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The EU Has a Plan To Break Up Google
An anonymous reader points out a report at the Financial Times (paywalled) which says the European Parliament is preparing to call for the break-up of Google. According to the draft seen by the FT, a potential solution to ongoing anti-trust concerns with Google is "unbundling search engines from other services." The article notes, "The European parliament has no formal power to split up companies, but has increasing influence on the commission, which initiates all EU legislation. The commission has been investigating concerns over Google’s dominance of online search for five years, with critics arguing that the company’s rankings favour its own services, hitting its rivals’ profits. Unbundling cannot be excluded, said Andreas Schwab, a German MEP who is one of the motion’s backers."
Windows phones no longer suck. iPhones have a big following. Bing is tolerable, if annoying. New OWA is actually kinda nice.
And there is an ISO-standard EIA-certified crapload of other search and e-mail providers out in the world.
EU: If you're desperately searching for things to "fix" at your next meeting: FIX SYRIA!
Good luck with that, Europe.
Europe disappeared from the worldwide web today.
To give the EU the middle finger.
It's the EU. Break out the brown envelopes.
Problem goes away.
I stopped using Google long ago, and now block all their known IP addresses.
Is somebody forcing people in the EU to use Google? If they don't want to use it, why don't they just... not? There's no possibility of lock in: you can just point your browser to any search engine you want, and away you go. This isn't a problem that needs government intervention.
Starve the beast, and it will die.
And days ago, we had http://search.slashdot.org/story/14/11/18/1347219/court-rules-googles-search-results-qualify-as-free-speech
Although, I do say that it probably gives Google an unfair advantage if they list their products before competitors.
Let's hope the Firefox/Yahoo! thing help provide competition to Google.
The EU seems to have a chip on their shoulders about Google. I get it, they're huge and they need to be kept on a leash. But when are we going to see them go after other huge companies abusing their market share? We have Amazon regularly putting full-page ads for their latest electronics right on their front page.
Are google's plans to break up the EU.
A company should be abled to offer any services they want, but they should have to make sure they don't create lock-ins, eg through their own proprietary standards. If whattsapp users could communicate with skype chat users, we'd get rid of lots of problems. Its like with energy. There are lots of devices, but they all work with one energy grid, at least with the EU connector. And still, there are only a few large energy companies running most of the power plants. But when I have to buy new devices the moment I switch the energy company, I think twice before the switch.
they should create their own GNU/Linux search engine, maybe out of Finland. Surely they'd be good at it.
Time to break the EU into several different countries.
I don't think it is wise for governments to determine the success of a business.
Google has done this by itself. Nobody should be able to take that away from them.
They'll drop all free services to users. No gmail. No News. No sites. No european developers allowed on the Play store in europe.
Excellent idea. That will make it easier to sink them each into the Atlantic Ocean.
If Google is an EU corporation EU will not do _anything_ to Google
EU doesn't care if Google is a monopoly or not - they only use "monopoly" as an excuse to do what they do
What EU really wants to achieve is to break America, starting by breaking American corporations, corporations such as Google
And if they can do Google in, Apple will be next
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No way anyone can win the argument that Google has a monopoly of any sort. Having a monster market share is only because they rose above their many many many competitors.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
So ... you get popular and a corrupt government will try to split you up .. must suck being good (or in this case, BAD).
Large companies should definitely not be allowed to develop the power and control that google has developed - particular with the kind of close relations google has with the ruling junta in Washington, which has a strong reputation for serious human rights violations. This is long overdue action against this virtual monopoly. I hope we can see similar action on operating systems, where it is quite clear that Microsoft should have a competitor shipping a compatible system. I really hope there won't be any kind of corrupt political compromise this time, as happened with the previous Microsoft issue, where Microsoft survived virtually unscathed, despite demonstrated criminality.
Go and Ogle?
I would like to see Google go into direct competition with the EU. Incorporate as a sovereign nation within Silicon Valley, in the same way as Vatican City. Issue its own currency. Build California a nice set of high-speed trains. Everybody wins.
Google only has one line of business, and that is advertising. Try as they might, they can't seem to find much revenue elsewhere. Eventually all one trick ponies meet the same fate.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/...
I'm going to put on my tinfoil hat here.
When the big boys don't get to play with the toys of the other big boys, then it's time for the boys to become men and show some muscles. This is all a dance, play with us (aka give us access to that wonderful database that knows everything about every individual out there) and we'll leave you alone.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Google makes almost all of its money through ads. Can the other products survive by themselves? They won't have the detailed user profiles that provide the data for 'better' targeted ads, thus leading to a reduced ad income.
I think a better solution would be for Google to put all it's related results into a side bar or something. Saying here's the general Internet results and here's all the things we do related to that. Actually, that would probably benefit Google more, but it would keep things separate.
It's about time. Google has become the de facto gatekeeper for the web and have no real competition. That makes Google a problem.
Also hahaha at the people saying Europe should be blacklisted, in other news, Google just lost access to a market of a half billion wealthy consumers.
The EU thinks too much of themselves. Google is not an EU company. The EU doesn't have any control over Google. If the EU doesn't watch out Google may buy the EU and put them down, discontinuing them in an end of life product cycle as they've done with some other annoying things. Bugs get squashed.
Let me know when the EU get's around to slapping Apple for browser bundling and not providing an install screen to select alternatives.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
As EU citizen, i can only say this is received with a lot of skepticism here too. And the usual anti-EU sentiment.
While i'm pretty `pro-EU`, i indeed think this is bullshit. Yes, Google has some sort of monopoly, however, monopolies are only a problem when abused. I don't see that abuse part. Also, there are plenty alternatives, however, Google is the biggest simply because they are the best at what they do. For them it's core business. For MS and Yahoo it's not their core business.
Anyways. it will blow over i guess. They prefer to launch this kind of bullshit ideas instead of worrying the things they really should worry about; like unemployment rates, poverty, eastern relationships, etc etc.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
No seriously... try it. All your bitching and moaning accomplished with MS was a decades long circle jerk. Exactly what do you think is going to happen if you try this with google?
They'll appeal... and then appeal the appeal... and so on... and when we all die of old age they'll still be appealing and screwing you around until no one even remembers what it was about anymore.
Here is the brass tacks... The EU sees a big rich american company doing business in the EU and they're not paying EU taxes. So they're going to fuck around with it until they figure out how to get money from it.
personally, I think Hungry had the right idea... just tax bandwidth... do I ACTUALLY think that is a good idea? no, it is retarded. But it would neatly remove the idiots in government that see everyone making money without paying them as a problem.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
For one thing: Will they outlaw "all the rest" from making their own search engine? They could even hire "Google" as the back end.
Plus: this doesn't seem to be a monopoly break up (Google is not a monopoly according to Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, whatever apple defaults to, etc); but it does seem designed to put Google at a competitive disadvantage to Yahoo and Microsoft who offer pretty much all the same services as well as search.
There is just too much dick measuring going on here.
Let's have a fun topic of discussion like "What would happen if Google just shut down all systems right now.?"
It scares the shit out of me to even consider it
Google announced yesterday the acquisition of the EU and has stated that intends to rollout a new service called Haven.EU that will allow companies to incorporate with this new Google service to evade US corporate income taxes all together.
Google is a U.S based company, EU has no jurisdiction over U.S and as usual EU screaming monopoly when in fact you have other search engines available and don't blame google because these other search engines suck. The problem with EU and like so many democrats who behave like communists in the U.S is that they cry foul every time a company becomes #1 because they are good at what they do. Look it how people bitched about MS Windows when it became #1 in the industry and yet nobody wanted to step up they just bitched and cried foul. Unix was never for the desktop in other words for the average joe, nobody knew what linux was, and apple was too damn expensive.
Yet another non binding resolution from EU parliament. This is a fake parliament: if cannot start a EU directive and does not decide on the budget.
First, the EU is a joke. But even if it wasn't, who are they to tell a company not to favor its own products? It is a socialist agenda, and goes against the very core of capitalism.
They can't claim it's anti competitive, there are still a lot of search engines out there. If they did as good a job as Google, maybe customers would have used them more. The fact is that Bing is also popular enough, and there are a few other search engines that are slowly gaining in popularity.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
They can "plan" and "call for" all they want, but EU has no authority over a US company and banning it from doing business would violate trade treaties. They can certainly set rules for doing business that apply equally to all foreign and domestic players. Why don't they focus on that instead of useless and inflammatory rhetoric? It seems that Europe has it's own tea party.
As to "why" part, where is the lock in? All major browsers including Chrome support a choice of search engines. Internet Explorer has Bing as default and soon Firefox will default to Yahoo. It sounds like EU government wants to put interests of its own big businesses over personal choices of ordinary citizens. Again, same as US, but so sad.
It's the people that use Google that give it dominance. Google's supposed dominance is the choice of the people the world over, so go fuck yourselves you stupid incompetent EU hacks, just fuck off and die.
They're an American company so Europe can eat a big bucket of stfu.
Wrong. Windows Phones still suck and are infinity years behind Android phones.
I like my Google just the way it is. Anti-competitive implies an outcome which negatively impacts the general public. I am not negatively effected.
The dim wits over at the EU let mickeysoft get away with shit for *YEARS* freakin *YEARS* bundling the O/S with web browser, bundling the O/S with applications, even the stupid brainless adoption of msxml as an ISO standard (a standard that mickeysoft can't even follow), yet the pulpheads over at the EU let them get away with all and sundry. Google comes along and just does business straightforward, and they try to break them up. WTF!?!?! Are they fucking morons? Are they that mentally retarded? Are they paid off by mickeysoft for doing this (the last would come as absolutely no surprise). Absurd. Absolutely freaking absurd.
Europe is JUST ABOUT READY TO EXPLODE since the unemplyement is 13 to 25% and MASSIVE social unrest is brewing for religious and political reasons...
a "country" which treats it scitizens so callously like in Greece AND has a UNELECTED "president" mired in COLOSSAL TAX EVASION schemes like Cloude Juncker is just not going to last long...
IT IS VERY PECULIAR that from a "country" so rocked by COLOSSAL social, tax and political problems we get lessons on "behavior".... just IGNORE them
very soon THERE WILL NOT BE a EU to wast time on...
Isn't it supposed to be the Google-killer?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Some could think it quaint that the EU 'parliament' propose to break up Google but has no such plans for Microsoft.
But when you consider, that the bulk of the parliament stems from countries with abundant corruption - like for instance Rumania, Italy, France, Spain, Greece etc. it all makes perfect sense.
No sensible person will have any doubts that this is born and funded out of Redmond.
Google is also a political tool, weapon, and asset, to the U.S government, so it makes sense for the EU to go at it, and they should.
Where were these assclowns 10 years ago when Microsoft was actively doing evil (and relevant)?
The EU should break up Microsoft
So will the local manufacturers of brown paper bags.
Google and Bing lose.
You'll (/.) work it out - eventually. (hint: another EU backhander bidding war - that'll continue until MS runs out of money they can't take back to the US).
They just want as much lobby money from Goggle as they receive from the competition.
I'd also wish they could go after other companies who have grown so large and monolithic that they're too big to fail. Honestly it seems American's can't check capitalism anymore properly because our elected officials are bought and paid for by dirty political money that got legalized. If it takes the EU to pull a Teddy Roosevelt on American companies then I say good on them and keep up the good work we can't do ourselves.
How about breaking up the anti-competitive cartel of governments that calls itself the EU? Everything they accuse Google, Microsoft, and anyone else of, they are worse. How about breaking up the OECD that attacks anyone that undercuts them ("Harmful Tax Competition"... bwhahahha)?
They can't compete (all the mostly French-backed efforts to build a "European Google" have been expensive failures) so they try and throw their puny weight around. When are they going to realize their glory days have long since passed and won't ever come back? Pathetic.
At least for the EU for instance - Search was split from Advertising/Mail/etc. Perhaps the Google Search could earn money by charging people for getting listed in their index. They could start with Spanish and German newspapers for instance.
China doesn't have any problems with this. They banned google in their country.
The EU should definitely not be allowed to develop the power and control that it has developed - particular with the kind of close relations the EU has with the ruling junta in Germany, which has a strong reputation for serious human rights violations. It is long overdue to take action against its virtual monopoly on European nations.
Lets see... If you don't want your windows broken from them hoodlums you need to pay Guido just $100 a week.
How is it MS gets away with murder and everyone else gets kicked in the junk?
Your Average Joe
Last I knew they weren't even an official entity. The member states didn't agree via a vote to make them a legal entity. Maybe those votes in the 2000s didn't matter after all? I remember France rejected it, so did others.
Require Google to use Bing's search engine, as well as office 365 instead of Google Docs, and Hotmail instead of Gmail. ... oh, wait, the idea was to give consumers good service, and Google's doing that and the rest of them are third rate.
Their market share would plummet and the consumer would be
Where Google is gaining market share by abusing their current position through anti-competitive practices, act against them.
Google gives good service in exchange for what they get. That is why people use them. The competitors seem to be interested in locking me in by making it hard to escape (MS's favorite method). Google keeps me because their service is better than their competitors. The second it isn't, I leave.
https://metager.de/en/
Casteism
What good do they expect will come of this?