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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.'"
frist psot
The EU apparently don't need the internet.
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.
Oh hey, a big corporation. Are you giving us tons of money on a regular basis? You're not? Then you must be breaking some laws. And if not we'll invent some new ones. Now pay up, and don't forget to send over the high-priced lobbyists to take us to fancy business lunches and tropical conferences.
Is this going to be the same ridiculous thing as the last one with Internet Explorer?
Look at it and let me know : Video
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.
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!
Looks a bit like Tex, too !!
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.
Except the government wants to give it to a private company rather than reduce tax burdens to everyone.
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.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
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.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
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.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
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!
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.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
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.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
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?
The EU doesn't seem capable of grasping that.
One day they will investigate Slashdot as a site that focuses web traffic on specific targets, instead of diverting it.
Let me try that.
Web Browser .Net documentation (System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser class)
1: Wikipedia article "Web Browser"
2: Wikipedia article "List of Web Browsers"
3: Web Browsers Downloads for Windows - CNET Download.com
4: Opera
5:
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.
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
I had a sig once. It was lost in the great storm of '09.
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.
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
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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)!
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
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.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
FWIW, my first Google search result on "email" was Yahoo Mail, which makes me wonder if Google randomizes the order of certain search results.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Gmail comes up 5th for me, after a bunch of services that I've never seen before.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
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."
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*
Kid-proof tablet..
"...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.
-Styopa
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.
"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
AccountKiller
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.
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.
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.