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."

Comments

Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[bmo]

Moreover, if Nokia wasn't run by absolute incompetents, they'd still be a huge player in the smartphone market.

But they farted around with OSes, libraries, and waffled and couldn't decide themselves out of a wet paper bag being while pushed off a cliff. To top it off, the board decided to welcome Microsoft's cukoo-egg into their nest because "OH MY GOD A BILLION DOLLARS."

Google is where it is because a lot of companies are run by boards that are more interested in feathering their own nests instead of what they largely give lip-service to - "innovation"

Look at Yahoo. Go ahead, look at 'em. Point And Laugh. They deserve it.

--
BMO

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[bmo]

It actually hurt my brain to read your reply.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

--
BMO

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Tom]

My point is that the EU is a bunch of arrogant idiots who have no business telling an American company to split up.

Like it or not, idiots or not, they do have such business, simply because your poor little "american company" is no such thing. It's an international corporation that was once founded in america, but now does business all over the world, including within the EU and actually quite a lot of it.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[johnjaydk]

Not only that, but the EUSSR doesn't seem to understand that an American corporation has nothing to do with European communists. They should go and re-read their history books and remember how close all of Europe was to speaking either German or Russian.

I could have moderated your drivel to hell but that wouldn't help much.

The EU commision can't tell US companies to do anything but they can set conditions for allowing them to operate within the EU. It's called sovereignty and the US does it too all the time. Having a beef with virtual or actual monopolies is not exactly a communist thing either. A monopoly is a direct attack on the free market and therefore upsets true free market believers.

The US have a long, although not resent, history of cracking down on monopolies. The Standard Oil case is the poster child for this kind of policy.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[sabri]

This is an argument from a monolingual person.

Well, I hate to break the news to you but I'm far from monolingual. I speak English, Dutch, German, a bit of French (albeit so bad that even the waiters in Paris reply in English) and a bit of Albanian. And I've lived in the EU as well as the US.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[lgw]

Nah, Tom's been this way from the beginning.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[sabri]

The EU commision can't tell US companies to do anything but they can set conditions for allowing them to operate within the EU. It's called sovereignty and the US does it too all the time. Having a beef with virtual or actual monopolies is not exactly a communist thing either. A monopoly is a direct attack on the free market and therefore upsets true free market believers.

Finally at least a reply that contains an actual argument. Thanks for that.

I actually agree with you. The EU can set conditions for allowing a company to operate within the EU. However, they EU should not be in a position to split up a privately owned enterprise. If they feel that Google has too big of a market share, than they should encourage competition. Which, BTW, there is a lot of. Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo, Ask.com (yikes) and many others.

In the case of Microsoft's anti-trust case, there was no such thing. Most people and business needed a Windows PC because (at the time) it was pretty much the only thing that would be compatible with your neighbor's PC. MS controlled the desktop. Switching required a installing a new operating system, and most people didn't even know how to do that let alone that they were even aware of alternatives.

Google does not control your search engine. Internet Explorer defaults to Bing, and soon Firefox will default to Yahoo. It is easy to switch default search engines, all you need is to change a bookmark. However, I prefer Google simply because it's better and a lot of people will do the same.

Having a better product than others doesn't necessarily mean you're an illegal monopoly. Google's perceived monopoly can be gone in six months, as soon as a competitor brings a better product.

Look at Myspace vs Facebook, for example.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[cavreader]

The EU uses a mafia style shakedown program against not only against US companies but any successful international companies who have the temerity of being successful. It's time those countries with true power to give them a glimpse of the potential downsides of their actions. We can kick things off by sending them a bill for US military services to be paid in advance. And their demonstrated incompetence in dealing with Russia will only guarantee they will need those services in the not so distant future the way things are currently progressing. To be fair and reasonable we can offer them a 5% discount if they make their payment within 90 days. Limit US NATO financial support to 10% of the total and just give them an 800 number to call in the event of an emergency. Pull all US military personnel and equipment since they have needed the US military presence in order to reduce their military budgets to fund their liberal welfare payments to the entitlement generation who consider working more than 15 hours a week as a violation of their human rights. National governments in every country are bad enough but leave it to the Europeans to create an entirely new tier of worthless bureaucracy that has contributed nothing to it's member countries let alone provide any united domestic and international leadership when it comes to advancing their member countries interests. And has anyone ever asked where the billions of dollars extorted from foreign corporations has ended up?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[supervillainsf]

A monopoly is a direct attack on the free market and therefore upsets true free market believers.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a monopoly. If I build a widget that no other company cares to build - I have a monopoly and that is perfectly ok. The problem comes when I abuse my monopoly position in the widget market to either stifle competing widget manufacturers or unfairly benefit my sprocket offerings - which is essentially what the EU Commission is accusing Google of doing. Does Google do this? I don't know and honestly I don't care. But, then again, I don't spend a whole lot of time using Google products so I guess that somewhat speaks to their (lack of) ability to manipulate markets for their non-search related services.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Shakrai]

Oh and btw, modding me a troll just because you disagree with my opinion makes you a bad mod.

The troll mods may have had something to do with these gems:

Not only that, but the EUSSR doesn't seem to understand that an American corporation has nothing to do with European communists.

They should go and re-read their history books and remember how close all of Europe was to speaking either German or Russian.

My point is that the EU is a bunch of arrogant idiots who have no business telling an American company to split up.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Shakrai]

The EU commision can't tell US companies to do anything but they can set conditions for allowing them to operate within the EU.

Devil's advocate, how do you stop Google from operating in the EU? Google does have a physical presence in the EU, data-centers and all that, but strictly speaking they could run the whole operation from outside the EU. What do you do then? Block them at the network edge? Hardly seems compatible with free speech.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Anonymous Coward]

Successful companies eventually pass a threshold in which their ambitions stop being beneficial to the rest of the economy, and start being exploitative of it. Any company, if too successful, will eventually cause more harm than good.

Slippery-sloping the obvious responses to this observation can cause great economic harm as well. But that doesn't change the facts. Monopolism is bad for the economy, and robs everyone of the benefits that justify capitalism.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[matbury]

It's funny that you say EUSSR. The European Central Bank is one of the most fundamentalist free-market neoliberal banking organisations in the world. It puts the Fed and Wall St. to shame (if you think being fundamentalist free-market neoliberal is a good thing). They're prepared to let whole countries go to rack and ruin for the sake of free-market purity.

And Google have an effective monopoly on search and are abusing it. It's a pretty straightforward case for their companies in the EU being broken up. Isn't that one of the functions of small gubbermint in a fundamentalist free-market neoliberal system? You know, to ensure that there's competition and no one entity can become tyranical?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[ultranova]

What is happening here is that a bunch of politicians are interfering in the legitimate business of a private enterprise.

Yes. And it's nice to know they have the balls to. This motion may or may not be a good idea, but simply bringing it up serves to remind everyone who is in charge here: voters rather than shareholders.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[thegarbz]

What part of this is not true?

Fact has nothing to do with trolling. The way you write and speak makes you a troll.
Notice how the one comment that got modded insightful is full of factual information, and your opinion of comparison to Russia (backed by a factual piece of information) that doesn't sound like a 2 year old name calling.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[cavreader]

Actually a great many Europeans who were fleeing the cesspool of Europe fought on the winning side of the US civil war. Says quite a lot that immigrants right off the boats were willing to line up in rows across open fields and take turns firing at each rather than continue living in Europe. And don't confuse inept troops with the inept politicians who force them to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. And can you provide any actual facts that support your friendly fire accusations? If not I suggest you try a little harder to hide your stupidity.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Shakrai]

You tell me how that does not constitute Soviet behavior.

Seriously? Nobody is holding a gun to your head and the EU member states are free to leave any time they wish.

Again, totally nothing factually wrong with that. If it were not for the Americans, all of Europe would either suffer under the Nazis or under the Soviets.

Really? All of Europe you say? Even Great Britain? Finland?

Are you an American? If you are I wish you'd STFU; you're making the rest of us look bad. WW2 was a team effort. Could the Allies have beaten the Germans without the Russians? Possibly; we did in WW1 after the Russians quit. The butcher's bill would have been a lot higher though. The west (particularly the United States and Canada) got off pretty easy. As far as "Europe would have been under the Soviets", that's debatable. The example of Finland suggests there are limits to how far Stalin was willing to go to gain strategic depth. Germany certainly would have gotten a much rawer deal without American involvement, though ironically enough it was the United States that originally proposed turning Germany into a pastoral state after the conflict.

Sure, if you live in Greece and need the EU to fund your pension

Yeah, well, the same problem is brewing in the United States and I haven't heard a single mainstream politician from either party come up with a proactive way of dealing with it. And guess what? There's no provision for a State to file bankruptcy like Detroit did. What happens when one of the 50 can't meet its obligations? Nobody knows but we're apt to find out in the coming decades....

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[don.g]

Silly question, but is a company which tries very hard to pay no tax on its profits a "legitimate business" or a leech on society?

Yes, I know they do neat stuff, as do many other companies. Yes, many other large companies legally avoid taxes. They're leeches too.

Yours sincerely, someone who likes his tax-funded healthcare and education systems. [can you guess I'm not in the US?]

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Kartu]

Google can complain about "youtube losing money" while keeping ads price on youtube so low that competitors starve., cough.
Google has too much power for "free open market" to be able to "regulate" it, OK?

EU has both legal and MORAL right to dictate anyone in EU market how to behave IN EU.

The "bunch of idiots" forced phone manufacturers to support USB charging, mobile providers to drop roaming charges, to allow you to switch mobile provider while keeping your old phone number, they forced Microsoft to un-bundle IE, PC manufacturers to offer windows-less version etc.

NONE of that would happen just out of "free market" without government pressing them.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Kartu]

Having better product never means you're an illegal monopoly.
Leveraging your monopolistic position to fight competitors in other areas does.
And exactly that is what evil EU is after.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[hene]

as a direct result of the success of the company.

Google has been manipulating search results in past.

I think it is good thing to stop this kind of thing happening. I do care from business rights to do their own choises and business models. But at the same time, I do not want to live in the world where everything can and will be controlled with money.

There is expected behavior of products. Consumer can't make in depth analysis of companies all to time to figure out all their connections. Just to find out which way he/she is getting screwed this time. Protecting the consumer rights is good thing, they have rights too.

In USA corporations have way too much power. At the same time I'm very happy by not being the one who has to draw these lines.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Zontar The Mindless]

If they were firing at each other, how could they have been fighting on the same side?

And in a response to a post about friendly fire, no less... Fish, barrel--meet gun.

Meanwhile, I humbly suggest that you try a bit harder not to contradict yourself 3 or 4 times in the same post.

Re: Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[O('_')O_Bush]

The part that makes it trolling is that even if Europe did depend on the U.S. in WWII to save it's butt, that has no relevancy on whether it is right or wrong for the E.U. to consider breaking up Google.

And I am sure you would agree with me had you heard an American use that same argument to try to justify some heinous crime in Europe.

Also, is it just me or do Shakrai and sabri look an awful lot like sock puppets?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Google's effective monopoly on search is not user lock-in. It's that they take that extremely successful business, and use it to fund other ventures, grabbing markets by virtue of being able to offer a product for very cheap or even free (e.g.: Android) by subsidizing it from search - which their competition cannot afford.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Anonymous Coward]

And Google have an effective monopoly on search and are abusing it.

You say this like it's been proven. I believe you are rigit in some sense, (Google has a monopoly on good search, as anyone who tried using DuckDuck Go for privacy or any other search engine for more than a few weeks knows; Google is getting major benefits from the strength of it's brand and using that to strong arm other companies), however when I compare with the legal standard that has been used for other companies I think what you are saying is rediculous.

"Monopoly" you say: On every computer I have seen where Google is available, DuckDuck Go, and Bing can be used. You just have to type a different string in your URL bar. "the competition is crap" is hardly an argument for monopoly.

Compare this with the "Windows Monopoly" which was established but was only treated as a limited monopoly. In this case, in almost every shop you would go to you would only find computers with Windows on. If you tried to order a computer from a major supplier they would refuse to remove Windows. Furthermore there was hard evidence in terms of exclusivity contracts and co-advertising subsidies which firmly showed that Microsoft deliberately set out to create this monopoly. Compared to just choosing if you want to in the case of Google, Microsoft's monopoly was much more real and clearly much stronger and much more obviously deliberately established.

"Abusing" you say: If you don't like Google's web site then you can set up your own and it will work on any consumer's computer. In the case of Microsof, almost every consumer PC had their operating system so you had no alternative. Try doing a default Windows install and then running "wordperfect" in the search. You will find that the only thing you see (as you type) is "wordpad"; a Microsoft product. Microsoft was clearly caught making it difficult for their competitors to run; Google has done nothing like.

Whilst Google's "monopoly" was established in a competitive equal access market place (remember they had to beat AltaVista and the result was not obvious to begin with) and was done by simple product quality, Microsoft's onopoly has been clearly shown to have been established by illegal tactics (see "Judge Jackson's Finding of Facts"

There's no problem with the EU getting involved with Google; there is clearly some danger here and a judgement should be made. However, before they even think about doing this they should first handle other much more obvious cases like breaking up Microsoft. It's very funny the way that this whole stuff is showing up after things like Microsoft's Scroogle campaign and their anti Google lobbying.

This looks like a fit up between the EU and Microsoft to avoid having to punish the actual offenders here.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Anonymous Coward]

My point is that the EU is a bunch of arrogant idiots who have no business telling an American company to split up.

Don't like the laws of the land? Fuck off back to Dumerica.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Google doesn't have a monopoly on search. Not even close. The only reason they get used is because they're the best. The second that they start sucking, people will leave in droves. It's pretty fucking far from tyranny when any user can go elsewhere. That's not a monopoly.

Re: Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[WindBourne]

And what messes would that be?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Tom]

The EU uses a mafia style shakedown program

Get some help for your paranoia issues.

The EU has become so fucking corporation friendly over the past two decades, we have rising poverty in all developed EU countries, falling real wages, unemployment, high percentages of temporary employment and are busy destroying the middle class that kept Europe stable for six decades. All in the name of protecting banksters and corporate profits, who are breaking records yearly.

Accusing the EU of shaking down corporations is orwellian.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Tom]

Yugoslavia was no threat to EU, ever. It was a civil war, and within Europe many people consider it a mistake to become involved.

As for Putin - you can think what you want, he's never expressed any desires to expand into Europe. That he got nervous about Ukraine - well, after Kuba you americans shouldn't be talking. What would you do if there was a revolution in Mexico or Canada and the new government is strongly pro-Russia with open, direct and very vocal russian support? Or chinese. Or both. You'd sit on your asses and say "let the people decide", yes?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Tom]

What is happening here is that a bunch of politicians are interfering in the legitimate business of a private enterprise.

Without this naster "interference", those private enterprises wouldn't exist. The government provides the stability, regulation and occasional enforcement of the rules that enables the business world to function at all. Without contract law and courts, do you really think the stock market, stock ownership of corporations and the whole investment sector would exist?

Funny how one kind of "interference" is taken for granted, as long as it benefits you, but as soon as you don't like it, it's evil nasty mafia-style badness.

Not as a result of violating any laws

It's called anti-trust, and yes there are laws about it.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Tom]

They should go and re-read their history books and remember how close all of Europe was to speaking either German or Russian.

Funny historic fact: The USA was one vote away from speaking German. :-)

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Tom]

What part of this is not true? The EU is operating like a socialist federation these days: they shove EU laws (up to and including a constitution) through their member states' throat and enforce them

You have no idea how EU politics works.

What's being "shoved down member states throats" are almost all laws that the national politicians wanted, but couldn't get through locally because of popular resistance and the media eating them alive. So they push it up to the EU, it comes back a few year later, thanks to short public memory they now claim they have no choice, it's an EU mandate, and they get the laws they wanted.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Eunuchswear]

They should go and re-read their history books and remember how close all of Europe was to speaking either German or Russian.

Uh, about 16% of them do speak German.

Because, they're like, Germans.

Idiot.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[dunkelfalke]

A corporation is an artificial construct existing on a whim of the current lawmaking of a country (or in this case a union of countries). Thus these states have every right to split it. If it was an unlimited liability general partnership, things would be much different.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[dkf]

Google doesn't have a monopoly on search. Not even close. The only reason they get used is because they're the best. The second that they start sucking, people will leave in droves. It's pretty fucking far from tyranny when any user can go elsewhere. That's not a monopoly.

Google has a much higher share of search in the EU than in the US, so the EU is far more interested in keeping a close eye on what they're doing. That said, the story was about something that the EP is pushing for and they're not exactly the most influential set of people ever (they've got budgetary powers, the ability to vet the Commissioners, and the ability to revise proposed legislation). What's more, it would probably be possible to split the search side from the rest of Google enough to satisfy at least some of the EP without breaking up Google entirely. (Satisfying the whole EP? Might as well ask for something that satisfies the whole of Congress.)

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[ganjadude]

they only have a monopoly though because they are good at what they do, not because of some evilness. There are plenty of other search providers out there.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[ganjadude]

but why is that really a problem?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[MoarSauce123]

It does not require a monopoly, it only requires commanding market share. As far as Internet searches and mobile OS goes, Google clearly as a commanding market share. And typically, the US media (including slashdot) focuses on this because Google is a US company. The EU commissions have similar proceedings against numerous companies from Europe and Asia going all the time. Yes, they are not all as big as Google or Microsoft, but this isn't only about singling out US companies with a lot of money. It applies to ALL companies who get caught not playing by the rules.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Plumpaquatsch]

they only have a monopoly though because they are good at what they do, not because of some evilness. There are plenty of other search providers out there.

It doesn't matter if you got your monopoly by being evil or not - we are talking about abuse of that monopoly.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[bingoUV]

OK, so how much tax exactly should an entity(person/company/trust etc ) pay to not be a leech?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[leslie.satenstein]

My point is that the EU is a bunch of arrogant idiots who have no business telling an American company to split up.

Like it or not, idiots or not, they do have such business, simply because your poor little "american company" is no such thing. It's an international corporation that was once founded in america, but now does business all over the world, including within the EU and actually quite a lot of it.

In the USA Google can do what is allowed under USA law. You know, Present you with their preferred websites that permit you to shop with a controlled to merchants and pay more. One could say Google is a monopoly.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[ebvwfbw]

... New OWA is actually kinda nice.

You really think so? Have you been smoking pot? The 1990s called and they want their e-mail system back. I have to use it at work, it's a POS. Well to be honest, it would have to get better to even be a POS.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[alexgieg]

The European Central Bank is one of the most fundamentalist free-market

That's funny! You user "central bank" and "fundamentalist free-market" in the same sentence as if they weren't opposed! Amazing!

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Dragon Bait]

What's being "shoved down member states throats" are almost all laws that the national politicians wanted, but couldn't get through locally because of popular resistance and the media eating them alive. So they push it up to the EU, it comes back a few year later, thanks to short public memory they now claim they have no choice, it's an EU mandate, and they get the laws they wanted.

I'm confused. It seems like you're supporting his argument versus opposing it. It seems like you're saying the local politicians try something. People revolt. The locals politicians get the EU to shove it down the people's throats and all is good. Isn't the EU shoving it down the people's throats what the person was arguing?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Dragon Bait]

Laws actually effectively dictate they have to, as they have to run the business in such a way as to try to maximise the profits of their shareholders.

Actually, no. There is no law that a corporation needs to maximize profits for their shareholders. Take Tim Cook's statements regarding Apple trying to be green when a shareholder insisted that wouldn't maximize profit.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[sabri]

serves to remind everyone who is in charge here: voters rather than shareholders.

This. Exactly this. This is exactly my point. But quite the opposite.

If I own a loaf of bread, I get to choose whatever the F I want to do with it. I own it. No matter what my neighbor thinks, I own it and if I want to eat it, or let it sit, it is my property.

Google is private property. Private property with shareholders yes, but it is still private property. The moment a government, -any- government, starts to interfere, it is interfering with private property. And that is exactly the thing I don't want the government to do with very limited exceptions (such as an idiot owning a nuclear bomb). Simply being the best in their industry (search results), is not one of these exceptions.

The owner of the corporation is in charge of the corporation, not a voter (or a politician that nobody voted for).

And once more, you modding-morons can mod me down as much as you like because you disagree, it doesn't make my points any less valid.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[sabri]

Because, they're like, Germans.

Na und? Ich spreche auch Deutsch, aber nur weil ich das gelernt habe in die Schule. You know damn well what I mean.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[slimjim8094]

And Google have an effective monopoly on search

Nope. First of all such a statement needs to be qualified - for instance, the 1.3+ billion people in China overwhelmingly prefer Baidu. It is clearly quite possible for people to avoid Google entirely, not just for search (which is, of course, even easier).

and are abusing it.

In what way? Because you don't think Google should use its other services to provide a more integrated experience? Without any sort of lock-in, don't pretend that's anything other than punishing success.

You're begging the question. If Google is a monopoly and they're integrating stuff, that's bad. And they must be a monopoly, because they're doing bad monopoly things like integrating stuff. But without being an actual monopoly with actual lock-in, there's no reason that integration is a problem at all - in fact it's quite the opposite, that's what they have to do to remain competitive. Changing search engines away from Google is as simple as typing a different URL or choosing something else from the drop-down, or even *not changing the default*. The idea that a high search marketshare can be anything other than direct user choice is ridiculous - and so what's the problem?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Tom]

Isn't the EU shoving it down the people's throats what the person was arguing?

The GP claimed the EU is shoving laws down nation states' throats, but that's only a dangerous half-truth. The fact that typically the same politicians who claim "bad EU makes us do evil things" are the ones behind the EU doing said things is a critical part of the puzzle the GP either wasn't aware of or omitted intentionally.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[metrix007]

That's adorable. Voters are certainly not in charge though.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[ultranova]

If I own a loaf of bread, I get to choose whatever the F I want to do with it. I own it. No matter what my neighbor thinks, I own it and if I want to eat it, or let it sit, it is my property.

But your right to do what you want with your property is limited by other laws. For example you are not allowed to beat people to death with your loaf of bread, nor form and abuse a monopoly with your company. The latter which is what Google is - rightly or wrongly - accused of doing.

Google is private property. Private property with shareholders yes, but it is still private property. The moment a government, -any- government, starts to interfere, it is interfering with private property.

Google is legal fiction. It's very existence, the same as all corporations, depends on constant government interference. If the government ceases interfering on the marketplace, Google ceases to exist. Given this, it's absolutely government's right - and in fact duty - to define the exact parameters of its interference.

And that is exactly the thing I don't want the government to do with very limited exceptions (such as an idiot owning a nuclear bomb). Simply being the best in their industry (search results), is not one of these exceptions.

And that's all nice and good, but why should your personal preferences take precedence over someone else's? Why should you get to dictate the conditions of corporate existence?

The owner of the corporation is in charge of the corporation, not a voter (or a politician that nobody voted for).

No one is disputing Google's owners right to make decisions on behalf of the company. What's in question is whether the government should use it's legitimate - under antitrust laws - power over the company.

And once more, you modding-morons can mod me down as much as you like because you disagree, it doesn't make my points any less valid.

Well, your points aren't backed by either facts, logic or even ideology - since you're willing to accept exceptions but only when you judge them okay - so they aren't valid by any stretch of imagination. Also, you keep calling people morons.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[ultranova]

Again, totally nothing factually wrong with that. If it were not for the Americans, all of Europe would either suffer under the Nazis or under the Soviets.

Really? All of Europe you say? Even Great Britain? Finland?

Actually... yes. Without US there's no way the British Empire could had mounted the Normandy invasion. That means the Soviet Union would had either lost or continued rolling on after reaching Berlin. Britain stopped a Nazi invasion and Finland a Soviet one, but neither could had hoped to last much longer without aid, much less win. And of course there's the post-war rebuilding of Europe and world economy, which was mostly orchestrated and bankrolled by the US.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Milharis]

The problem is that you can't have a better product in six months, at least not a search engine that provides more relevant results.

I've recently had a lecture from a guy from Bing, and when asked who was more relevant and why, he simply said "Google", especially outside the USA.
The reason is that search engines are now way more about user data than any IR algorithm.
Simply put, without the huge market share and time advantage Google has, you won't be able to match them is relevance.
Now, you can compete on features or things like privacy, but Duckduckgo hasn't been able to upset the market with that.

To go back to the story, I don't think it's Google's monopoly the problem, it's that Google is accused of leveraging its monopoly to promote their other products.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[NoOneInParticular]

Because this destroy the competitive market.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Xest]

It's probably worth pointing out that the only reason Europe has it in for Google in the first place is because of extensive lobbying by other US corporation, particularly Microsoft. See here for example:

http://www.lobbyfacts.eu/news/...

Google is being hit from two fronts, Microsoft has been strongly lobbying against it in the EU for many years now and spends more on EU lobbying than every other silicon valley tech company combined.

On the other front is the newspaper industry. Part of this is indigineous like Germany's Bild, but of course there's Murdoch's News International as a major player in the fray too.

So before anyone starts bitching at the EU for targeting American companies, they must bear in mind that the EU is targeting Google largely at the behest of other American corporations, again, most prominently Microsoft.

What's really going on here is that Google just isn't making an equivalent counter-effort to build allies and lobby in it's favour within the EU. It has been doing this in the US where it seems to lobby the US government hard, but for some reason it just doesn't much seem to care how strongly it's losing on this front in the EU.

You're absolutely right, Google has no monopoly but that's not the real actual issue here, lobbying and the consequences of it are the real actual problem here.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[dywolf]

Oh, but you'd be surprised at what comapnies can do without violating any laws. They have whole teams of lawyers to help them figure it out.

The problems is when private enterprise interfers in the business of other private enterprise.
Or did you never learn about Standard Oil as a kid?
Or trusts? Or monopolies?

Here's a clue: those things are fundamentally BAD for free enterprise.
That's why we make laws against them. Doing so fosters free enterprise by promoting and enabling competition.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[dywolf]

Fail. We arent talking about if you had a loaf of bread, and what you chose to do with it.

We are talking about if you had ALL THE LOAVES OF BREAD, and chose to tell others to do with it, or even withhold it entirely until certain conditions are met. That's the point when government steps in and says "nope". That's good for soecity. It keeps competition alive and active. It prevents stagnation int he economy. And most importantly, it lowers the chance of citizens getting themselves some of that bread youve been withhold via the The Pitchfork Method.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[dywolf]

1- It is clear that you are completely ignorant of the definitions of the words "socialist", "communist", and "Soviet".
--

2- It isn't the US that broke Germany's back. It was Russia. And Hitler's own obsession with it. We dont teach it in our history books nearly as well as we should. And people like you are poorer for it. There is no doubt that we contributed much of the technological might to the fight to counter the German's own (and even then we found just how far ahead of us they really were after the war).

But the numbers, the sheer numbers of attrition, both allied and axis, were provided by the Russians.
88% of all German casulaties were on the Russian Front.

The Western Front was nothing comapred to the Russian Front. There's a reason being "sent to the Russian Front" was considered a death sentence and used as a threat within Germany. On the Russian Front fighting was "between 400 German and Soviet divisions on the Eastern Front for four years. The front itself spanned 1,600 km. In the meantime, the fighting on the Western Front involved 15-20 divisions at most." ( http://www.globalresearch.ca/w... )

It as the Battle of Kursk that turned the tide of the war when a German advance was stopped for the first time before achieving its objectives, in one of the largest battles in human history. The Soviets incurred more 250,000 killed and 600,000 wounded. The Germans suffered 200,00 total casulaties, both fatal and wounded. One million casualties, in a single battle.

Total Russian casualties for the war would be between 20 and 30 MILLION, far larger than any other country except China (10-20 million), and comprising nearly half of all casualties in the European theater.

Keep in mind only a small portion of Germany's military might made life very difficult for all of the western allies (US, UK, France, etc), while the bulk of Germany's army was fighting Russia. If Hitler hadn't tried to take Russia, if he hadn't broken his own treaty with them, nothing the US did would have mattered. It was Russia that removed the German Army's will and capability to fight. It was Russia that absorbed the bulk of Hitlers might and eventually, slowly, beat him back.
It was Russia that won WWII.
--

3- You are troll:

You dont know basic facts.
You substitute your own bigoted opinions for facts.
You pass those opinions off as facts.
You then denigrate people who point that out.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[g4sy]

And Google have an effective monopoly on search and are abusing it. It's a pretty straightforward case for their companies in the EU being broken up. Isn't that one of the functions of small gubbermint in a fundamentalist free-market neoliberal system? You know, to ensure that there's competition and no one entity can become tyranical?

No. The EU forces me all the time to do things I don't want to do, and I have no choice. I have, and did choose to stop using google services over a period about a year. Totally weaned from google about 12 months ago now. I might starting using them again now. But the point is I HAVE A CHOICE

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Plumpaquatsch]

The European Central Bank is one of the most fundamentalist free-market

That's funny! You user "central bank" and "fundamentalist free-market" in the same sentence as if they weren't opposed! Amazing!

Here's a critic of an other of his books - the title says it all: http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/03/murray-rothbard-was-idiot.html " I read The Ethics of Liberty and found it completely, utterly, and transparently intellectually bankrupt. "

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[alexgieg]

Thanks, I liked that article. It expresses many of the same criticisms I have to Rothbard, better than I myself could.

However, that has no bearing on the issue at hand. Central banks are state monopolies that prevent the free market of private currencies. If one's a fundamentalist free-market advocate, then currencies are just a good among others, and monopolizing on their production is anything but being free. Hence, any central bank cannot by definition be a fundamentalist free-market advocate, else they'd advocate for their own monopolies over their respective national currencies to end.

That's why, incidentally, no huge company is ever truly libertarian. Libertarianism is always the position defended by those neither at the bottom nor at the top of the economic pyramid. It's a purely middle-class ideology.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Plumpaquatsch]

Thanks, I liked that article. It expresses many of the same criticisms I have to Rothbard, better than I myself could.

However, that has no bearing on the issue at hand. Central banks are state monopolies that prevent the free market of private currencies.

Wait, what? "Private currencies"? Is that something like ocean shells? PostIts with "IOU" written on them? Look at non-cash payment system and who does and who doesn't support which combination of them, and tell me something like an unregulated private currency could work. Even as a reasonable alternative to a real currency, let alone as an replacement. And don't even get me started on "gold currency".

The problem with FREE free markets is, that they don't work. Period.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[matbury]

Are you suggesting that Baidu is a competitor to Google? How's your Chinese? I guess Europeans can always choose to learn Chinese and maybe, just maybe the search results will be appropriate for them. Who knows?

In what way? Because you don't think Google should use its other services to provide a more integrated experience? Without any sort of lock-in, don't pretend that's anything other than punishing success. You're begging the question. If Google is a monopoly and they're integrating stuff, that's bad. And they must be a monopoly, because they're doing bad monopoly things like integrating stuff. But without being an actual monopoly with actual lock-in, there's no reason that integration is a problem at all - in fact it's quite the opposite, that's what they have to do to remain competitive. Changing search engines away from Google is as simple as typing a different URL or choosing something else from the drop-down, or even *not changing the default*. The idea that a high search marketshare can be anything other than direct user choice is ridiculous - and so what's the problem?

This isn't even wrong. It's incoherent.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[matbury]

The problem with Austrian School economics and the subsequent Chicago School is that they are a-historical, i.e. their theories bear little or no relation to what happens in reality. The Fed was set up as a response to the frequent financial panics that plagued the free market at the time: http://www.minneapolisfed.org/... Additionally, the foundational principle of Austrian/Chicago School economic theory, homo economicus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H..., is just plain wrong (See Daniel Kahneman's Nobel Prize in Economics-winning work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...). We're not rational, self-interested agents and we have over a century of conclusive cognitive psychology resarch that tells us otherwise.

Austrian/Chicago School economists, like Murray Rothbard, are just plain nuts.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Plumpaquatsch]

They did, because the Americans weren't able to:

“We immigrant citizens have the holy duty topreserve the Union and the Constitution . The native Americans are demoralized physically and spiritually. Love, true attachment for this land is entirely lacking [in the native born], They are unworthy of the freedom . They do not understand free institutions because to them the difference between freedom and despotism is unknown. To us immigrants is reserved to save this land from destruction. And we will do it.”

The Europeans saved America. You are welcome.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[alexgieg]

We're not rational, self-interested agents

You're agreeing with one of Austrian Economics' basic axioms. Hayek wrote entire books based on this central fact.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[alexgieg]

You have to make up your mind. Either central banks are fundamentalist free market advocates, or they aren't. In this post you seem to be agreeing with my point that they aren't. So, which is it?

The problem with FREE free markets is, that they don't work.

True, which is why I'm actually a distributist, not a libertarian. That however has no bearing on the original argument about what central banks are or aren't.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Plumpaquatsch]

You have to make up your mind. Either central banks are fundamentalist free market advocates, or they aren't. In this post you seem to be agreeing with my point that they aren't. So, which is it?

There is a difference between "fundamentalist" and "extremist". You know, like Iran actually fighting ISIS, while "moderate" Turkey supports them (to fight Assad). Or Adam Smith speaking favorably about the Bank of England.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[cavreader]

The Europeans colonized America they just couldn't hang on to it once the early immigrants got settled and a bunch of rich aristocrats decided they didn't want to pay taxes to a king on the other side of the Atlantic. And yes, the European immigrants during the Civil War period did help the North eventually win the war. And for the those who survived the Civil War I very much doubt that they considered themselves Europeans any more.

In an unrelated news item...

[mmell]

Europe disappeared from the worldwide web today.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google checked its own sources, found that the USA made up a very small part of the worlds population and that business growth was all outside of the USA.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Em Adespoton]

Europe disappeared from the worldwide web today.

Would that be because the EU parliament exercised their right to be forgotten?

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Tom]

This stupid nonsense is posted every time the EU acts in relation to american companies.

It's among the worst nationalistic hogwash misconceptions ever, easily on par with North Korea rambling about its moon base.

The EU is bigger than the USA in almost every metric, especially on the important ones: Population count (507 mio. vs. 319 mio.) and GDP (18.4 trio. US$ vs. 16.8 trio. US$).

Any big american company deciding to withdraw from Europe would have its board of directors kicked out faster than they can sign the paperwork to make it happen, or watch its stock crash & burn, because they've just not only moved out of its biggest market, they've also given a free playing ground for a global competitor to emerge unchallenged.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[slimjim8094]

But this represents an existential threat - when viewed that way, it's a no-brainer to give up a market, even a huge market, if the price of admission is too high. Also, Google doesn't have to stop serving them, just stop doing business there.

Also, don't forget that Google pulled out of China, and China has a lot more population and will have the biggest GDP shortly. This is far more concerning than a little espionage.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[zlives]

google will make available certain search results and all will be google, i mean good

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[mister_playboy]

It's among the worst nationalistic hogwash misconceptions ever, easily on par with North Korea rambling about its moon base.

Pretending that the EU is a singular nation in the way that the US or North Korea are is itself "hogwash".

Re: In an unrelated news item...

[mmell]

The US has to get over this belief they can bully everyone else in the world.

Who's gonna make us - you?

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[mmell]

Close.

Not before Monsanto found a market for their products feeding third-world European nations.

X^D

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[__aagmrb7289]

I believe you mean the "right to suppress free speech", don't'cha?

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Population count (507 mio. vs. 319 mio.) and GDP (18.4 trio. US$ vs. 16.8 trio. US$).

Given their superior regulatory environment, why does the EU only make less than 70% per-capita of what the US makes? Especially given that many US-headquartered companies are recognizing most of their revenue in Ireland.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[theVarangian]

It's among the worst nationalistic hogwash misconceptions ever, easily on par with North Korea rambling about its moon base.

Pretending that the EU is a singular nation in the way that the US or North Korea are is itself "hogwash".

Who ever made that claim and how is it even relevant? What matter to Google (and any other company engaging in anti capitative behaviour) is that far as anti-trust issues are concerned the EU is a single entity.

Re: In an unrelated news item...

[lgw]

Why are you hitting yourself France? Why do you keep hitting yourself?

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[theVarangian]

But this represents an existential threat - when viewed that way, it's a no-brainer to give up a market, even a huge market, if the price of admission is too high. Also, Google doesn't have to stop serving them, just stop doing business there.

Also, don't forget that Google pulled out of China, and China has a lot more population and will have the biggest GDP shortly. This is far more concerning than a little espionage.

But China was demanding a bit more than the EU who merely wants Google to break up it's operations in the EU into separate business units. China wanted Google to censor web searches and rat out Chinese citizens for regime critical utterances and activities. Pulling out of China in the face of those demands makes sense since Google's position as an information broker depends to a large extent on whether the public trusts them or not. If a large number of people get the notion that Google cannot be trusted, Google could easily see a collapse of it's share of the internet search market. Of course somebody will inevitably ignore this fact and go straight to pointing out that Google feeds information about it's users to the NSA as a matter of course (and as if that was a proven fact) to which I'll respond that I'm no friend of Google, I think they have become a dangerous monopolist, but I'll also consider them innocent of collaborating with the NSA until they are proven guilty.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[theVarangian]

Population count (507 mio. vs. 319 mio.) and GDP (18.4 trio. US$ vs. 16.8 trio. US$).

Given their superior regulatory environment, why does the EU only make less than 70% per-capita of what the US makes? Especially given that many US-headquartered companies are recognizing most of their revenue in Ireland.

Because the EU added several Eastern European nations as members who were, and to some extent still are, recovering from two world wars and 50 years as vassal states of the Soviet Union. Man of these countries are suffering through the usual corruption and political instability issues that plague all young democracies. Just try to imagine that the USA admitted a few dysfunctional South American countries with broken economies and a few tens of millions of poor working class citizens as new states of your union. The per capita economic output of the USA would take a bit of a nosedive. The reason that most US-headquartered companies are recognising their revenue in Ireland is because they are dodging taxes, the EU as a whole does not benefit from that because their corporate slime balls are doing the same thing. The only ones benefitting from the now famous 'double Irish' tax dodge are corrupt Irish politicians.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[steelfood]

Your numbers may very well be true, but the U.S. leads in per capita consumer spending. That means Americans spend more money on products per person than any other country (except the UAE, strangely enough). In contrast, the number for most of Western Europe is around 60% of the U.S.

This is why the U.S. is often considered a special market (consumer products-wise) separate from the rest of the world. The only other market that's considered special is China, but only because of its growth potential due to sheer population numbers.

Now, how much spending is on European products, nobody really knows. But the U.S. (and U.S. companies) does not need Europe to sustain businesses tied to consumer products.

GDP numbers tend to be more relevant for B2B and banks, so it would be stupid if IBM or even Microsoft pulled out of Europe. But Google? Their dollars are advertising dollars, and the ROI on marketing in Europe just doesn't have the same potential. Not that they would want to pull out, as it's lost revenue and certainly opens the door for competition. But to say that Europe is a bigger market for them than the U.S. is flat out wrong.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Shakrai]

Who ever made that claim and how is it even relevant?

The grandparent, in the stupid pissing contest EU vs. US thread. I really hate these threads; sure, we have quarrels, but we've also got a shared history, culture, and commitment to freedom. People would do well to remember that. They might also wish to remember that countries that share our values are most definitely in the minority on planet Earth; it's really fucking stupid to root for the EU to drag the US down or vice versa.

These idiots should get a bloody passport and go visit the "other side"; you'll find we're/they're not that much different from you.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[kamapuaa]

I'm a little confused how your answer is a response to "Europe disappeared from the worldwide web." What you're replying to is a joke that google would get rid of all Europe links in retaliation, not a nationalistic claim that Google should abandon all business in EU nations. It's like you're deeply offended by something nobody is actually saying.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[KermodeBear]

Yup, because nothing says "trust" like search results based off of government mandates, right?

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[x0ra]

In that case, is it Europe which is bullying for money it has not been competent enough to earn.

Re: In an unrelated news item...

[deviated_prevert]

Perhaps, but Europe isn't exactly the engine of growth powering the world, either. Maybe EuroParl should think about fixing employment and debt along its southern periphery instead of trying to dismantle Bing's competitor.

LOL the first post that mentions anything about the competition. Perhaps the EU is just trying to get special software seat costs for member countries from Redmond. A simple case of "the Mouse That Roared" strategy to get special treatment from the real monopolists on the block!

Either way the truth about why the EU are trying to oust Google is most likely well and truly hidden from the tech journalists and the tech journalists that are reporting on this perceived strategy to dismantle Google as a company are in the pocket of the people behind the scenes.

If Google is successfully dismantled and restricted in access by a segment of the internet as large as the domains of Europe then chances are what we will see happen in the future is new routing hardware and nodes being built. The results of breaking up Google in a big way will be a case of "All Roads Lead To Redmond" not Rome along with huge bandwidth cost increased not real competition as some officials in Europe may think.

The other possibility is that the net will split up and we will see disconnected local nets firewalled in the same way China does. This could be easily done with hardware based domain blocking technologies the way cell phones can be made to lock out competing providers network pipes.

Either way the network traffic and services including ad revenues will be controlled in Washington State instead of California. The revenues conveniently off shored by the lords of Redmond to avoid paying American corporate and state taxes regardless of which who is on the top of the heap.

Or just maybe Suse will get more money and build a competitor search engine based upon Bing's search engine software, perhaps this explains the recent love affair with Linux that is happening in Redmond.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Tom]

China is much less connected to the world and especially the language barrier is massive. There's more to language than making a translation. Why do you think Facebook has almost no traction in Russia? It's not that they couldn't find someone who writes kyrillic.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Tom]

but the U.S. leads in per capita consumer spending.

Which, as a per capita value is again dependent on the population number for total value, and the population of the EU is 60% larger.

But the U.S. (and U.S. companies) does not need Europe to sustain businesses tied to consumer products.

Strangely, they seem to think otherwise, because they're going to great efforts to do business in Europe.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Tom]

You need to go back to reading comprehension 101. The part that's nationalistic about the GP post is USA nationalism, not european.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Tom]

But this represents an existential threat

Nonsense. One of the ways that corporations are different from real people is that you can split them into parts without killing them.

So we'd have AdSearchGoogle, headed by Larry Page, and ServiceGoogle, headed by Sergey Brin. AdSearchGoogle would be prohibited for 5 years to favor search results pointing to ServiceGoogle, and that's it.

Also, Google doesn't have to stop serving them, just stop doing business there.

Googles business is advertisement. Their services are excuses for showing you advertisement. In this business, these two things are pretty much the same thing.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[AmiMoJo]

Also China is dominated by domestic companies who provide search, cloud services, email, chat and pretty much most of what Google does. It would have been very hard for them to complete, and with the political environment and the US's increasingly hostile position it just didn't make sense to continue.

Re: In an unrelated news item...

[Eunuchswear]

There are two European countries that have enough warheads to destroy all towns in America with a population of more than 100,000.

Want to start a game of chicken?

Re: In an unrelated news item...

[Eunuchswear]

As Greece has only been democratic since 1974 I'd say, yes, corruption affects young democracies.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Tom]

and the EU is a conglomeration of thugs who makes a lot of their money by suing big companies for free money.

If I had a dollar for everytime someone posts these 100% predicatable pieces of hogwash, I'd put Warren Buffet to shame.

The EU is so crazy corporation-friendly, claiming they're in any way treating corporations badly is like saying the oceans are evil bastards because they're trying to drown all the fish.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Xest]

It's also worth pointing out that regardless of China's GDP and population Google still wasn't ever going to make much money there because it would always be second place to indigineous Chinese search like Baidu.

10% market share in a $20 trillion economy is still going to be far less than 70% in an $18 trillion economy.

Google never had enough marketshare to care about China and neither was it making much progress in growing it's marketshare there and that's why it was happy to pull out. If Google had 70%+ marketshare in China what's the bet it would've bowed to the demands of the Chinese anyway?

switching search engines has no cost

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:switching search engines has no cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Switching operating systems has no cost either. You can just download Linux and erase Windows from your hard drive. See where this is going? Unlike the US, Europe is opposed to monopolies even if they don't "abuse" their position. But arguably Google does abuse its position, for example by moving more and more parts from the Android Open Source Project to proprietary Google apps which heavily rely on Google services, and then requiring phone manufacturers to include these apps if they want their phones to be certified. Even Amazon, which wields tremendous power itself, has quite a difficult time establishing an alternative app store and replacing all Google services with their own and convincing app developers to include support for them. IMHO you don't even have to break out the conspiracy theories about Google ranking competitor's products lower than they would place naturally. Google does enough in the open to warrant restrictions on their activities. Whether Europe can do anything about it is a different question.

Re:switching search engines has no cost

[tgv]

Was somebody forcing people to buy anything from Standard Oil? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Free speech

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

What's so special about Google?

[PhrostyMcByte]

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.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[rahvin112]

Kept on a leash. Lets be honest here, the ONLY thing that keeps someone from using another competing search engine is nothing at all. The only reason people use Google is because it's better, the minute they stop being better and people will quit using it. I don't consider it much of a monopoly when the barrier to entry is almost nothing.

I don't particularly like them fronting their own service but again, no one is forcing anyone to use Google. It's not even the default search engine for the predominant desktop system! This appears to be being driven by the German politicians who are bowing to their own content industry to try to force google to give them a piece of their search business.

I can't help but feel that this entire push is slimy corruption politics typical to Europe where they try to protect local businesses and harm foreign ones using dubious legal means which are often against WTO agreements.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

They go after other companies for antitrust, you just don't hear about it. If you go to their antitrust case search engine and do a search for all antitrust/cartel cases in the last 6 months you will find 8 cases. How many of those 8 cases did you hear about? btw EU is already investigating Amazon over E-Book antitrust.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[Tom]

But when are we going to see them go after other huge companies abusing their market share?

They do. The anti-trust part of the EU is actually one of the few that's working pretty good. And before the usual stupid comments come running: They go against EU companies as much as against USA companies.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[CaptBubba]

Yeah a lot of it is politics but you have to admit it is very difficult for anyone to get off the ground because whenever anyone comes up with something marginally better, usually for a specialized subject (like say flights), Google puts their own version of the same at the top of the Google search results and effectively attempts to use their current dominance in normal web search to completely eviscerate the newcomer's traffic. A nasty "secret" of the search industry is most people will only hit the first result or so because why click further when "eh close enough" is already there right in front of you?

You don't have to be forcing customers to use your product to be exhibiting anti-competitive behavior, using your market position to make sure that no other companies can be profitable is just as effective.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[rahvin112]

Yea I don't like it either but it's still not a impediment to alternative businesses IMO. Google might control advertising on Google and affiliated sites but they hardly control all advertising. And the most effective advertising is still not on the web, it's local.

The reason Google dominates these other markets is often their solution is better, easier to use and charges less than competitors. In all their years of dominance they've done one thing continually and that's to drive prices down, not up. As an example Google did massive damage to Amazon's earnings by overnight dropping hosting costs by 90%.

I guess my main gripe is that there has been no consumer hostile actions by Google (other than privacy). They've not raised prices, they don't refuse competitors advertisements. If they aren't hurting consumers than regulation should be light up until they do. For me it boils down to one simple fact, it's just not difficult for someone to type an alternative URL into a browser. There is nothing at all forcing consumers to Google, if anything they make it easier to leave their ecosystem than their competitors do.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[rahvin112]

If you think the barrier to entry in the search market is low, you should have a talk with Yahoo or MS, both of which have spent a billion or three on what you call "almost nothing". Either they're all idiots, or you're missing something.

The only barrier to entry is a good search engine that turns out results people want. It's not that hard, but it's far to easy to want to screw up those results to boost revenue, something yahoo was notorious for. Microsoft's biggest expenses related to search were advertising (such as buying Yahoo's search business) and trying to convince people they could be trusted, so far they've mostly failed at both. Even at that Bing is still not as good at returning results as Google is. Maybe that's because Google's entire company is devoted to search and Yahoo and Microsoft are devoted to other things with search being a second class citizen in the company.

But actually a good thing. Of course you'll deny that if you drank too much of the neo-conservative cool-aid, but to any thinking person it's quite clear that the total dominance of a few global superplayers is not beneficial to the market or the people.

You might like putting people in jars but I don't, please don't attempt to classify my political leanings by putting me in a jar, particularly one I despise. The problem with your argument is that the total dominance of Google as you claim could be replaced overnight by people typing a different URL in the bar. There is no barrier to entry other than excellence in search. What I see in search is a very functional and competitive market place. Google messes up once and the lions at their door will eat their market-share in a matter of months. The total lack of barrier's to entry, the ease with which consumers can switch and the fact that prices are falling indicates a healthy free-market, even if one of the players is dominant. All regulations will do in a situation like this is break the functioning market. I'm all for regulating markets, just not doing it to ones that are functioning relatively freely.

European regulations should be focusing on the edges of the market where Google is trying to manipulate things, such as forcing them to randomize product listing instead of always listing their own first. Or making sure they don't turn their Android system into a vehicle to mobile control (but by all reports Europe has a healthier mobile competition than the US with a functional player in Microsoft). Or even leveraging their android wear or android car to gain control of other markets. Again though the touch should be light, by all accounts these markets are free and functional. Overly heavy regulation is as damaging as no regulation at all.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[c]

but to any thinking person it's quite clear that the total dominance of a few global superplayers is not beneficial to the market or the people.

I don't entirely disagree, but before they have a go at kicking around Google, there's a whole host of larger corporations with a much longer and broader history of abuse that need a kicking first. That they don't seem to be interested in taking them on suggests that the "benefit of the market or the people" isn't the primary goal behind this little initiative.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[steelfood]

Everyone does it. It's called protectionism, and no country is guilt-free. It's a matter of how smartly it's done. This move? Stupid. Picking a fight with Google (or even trash talking, which this really is) is a really dumb idea. Nothing's really going to come out of this, except for maybe a bit of egg on some world leader's face at a Google-hosted party. Toppling democratically-elected regimes in unstable regions? Brilliant. Chances of success are almost a hundred percent, and the trade benefits are tremendous. It's only called bullying if you're caught doing it and nobody's really looking that way anyway.

My point being, you shouldn't be so surprised political leaders are making lots of patriotic noise. It's what doesn't get into the papers that's the real eye-openers.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[martin-boundary]

Hogwash.

What keeps people using Google is that it puts its grubby little search boxes in all the major default locations. Face it, most people use the first text entry field they see, regardless of if it's a search box or not. And when it doesn't respond like they think it should, they say it's broken, rather than accept that they typed words into the wrong textbox.

Do not confuse ordinary people with the elite here at slashdot. We know which search engine we use, and we know the differences between them. But we're a tiny minority.

TL;DR summary: Google's success isn't based on quality, it's based on flooding the major entry points for text so that people use them without needing to make a choice.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[rahvin112]

And if Google even hesitates or tries to leverage search in a way consumers don't like those very competitors will eat them alive so quickly it would make your head spin.

If everyone on the planet used duck-duck-go tomorrow and for the rest of the month Google would be in very serious trouble.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[walterbyrd]

> The EU seems to have a chip on their shoulders about Google.

Because Microsoft pays better. Just business, nothing personal.

During the OOXML, Microsoft was caught red-handed giving bribes to European officials.

When somebody sticks it to Microsoft, Microsoft often uses the same tactic against it's competitors. Remember Europe saying MS had a monopoly? A few bribes later, and viola, MS competitors have a monopoly.

BTW: I think US politicians are even worse.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[khallow]

Truly, the only way to be able to determine results people want is by having people using it more and often.

But you get diminishing returns. I doubt there's much additional value from a trillion searches over a billion searches, especially once the data gets a bit stale.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[Kartu]

Yet EU isn't after googles dominant position as a search engine.
It's about google (mis-)using that position to promote other products.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[Winchy]

Duck Duck Go wouldn't be in great shape, either.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[Tom]

Tell me, do you really believe it is the anti-trust department that decides upon sanctions? If not, why bring up this strawman when my argument was that this department, at least is working nicely? I didn't say other parts of the EU do.
 

Re:What's so special about Google?

[bingoUV]

I hear this a lot but I don't see this. I search Google by famous stock ticker names, and I always get Yahoo finance results as the top result. Google finance is 3rd or later, second is either "advice" from bloomberg or the company's own website.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[bingoUV]

I had heard of poor reading comprehension, but not understanding your own statement? You take the cake. Look, "barrier to entry" doesn't matter to Microsoft and Yahoo - they have already entered. What you are referring to while calling it "barrier to entry" is actually "barrier to becoming the top player".

Free market does NOT depend on this being low, nor does a free market cause it to be low. This barrier being low does a world of bad for everyone.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[Tom]

What you are referring to while calling it "barrier to entry" is actually "barrier to becoming the top player".

You failed telepathy class, I assume?

No, I meant barrier to entry. You may think that if you put up a website on a free webhosting site that returns results from that MySQL database your single-threaded Perl crawler is filling, you've somehow entered the search market, but I'm pretty sure everyone who's stopped laughing will explain that's not what entering a market means.

You've not entered the furniture megastore market either when you're selling your old sofa on ebay, you know?

Re:What's so special about Google?

[Xest]

I wondered the same thing for a long while, why Google when it's not even close to the worst tech offender? See my post here for an answer:

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Long story short? Lobbying by a combination of the likes of Microsoft and News International.

Of all the things Microsoft gets slagged off for one of the worst things it does is often ignored here and that's the amount of lobbying it engaged in within the EU. Have a Google for Microsoft EU lobbying to see how big a problem it is.

I tend not to hate either Google or Microsoft, I like a lot of what Google does and I think Microsoft has improved a lot, but Microsoft's EU lobbying is one of those things that really concerns me (just as Google's increased lobbying against the European Data Protection Directive does).

Re:What's so special about Google?

[bingoUV]

Which dictionary do you use which defines "entered" as "become top player"? FYI Microsoft's search engine is neither single threaded, nor Perl, not on MySQL either. Triple fail.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[Tom]

Troll someone else. Your first sentence I just debunked, no need to repeat the effort. Your 2nd sentence is proving my point - MS spent tons of money, they're a great example for the barrier being quite high. Your 3rd sentence is self-referential.

It's a good troll posting, actually, when I think of it. At first glance it seems just completely stupid, but looking more closely reveals a few nice gems that make it clear it was crafted as a joke on itself. Well done. I'm taking back my 1st sentence, high-quality trolling is rare these days.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[bingoUV]

Nice move - you've been proved wrong so cry "troll!!". Go to mommy.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[Tom]

Not everyone here is 12 years old and still lives with his mother. :-)

I was wrong. Do go troll elsewhere. EOT.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[bingoUV]

I know, just you behave like a 6 year old that should live with someone motherly.

Standards

[NotInHere]

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.

Re:Standards

[eht]

And Google is happy to let you take your data out of them.

https://www.google.com/setting...

Want out of the Google experience? Here is all your data available to take to your new service.

I can not think of another company that offers anything remotely similar to this.

Re:Standards

[turp182]

Fantastic link.

They have 2.36GB of data on me.

At least this is reassuring...

"It may take some time before it is ready to download. Don't worry, we'll email you when it's ready."

I'm not sure how to respond, as well as process the data load.

Re:Standards

[swillden]

Fantastic link.

They have 2.36GB of data on me.

At least this is reassuring...

"It may take some time before it is ready to download. Don't worry, we'll email you when it's ready."

I'm not sure how to respond, as well as process the data load.

How much of that is your Gmail?

Re:Standards

[Totenglocke]

Google Drive / Google Docs are all included in that too.

Why does Europe use Google?

[Spy Handler]

they should create their own GNU/Linux search engine, maybe out of Finland. Surely they'd be good at it.

EU is getting too powerful

[DavenH]

Time to break the EU into several different countries.

Re:EU is getting too powerful

[manu0601]

Time to break the EU into several different countries.

According the Pew institute study, this is what the People of EU member states want. We also have the 2005 referendums in France and Netherlands that told us People had enough of this mess. That votes have been ignored.

Give us democracy, break up the EU!

Re:EU is getting too powerful

[Shakrai]

That's because the EU is really an economic concern trying to masquerade as a country. It originally started as the European Coal and Steel Community. It has always been about economics. A handful of rich and powerful countries benefit from a common market and currency. Countries that would probably be better off outside of the Eurozone won't leave it because the rich and powerful therein benefit. Well monied interests calling the shots is hardly a uniquely American phenomenon.

Europe won't truly unite absent some sort of external and existential threat. It took such a threat to unify the United States back in the day and the American colonies had a shared culture, language, and no history of going to war with one another. Even at that there was a rather bloody Civil War and regional tensions that still simmer to this day...

Re:EU is getting too powerful

[Totenglocke]

Yes, but are those economic benefits worth the loss of sovereignty? Why should people in the UK or France be forced to live by rules determined by the people of Germany (or any other nation)?

Re:EU is getting too powerful

[dinfinity]

We also have the 2005 referendums in France and Netherlands that told us People had enough of this mess

Don't be an idiot.
1. Those referendums said no such thing. They were about accepting a set of laws under the name 'European Constitution'. Most of the people who voted didn't have a fucking clue what any of the laws were and didn't want to know. They just collectively wanted to vent their nostalgic love for their old currencies and similar hatred for the newfangled Euro.
2. It is not a mess. It's doing great and improving every day. You haven't the faintest clue what an ineffective and internationally unattractive clusterfuck Europe would have been without the EEC and the EU.
3. Representative democracy. There is a reason for the existence of specialization and that reason is efficiency.
I really feel for many of the good politicians: they work their ass off to understand the material to be able to make tough decisions and then literally millions of fuckwits who have no idea about any part of their job or the subject matter come along and bitch at them, tell them they should do it differently and to generally go fuck themselves.

Honestly, imagine the second dumbest idiot you know who has no idea what the fuck your job is about, let him abuse you, tell you how to do your job and then just smile and say you're doing your best.
Relevant XKCD: http://xkcd.com/793/

Re:EU is getting too powerful

[manu0601]

Yes, but are those economic benefits worth the loss of sovereignty?

What economic benefits? You are aware that EU economical policy managed to bring recession to the whole continent, right? Germany included. And since EU economical rules are hardcoded in treaties, People of the EU cannot even use their vote to fix it.

On the log term, compare the historical period of eurozone versus 1945-1975. Some EU countries did much better without the EU than with it.

Simple solution Google will implement...

[Isca]

They'll drop all free services to users. No gmail. No News. No sites. No european developers allowed on the Play store in europe.

Re:Google also has a plan

[Guppy]

Practically, the EU branch of their offices needs to be little more than a cubicle with a lawyer and desk.

But oddly enough, on paper it seems a huge portion of Google "exists" in the EU, legally speaking. As far as revenues and expenses go, a huge portion of Google's revenues and expenses are "generated" there, (specifically, Ireland), thanks to an international tax dodge.

Never happen

[Timmy D Programmer]

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.

Re:Never happen

[ericloewe]

Monster market share == Monopoly

Re:Never happen

[Ralph Wiggam]

Oh look, someone on Slashdot who has absolutely no knowledge of economics, but thinks they do. You hardly ever see that.

Re:Never happen

[Totenglocke]

Yeah, people said that about Yahoo! and AOL as well. Now most people barely remember that they exist.

Re:Never happen

[ericloewe]

Oh please, wise Ralph [Wiggum], do share your definition of "monopoly" that deviates so much from the 90%-96% Google has in Europe.

Stupid is as stupid does.

[Cammi]

So ... you get popular and a corrupt government will try to split you up .. must suck being good (or in this case, BAD).

All these search terms are yours, except "Europe"

[Applehu Akbar]

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.

Does it matter?

[trippytom]

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/...

Re:Does it matter?

[fnj]

Coca-Cola only has one line of business, and that is soft drinks. Eventually all one trick ponies meet the same fate.

Yeah. Right. Um.

All your data belongs to us!

[MindPrison]

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.

Good

[Intrepid imaginaut]

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.

EU is getting Lame

[pubwvj]

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.

Re:EU is getting Lame

[ericloewe]

With that amount of bullshit flying out of your figurative mouth, you could fertilize a whole field.

Re:EU is getting Lame

[PhilHibbs]

Google is not an EU company. The EU doesn't have any control over Google.

They have control over any company that wants to do business in the EU. They can't directly break them up, but they can give them an ultimatum - "form a separate company to run your EU search business, or we will ban you from doing business within the EU". Or something like that. My example is probably overly simplistic and naive as I'm not an expert on international trade law, but just because they are incorporated in the US does not render the EU entirely toothless.

Sure thing

[wiredlogic]

Let me know when the EU get's around to slapping Apple for browser bundling and not providing an install screen to select alternatives.

Re:Sure thing

[thegarbz]

I don't think you understand what a monopoly is, or how antitrust works. Hint: simply bundling applications is not an antitrust violation.

Re:Sure thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me know when the EU get's around to slapping Apple for browser bundling and not providing an install screen to select alternatives.

The IE case had a lot more nuances. That Microsoft started to fling bullshit early in the investigation (IE.exe and the link to it are a core component of Windows) and has a history of dishonest ( IIRC the original IE code base was licensed for a share of the profit of selling it - 0$ ) and monopolistic misbehaviour ( if DOS_VERSION != MSDOS : print weird error) certainly didn't do them any favours. Nor did it help that they practically killed the browser marked back when they included IE for "free".

Re:Sure thing

[PhilHibbs]

Apple don't have a monopoly, so they can't be accused of using one monopoly to gain another.

Re:If Google happens to be an EU corporation ...

[johnjaydk]

What EU really wants to achieve is to break America ...

Nice conspiracy theory but we can't even get along internally over here. Herding all the cats into a unified, secret attack on the US would require a coordinated act by several deities.

I'm afraid any break up is self inflicted. The US is already even more fractured than EU.

EU citisens are skeptic too

[xonen]

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.

Re:EU citisens are skeptic too

[AmiMoJo]

The main problem that the EU has with Google is that it promotes its own services above everyone else's, making it very hard to compete with them. They proposed fairer search results but Google hasn't implemented them, so now they are talking about forcing the issue.

Re:EU citisens are skeptic too

[slimjim8094]

Citation really needed. I reject that integration is "promoting above everybody else". They're trying to provide the most relevant answers to their users, when they can. If you want to go off and do your own thing, the regular results aren't even below the fold! Try "sfo to jfk", which is clearly looking for specific flights - Google has a little box telling you the flights you can take, but immediately below that is a link to Kayak.com (for me). If you search the more generic "flights", there's a small widget indicating that you could've just searched the flight, but the first actual result is Kayak. I should note that the flight search stuff has a huge "Sponsored" text on it - if you don't want to use it, they could hardly make it easier to avoid especially since people are so hardwired to drill in on Google's real results. And if you do want to use it... well, what's the big deal? If somebody's literally just clicking on the first result anyway, and now they don't have to, that's a pretty mercurial and weak preference - would you say that a subtle algorithm change that happened to switch the first and second result was also worth breaking up the company? That's probably more damaging than Google launching its own thing. I imagine a lot of people skip right over the whole top block of "non-organic" results due to years of practice with the ads, but they still click the first organic result.

Let's use a less commercial example. Try searching for "triangle calculator" or "RFK mother" or "range of a cessna 172" or "how many bees are in a pound". They're obviously just trying to provide faster answers when they understand your query enough to do so. Do you really think they want to make money selling airline tickets? Or are they trying to put "ostermiller.org/calc/triangle.html" out of business as well?

Good luck with that EU

[Karmashock]

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.

Re:Good luck with that EU

[El_Muerte_TDS]

The EU sees a big rich american company doing business in the EU and they're not paying EU taxes.

On the plus side, those companies are not paying taxes in the US either.

Re:Good luck with that EU

[Lennie]

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.

Actually, seems to me Google was paying taxes in EU:
http://www.latimes.com/busines...
http://www.businessweek.com/ma...

I don't know where their taxes will be going next.

Or dot you think Ireland is not a EU-country ?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

Re:Good luck with that EU

[Karmashock]

It is an EU shake down. We've seen it before and if you read what the europeans are saying about Google in their press it is clear they are looking for any excuse to push google out.

I'm fine with that. Simply put an easily bypass-able block between Google and the EU. Something along the lines of a notice "sorry, due to EU regulations Google is blocked in your country."...

The point being to piss people off enough that they politically lynch the stupid EU committee causing the problem and then you restore service.

The fact of the matter is that the EU doesn't have a competitive alternative and thus has a poor bargaining position. They might be able to pass regulations or levy taxes or whatever. But at the end of the day, their people want google more then they want those taxes. And so there should be some way to leverage that to undermine any attempt to roll google back.

Re:Good luck with that EU

[NoOneInParticular]

I understood that Google pays their taxes in Ireland, just like Microsoft, Facebook, and many others, I guess that makes them EU companies, so what's your point?

Re:Good luck with that EU

[Karmashock]

Look at what Hungry tried. That is my point. Note the pattern. Read european union officials on the issue.

This is about protectionism and money.

To what end?

[JerryLove]

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.

Re:If Google happens to be an EU corporation ...

[Puls4r]

Actually, that's where you're wrong. Americans hate each other. We treat each other like crap. Here's the thing though: anytime ANYONE not from another country tries to fuck with us we immediately band together. We may not get a long, but we have a nationalistic streak a mile wide.

Google Acquires the EU

[l0ungeb0y]

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.

EU parliament power

[manu0601]

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.

Re:EU parliament power

[thegarbz]

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.

Never let fact get in the way of a good group naval gazing session.

This isn't Soviet Russia

[skaag]

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.

How and why?

[iamacat]

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.

Re:Wont They Die?

[AaronW]

They also are making a fair amount of revenue selling services. For example, my employer had so many problems with Microsoft Sharepoint that they switched to Google Drive. I use both Google and Microsoft's services. Microsoft's (at least Email) leaves a lot to be desired.

Google is also in the transaction business like Paypal and Amazon as well as hosting services.

For another organization I'm looking into Google services now to handle documents and email.

american company

[slashmydots]

They're an American company so Europe can eat a big bucket of stfu.

The EU's Quaero

[Vinegar Joe]

Isn't it supposed to be the Google-killer?

Wait

[_KiTA_]

Where were these assclowns 10 years ago when Microsoft was actively doing evil (and relevant)?

Brussels Hotels Win

[Demonoid-Penguin]

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).

As usual

[nospam007]

They just want as much lobby money from Goggle as they receive from the competition.

Re:As usual

[Shados]

They're going to blissfully type to each other on their iphone to tell each other how to get as much money from Google :)

I can't blame them...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

does MS have their hand in the cookie jar again?

[Your Average Joe]

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?

What about the EU?

[ebvwfbw]

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.

Is it to promote

[NewYork]

https://metager.de/en/