, and that they're not relevant.
As long as I have the option to turn the tracking off (e.g. by disabling cookies or using Incognito Mode / etc.), I have no objections to be being tracked.