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Alleged Secret Google Antitrust Proposals Leaked
itwbennett writes "Google's latest proposals aimed at avoiding an antitrust fine from European authorities have been leaked amid growing anger over the secrecy surrounding the case. The documents, which have been verified by sources in possession of the originals, revealed the full remedies put forward by Google, the questionnaire that rivals have been asked to fill in giving their response to the remedies and a comparison document showing the changes in Google's remedies since the last proposals. Unlike the first round of so-called 'market testing,' Google's revised proposals have not been made public and were only sent to 125 interested parties who were warned that they were not to be made public."
So, how exactly is it that Google gets to dictate that these stay private?
It's Google who committed the offenses, and they're being punished by the European regulators.
Why does this seem like Google is the one dictating how this plays out? That makes no sense to me.
These back room deals don't help any but Google -- who is no doubt proposing things which don't actually limit or change how they do things, but just a few token gestures.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yes, why don't the sue Bing, Yahoo, etc? Are they just determining that no one actually uses the other search engines?
Really, is it a crime to be better than your competitors?
The case isn't about the search engine, but using a dominant position in search to create unfair competition in other areas. Like someone with dominant position in operating systems using it to promote their own browser over rivals.
The whole investigation was done by a group controoled by Microsoft, so Bing is unlikely to be a target.
For the purposes of comparing search engines, Bing and Yahoo are the same.
This information is completely missing from the summary and from the article it links to.
It's not about whether Google dominates search (it's literally not part of the case). It's about whether they use that position to obtain (for themselves or their paying clients) leadership in other areas in which they do not have the best product. For example, Google Shopping is no longer an organic Search function, you need to pay to be featured there. Yet Google Shopping results appear ahead of organic search results, meaning people who pay Google get a leg up.
Competition law isn't about whether you dominate the market, it's about whether you use your dominant position to materially disadvantage competitors.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Really, is it a crime to be better than your competitors?
;)
In the EU, for an American company - Yes. Google. Microsoft. Amazon.
In the EU, for a European company, they actively promote that. Airbus. RBS. BP.
In the US, for an American company - Only if they reach some completely arbitrary threshold of "too big", which at least since Standard Oil has apparently applies solely to technology companies, while the banking industry can snort blow off the asses of underage Filipino prostitutes with impunity. AT&T and Microsoft, vs Goldman Sachs and Fannie.
For symmetry I would mention "In the US, for a European company", but see no point in dealing with purely hypothetical situations.
I'm attempting to figure out what Google has done that has functioned as an antitrust-type of scenario...
Search engines? At the time they came out there was a crowded market in Internet search. There are still competitors that come and go, and Google does not appear to be interested in buying them out.
Advertising? Last time I checked, Doubleclick was not the only ad-delivery that's blocked by my adblocker...
Mail? Gmail is certainly not the only e-mail provider, by a longshot, and most of us who've migrated to it have done so because it's proven to be long-term reliable so our e-mail addresses haven't had to change.
Calendaring, collaboration, productivity suites, file storage? No, lots of companies do those things.
Web Browsers? Given that I'm typing this using a Mozilla browser...
Operating Systems? Android has competition with iOS, and to a lesser extent with Windows Phone and Blackberry. Chrome is in its relative infancy, competing with MacOS, Windows, GNU/Linux, and even Android.
Maps? I can get maps from several providers.
I won't deny, Google does one hell of a good job integrating their various services, and they're also willing to modify their services at-will. They provide platforms for which others can develop things to either use features of Google's services or can integrate their own services, but they are willing to yank the floor out from under someone's creation with little or no notice. But, they're not usually charging the developer or user of this third-party addon either, so it's hard to claim that they're not in their rights to do this.
If the issue is the very nature of the tight integration, where a user will go from using Google's search engine to using their maps, calendar, e-mail, etc, again I point out that they've made the entire process of using these systems very smooth, and that when a Google service has proven to be clunky people don't use it. They also don't stop competitors like Microsoft or even Yahoo from developing their own integrated suites.
I'd really like to know what's considered antitrust...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Look, kill it, quick! Just like they did with AT&T
Cant have those pesky companies making a profit in this socialist 'state'. I still want to know who Google pissed off to bring the wrath of the feds down on them.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you had to completely obliterate all competition before you could be prosecuted for anticompetitive action, it would completely defeat the purpose of the legislation.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Actually it was mainly because they tied IE directly into the OS making it a necessity. You still have a choice of search on whatever device you use, so not really the same thing.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
People who pay dell get a leg up, ie MS and intel, so that their items get put on dell machines, does that mean we should sue dell for anti-competitive behavior? If this was something limited to google you may have some issue, but other search engines do it as well, meaning it is not something anti-competitive.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You're thinking of the American antitrust case against Microsoft.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Actually, yes, Intel and PC manufacturers were subject to a massive antitrust action for doing that.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
It has nothing to do with size. AT&T and Microsoft were engaged in specific, targetted actions against their competitors, while Goldman Sachs and Fannie Mae were not. You should have taken the fact that you had to introduce arbitrary-looking exceptions to your hypothesis as a warning that because your hypothesis was wrong.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You sue companies, not technology.
Google's revised proposals have not been made public and were only sent to 125 interested parties who were warned that they were not to be made public.
Apparently they never heard the maxim that the only way to keep a secret is if just two people know and one of them is dead.
But, if I install Windows, I either have to use IE in order to get to another browser, downloading it and installing it, or I have to go through a bunch of other hoops to get that other browser without opening IE. Since the average user can't use a command-line FTP interface without loading the documentation on how to use it (again, going back to opening the web browser) it's not practical for a user to avoid IE, at least in the US. Admittedly I haven't used a euro-centric Windows installation.
By contrast, Yahoo, Microsoft, and even other companies like Mapquest have made no secret that they have websites that provide maps. One can visit these sites without ever visiting Google. Microsoft even makes that easy, since their default search engine is Bing, not Google, when one loads their browser. One can even type "yahoo maps" into Google's search engine and it'll give them a link to, *gasp* Yahoo Maps, and no links to Google Maps, not even a recommendation on a sidebar. Same for "bing maps" and "mapquest maps". Even simply searching for "maps" gives Google Maps first, then Yahoo Maps, then Mapquest, then Bing. And for those that plug in an address in the regular search engine, they probably want a map, and I don't really have a problem with Google fulfilling that want through their own internal APIs. If a user wanted a map from Bing or Yahoo or any other search engine they'd go to that search engine to get it.
I guess I still don't see what the problem is. I go where I find the best experience. Right now Yahoo News seems to be a better aggregator than Google News. I use Mozilla because I prefer it and it seems to have more plugins at the moment. I don't use ChromeOS on anything, at all, laptop, netbook, etc. I use either LibreOffice or Microsoft Office depending on where I'm at, and basically use Google Docs/Drive for only a few things I need for reference. Google has not locked me into anything, everything of theirs I use because of choice, and they do a good job making that choice easy by providing a very smooth experience when going from one service to another, and those services themselves work very well.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
There is not much difference. In the EU case it was because they were actively blocking competition, in this cause there is no active blocking of competition.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Intel was sued, not dell.. In this case google is dell, not intel.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Nope, the integration issues that prompted the US case were already dealt with: the browser ballot issue came down to MS' decision to preinstall IE.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/02/microsofts-eu-browser-ballot-approved-arrives-march-1/
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Dell settled for $100m for taking those kickbacks from Intel.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case
The ballot was one of the ways to remedy the situation.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Actually it was mainly because they tied IE directly into the OS making it a necessity.
No. This was never argued in the EU case. And isn't true for any modern version of Windows from long before the EU case. The EU case against IE was about Microsoft using bundling with the dominant Windows-platform as an unfair advantage to win in the browser market. Exactly similar to the case now, where EU is claiming Google is doing the same using its dominant position in search as an unfair advantage to win in other markets. The rules are different for companies that have a product with a dominant position, this actually limits what they can do in other areas compared to companies that do not have such a position to consider.
And above all, in all these fields, Google doesn't restrict the free choice.
Users are freely allowed to go to google or any other provider.
Google doesn't follow any lock-in strategy.
In fact, with their "data libreration campaign" they even make their users aware that google follows open-desings making it easier to move personnal data in and out of the various google services. (GMail uses standard protocols like IMAP, SMTP, etc. GTalk is based on standard XMPP protocol, etc.)
Only for their phone is the choice of OS rather limited. But even there, the problem has less to do with active blocking by Google (the android devices they sell are unlocked, they publish spec, and enthousiasts are able to port quite a few opensource OS on it), it has more to do with absence of alternatives (Windows RT only runs on a limited set of hardware, iOS only runs on Apple hardware. On an unlocked andoird phone, you're limited to installing android or a few other opensource OSes of which most run a Linux kernel).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The American case wound up requiring that Microsoft share APIs and generally make it less of a pain in the ass to provide a competing, compatible browser in Windows, but allowed it to continue to bundle IE. The EU case dealt with the issue of whether including IE at all constituted an anticompetitive action against other browsers. My point being that the EU is stricter about what constitutes anticompetitive promotion of one's own products in the software space.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
To address your first question, the European settlement with MS required that they offer a screen when the PC first boots, with a choice of browsers in random order. The user clicks on one and their browser is downloaded and installed. No hoops.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Assclowns who modded him down, answer the question instead of behaving in a shameful way, trying to hide the question.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Google's 60% market share, and falling, is like the 95%+ market share that Microsoft has?
It has nothing to do with size. AT&T and Microsoft were engaged in specific, targetted actions against their competitors, while Goldman Sachs and Fannie Mae were not. You should have taken the fact that you had to introduce arbitrary-looking exceptions to your hypothesis as a warning that because your hypothesis was wrong.
You've missed a prerequisite here.
The things that AT&T and Microsoft got busted for, while specific and targeted, don't break the law when done by a "not too big" company.
If you wrote your own OS today, and bundled your own browser with it, specifically and targetedly intending to undercut Microsoft's sales - You have done absolutely nothing wrong. You could even brag about your attempts in your SEC filings, and comfortably remain on the legal side of the fence.
Microsoft's actions only crossed into antitrust territory because they exceed a magic (and completely arbitrary) threshold for size.
He's begging the question so nobody is under any obligation to answer it. He might as well have said "Is it a crime for Google to save orphaned puppies?" because it would've had as much relevance to what Google is being prosecuted for.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Perhaps instead of modding this as flameait, you should ue a search engine, perhaps even Bing, where you can find Reuters articles and other with information like the following:
"Lobby group FairSearch, whose members include complainants Microsoft, online travel agency Expedia and British price comparison site Foundem, expressed doubts over the effectiveness of Google's proposal.
"It seems that no genuinely significant changes have been made to the initial proposal, so it is difficult to see how the new package can hope to solve the competition concerns Mr Almunia (the EU Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia) has declared must be addressed," FairSearch lawyer Thomas Vinje said.
ICOMP, another lobby group that that counts Microsoft and four other complainants among its members, agreed."
I see Microsoft is putting those Android patent dollars to good use.
don't break the law when done by a "not too big" company
Yes, because effects scale with the size of the actor and correspondingly different laws apply to a five-man operation in a basement than to a multinational with 90% market share. Would you be equally surprised if I told you that I'm allowed to fry food in my kitchen with impunity, but I'd need to install specialised ventilation equipment to open a fried chicken restaurant?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You have just completely not read my post, have you? I mean literally the only thing it says is that you don't have to be a monopoly to be engaged in actionable anticompetitive behaviour.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
When the EU took action against Microsoft, IE had about a 60% share in Europe... and falling.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You do have to engage in anticompetitive behaviour, though.
And that behaviour must be able to push people there, which is why it's under "Monopoly abuse" that this law appears.
If you decide that everyone who buys your new web browser must delete Windows off their machine, it may damage Microsoft ONLY IF people have hobson's choice in the matter.
If they don't have the ability to make it so, then all they've damaged is their own sales because people will leave.
I can preclude anyone shopping at my store I like. Including if they shop at a competitor across the street. However, this is not illegal because I am not a mandatory supplier for some good people must have. I have no monopoly on toilet rolls.
Antitrust law disagrees.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I'm still waiting for them to go after Apple for browser bundling. Until then their crusades will ring hollow.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
In the EU, for a European company, they actively promote that. Airbus. RBS. BP.
Don't let the fact it's called British Petroleum fool you it hasn't been British for over 10 years.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Yes, but Yahoo uses Bing under the hood, so there's no real point in suing Yahoo. It'd be like suing Dell or HP over a Windows antitrust issue. There might be some legal basis for it, but they're just reselling someone else's product.
"It has nothing to do with size."
[...]
"because effects scale with the size of the actor"
Oh-kaaay... Should I, um, just leave you to debate yourself on this one?
Then show what antitrust behaviour Google is involved in.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
What? BP is headquartered in London. By most standards that still makes them a British company.
If you had to completely obliterate all competition before you could be prosecuted for anticompetitive action, it would completely defeat the purpose of the legislation.
Possession of a monopoly position is a pre-requisite to being able to engage in anti-competitive action, as least per my non-lawyerly understanding. Up until you possess a monopoly position anything you do that isn't otherwise illegal is just competition. Antitrust legislation comes into play when a competitor that has achieved monopoly power in one market abuses that position to maintain that position or -- even worse -- leverage an advantage in other markets.
Keep in mind that it is not illegal to become a monopoly, or to stay a monopoly. Monopolies happen from time to time in competitive marketplaces, because one competitor is just that much better than the others. And as long as the monopoly position isn't abused to keep competition out, that's fine, because the monopolist holds the position through simple excellence at meeting consumer needs most effectively and efficiently (at the lowest price). When another player steps up an betters the monopolists' operations, then consumers will move, the monopoly will end, and nothing bad will have happened.
So, the GP's point that Google doesn't actually have a monopoly in anything is a really valid one, IMO. The EU regulators don't seem to care, but I think that's mostly because Google is an American company.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google employee, but the above is purely my own understanding and opinions, and haven't changed since going to work for Google.)
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Let me log with something else than a Google account on my Android. Why shouldn't I be able to log with a Microsoft Live, Apple iCloud, or any OpenID/OAuth provider I so choose? Thanks for the OS, but I'd like it to come with no strings attached.
If you had to completely obliterate all competition before you could be prosecuted for anticompetitive action, it would completely defeat the purpose of the legislation.
Microsoft kept Apple's heartbeat alive for a decade, including infusing tons of cash, so they could dodge monopoly charges by pointing to them as a competitor.
In the 1950s, Alcoa execs went to jail because they kept prices low, making it difficult for competitors to arise, not for killing them off.
It's all a stupid game for politicians to act like kings demanding kickbacks. Don't play right? Release the surface argument the hoi polloi buys, and bring them back in line.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Well, there are two forms of monopoly. One is a horizontal monopoly, where one owns all of everything across a market, so players in that market must go through that party, and then there's a vertical monopoly, where one locks the product from the very bottom to the very top, so that others cannot integrate their products in.
I think that the EU antitrust prosecutors are trying to call Google a vertical monopoly, citing how various Google services tie into other Google services tightly. Thing is, they don't make use of other companies' services break one's use of Google services.
I'd argue that ActiveX from Microsoft is massively, significantly more antitrust than anything from Google or any other web-services company, as ActiveX is designed for Microsoft browsers on Microsoft OSes to interface to Microsoft web daemons running on Microsoft servers.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
When is somebody going to raise an antitrust case against the EU?
So... whether or not there is a monopoly is irrelevant to an antitrust investigation?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I just hope that Steam Box & OS take off, esp. OS as it would mean finally that I could probably dump using Windows altogether as I primarily only use it for gaming.
Have you tried using Wine to run MS Windows video games? I started doing that about 6 months ago & have had very good results.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Thanks for the clarification on that! I'm amazed that the GPL has such a big loophole in it. I'll no doubt review the current state of open-source licenses. (I have a lot of reading to do.)
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters