Google Should Be Broken Up, Say European MPs

An anonymous reader is one of many to send word that the European Parliament has voted 384 to 174 in favor of unbundling search engines from other commercial services in order to ensure competition. "The European Parliament has voted in favor of breaking Google up, as a solution to complaints that it favors is own services in search results. Politicians have no power to enforce a break-up, but the landmark vote sends a clear message to European regulators to get tough on the net giant. US politicians and trade bodies have voiced their dismay at the vote. The ultimate decision will rest with EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager. She has inherited the anti-competitive case lodged by Google's rivals in 2010. Google has around 90% market share for search in Europe. The Commission has never before ordered the break-up of any company, and many believe it is unlikely to do so now. But politicians are desperate to find a solution to the long-running anti-competitive dispute with Google."

Comments

No clue?

[BarbaraHudson]

"Politicians have no power to enforce a break-up"

Re:No clue?

[nitehawk214]

That was the quote I came to wonder about. Why vote and make a decision that that have no power to enforce or do anything about.

Seems like European politicians are as useless and wasteful as American ones.

Re: No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

European leaders express their displeasure but don't actually take any steps to do anything, film at 11.

Re:No clue?

[rtb61]

The whole idea is stupid. What governments should of course be considering instead, if they find biased internet searches so troubling, is to create a government body that provides the same service upon a completely neutral basis. The problem then comes into how to sort the list, who gets first page ranking and who misses out. So hold a conference, invite various groups and individuals and set rules for search sorting and set major penalties for attempting to search optimise, also provide the means for registered end users to readily filter out and promote sites based upon how well they match the search criteria. Do it all ad free, based upon the majority of companies getting better consumer access without bias, on consumers saving time without having to wade through irrelevant search optimised shit search sites, in fact allow users to flag them with a view to prosecution far disrupting user network search activity. Government spending should always have a focus on saving the majority of it's citizens money where that taxation investment is far less than the money citizens save in the more efficient provision of services.

So should internet search be private or public and should citizens have a choice whether to use the private service or the public service. In this case only a handful of private companies benefit and the cost of a huge number or private companies and this cost is inevitably passed onto the consumers.

So should net neutrality extend to search neutrality, well, at least search fully controllable by the end user and their choices of what a good search results and which ones 'search optimisely' suck.

Re:No clue?

[DoomSprinkles]

A little long winded but I think you've got the right idea of how this SHOULD work if the government wants to get involved. But of course this would never happen- its just too damn efficient.

Re: No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

European politicians are far worse.

And they do it to stay in power.

Re:No clue?

[Kjella]

The whole idea is stupid. What governments should of course be considering instead, if they find biased internet searches so troubling, is to create a government body that provides the same service upon a completely neutral basis.

"Neutral", seriously you want a government imposed Pravda? Or are you just trying to set up such an absurd left wing straw man to get everyone on Google's side? What the EU is generally against is bundling products and services because it hampers competition and creates vertical collusion and hidden costs. Say you buy a car only to find they use IP, warranty terms, secret error codes and such to make sure you only use original parts, authorized service dealers, approved fuel and tires from partners and so on . There's laws curbing such behavior because it's in the consumers' interest that car companies compete on making cars, auto repair companies compete on maintenance and repair and tire manufacturers compete on making car tires. It doesn't mean the government should jump in national everything so everybody gets "fair" maintenance on their cars.

For example, during the first iPhone launch here they tried playing the "exclusive carrier" game bundled with a high monthly cost, but our consumer laws demand you can terminate such a agreement by covering their loss. So those who wanted another carrier would sign up, got their iPhone, insta-canceled, paid for the full price of the phone and was free to sign up with another carrier. That effectively killed it, pretty soon after you could buy it directly with no subscription and sign up with whoever you wanted. And that's how it should be, phone manufacturers compete on phones and carriers compete on being carriers. Companies don't want free markets where prices are low and competition intense, they want dysfunctional markets where they can make huge profits. This is very obvious in software where they want you to buy into the Microsoft stack or the Apple stack or the Google stack. If the bits and pieces were compatible and interchangeable you'd see a lot more competition and many smaller third parties providing a few parts. Bunding is a way for megacorporations to make sure only megacorporations compete.

Re:No clue?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

"Google should be broken up," say politicians of the European Parliament, to whom Google has not learned to make "donations", unlike national European governments, or the government of the United States.

"Christ, Almighty!" said Google lawyers. "Doesn't this ever end?"

Re:No clue?

[rtb61]

Gees, I made it pretty clear I wanted a choice, either use public or private with the public one subject to full public review and with the ability to filter out results and promote others ie leaving you in total control. Do you not read and comprehend. Google can do what ever the crap it wants with searches as long as people have reasonable alternatives to select from and likely a government managed version with clear public rules and guide lines with actual end user control over the results is the best option, as long as of course it only remains an option and not government forced choice.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

... should of course be considering instead ...

Translation: The government has to provide competition to free services ...

This is just as dumb as nationalizing private businesses. Sure, it looks good on paper, but such an artificial structure changes the outcome. Google is using its monopoly power; that needs to change. There is no easy solution. I think forcing Google self-promotions to the bottom of the page, is a minimalist answer that is within the power of the EU politicians.

Re:No clue?

[jmac_the_man]

This is very obvious in software where they want you to buy into the Microsoft stack or the Apple stack or the Google stack. If the bits and pieces were compatible and interchangeable you'd see a lot more competition and many smaller third parties providing a few parts.

We're talking about search here. What's the Google Stack here? They have a desktop operating system (Chromebook) a browser (Chrome) and a search engine (Google Search). Google doesn't give me meaningfully different results if I use Microsoft's OS and Mozilla's web browser. I haven't tried this myself, but I hear you can use Google's browser and/or Google's OS to get the same results from Microsoft's search engine that you'd get if you were using the "Microsoft stack."

There is absolutely NO switching cost involved in changing search engines. The European regulators are looking for a bribe here, and I hope Google tells them to crawl the web themselves.

Re:No clue?

[sFurbo]

While I haven't been following European politics lately, I would think that this is part of the power struggle between the European Parliament (elected directly by the European voters) and the commission (members are selected by the governments of the member states, though I think the parliament have to approve the final result). Traditionally, the parliament have had very little power, and has been getting more power (primarily at the expense of the commission) a little at a time. This kind of votes are usually held to highlight who has what power in the hopes that it will help them change it (so basically telling the people "See? If we had more power, we would do something about this issue.").

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole idea is stupid. What governments should of course be considering instead, if they find biased internet searches so troubling, is to create a government body that provides the same service upon a completely neutral basis.

That isn't the issue. When you want to solve that particular problem with monopolies you fine them and use the money to encourage competitors.

In this case the perceived problem isn't that Google has a dominant position as a search engine, it is that they use that position to fund everything else.
Essentially Google is competing in a lot of fields (Online translation, mail service and maps among some things.) and can runs those as non-profit or at loss.
Previous businesses in those fields can't compete with that because that were their primary business so they don't have another money-maker to fund it.

So Google is using their dominant position in one field to kill off competition and gain a dominant position in other fields. This happens to be illegal, both in the US and in EU. By splitting up the company each division have to compete with the other companies on fair terms.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Their stack is all of their extra products such as mail, cloud storage, instant messaging and video.

You currently can't use video search for non-youtube results. Searching for mail on Google shows prominently displays GMail. Alternatives to these products exist but Google is using its search monopoly to drive people towards its other services, creating a massive barrier to entry for those offering competing services.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Say you buy a car only to find they use IP, warranty terms, secret error codes and such to make sure you only use original parts, authorized service dealers, approved fuel and tires from partners and so on .

How did you know I owned a Mercedes?

Re:No clue?

[beh]

Indeed - no "stack"...
yet - unless google starts "integrating" the services into each other (integrate - not just share a home page as a starting point).

The stack example, indeed, seems misleading here.

On the other hand - while you defend google here - think back to some of the issues in the MS anti-trust case:

  - MS used proceeds from other areas to funnel huge amounts of money into IE development - much more, than any start-up could hope to match.
  - By including IE into Windows, for many people (normal users, not people working in IT) they eliminated the need to even look for other browsers - no matter, whether other browsers might have been better.
  - The inclusion of IE also meant the end for commercial browser makers - as they wouldn't have an alternative source of income. "Netscape" failed, their browser ultimately only growing because it was completely freed and open-sourced: In effect, MS might still channel more money into IE; but against the open source community that would not necessarily help, as the open-source author doesn't need to "show quarterly numbers"; quarterly profit reports, etc -- as long as the open source developer gets an income (which in many cases may stem from an unrelated day-job)...

In google's case, there is no full integration of services - but:

    - income from the advertising (which the search engine generates / facilitates) supports an ecosystem of other software - a free calendar or documents - services that _depend_ on their ad business generating the income for them. Same as MS Office paying the bills for IE.

    - the same landing page (www.google.com) being a straight entry point to not just the search, but other free offerings unrelated to search (like the news, play, ...) gives those extra services a big head-start over their competition - and one they can't hope to match (no ad space sold on the landing page).

These things make it more difficult for new enterprises to form - and it's reasonable to expect that any new area popping up on the web, google will not just also try to profit from (which would be fair enough), but they can (easily ab)use their position to help their apps further by giving them privileged exposure on their search page and continue to fund them for extended periods of time to prevent other entrants getting into that area.

Re: No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and the first result for "maps" is Google Maps! O horrors... and that's when you search with Bing!

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

> > Say you buy a car only to find they use IP, warranty terms, secret error codes and such to make sure you only use original parts, authorized service dealers, approved fuel and tires from partners and so on .

> How did you know I owned a Mercedes?

Google!

Re:No clue?

[Immerman]

Well, you've got to admit the vote to establish micro-usb as the recommended cell-phone charging standard did a lot of good, and far beyond the bounds of the EU - I thank them for that one every time I come across an old proprietary phone charger here in the US. Not even a requirement, just an official recommendation.

Re:No clue?

[non0score]

I don't know about the validity of your argument of spending search/ad revenue on other areas. I don't see any reason why MS Office shouldn't pay for IE. Just like I don't see why hotels can't offer me free bag service when I stay at the same hotel (since, you know, my hotel charges pay for the people that handle my bags, and I don't pay for the free bag services directly).

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why vote and make a decision that that have no power to enforce or do anything about."

It's a symbolic vote. They earn €8.000 a month (tax-free) to cast symbolic votes.

And they wonder why no one turns up to vote for these fat Eurocrats any more.
The EEC was a good idea. Even the EU is based on some good ideas, but crippled by horrible execution.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

" to get the same results from Microsoft's search engine "
This is the problem with monopolies. No competition. Because of that, the market stagnates.
Same results means you don't choose and let the default be your choice.

What they want is a simple window after an installation that asks you for your favorite search engine, alongside the one for the browser. That's it.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Efficient"? European gov't and "efficient" in the same paragraph? There's a good one.

I wonder who is going to pay for the OP's wonderful "public" search facility. Spend your own damn money, ok?

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is absolutely NO switching cost involved in changing search engines. The European regulators are looking for a bribe here, and I hope Google tells them to crawl the web themselves.

So what? That doesn't have anything to do with this. The problem is that if you search for certain services, Google shows their own alternatives ahead of all other, possibly better, ones. Now, I cannot suggest a good solution yet but I do see the problem. For many people Google = the Internet and thus Google can decide what consumers find, which creates barriers to entry for competitors and creating such barriers is illegal. And such barriers shouldn't exist in a free market so if you're a free market fundamentalist, you shouldn't approve of it either.

Re:No clue?

[jmac_the_man]

Indeed - no "stack"...

yet - unless google starts "integrating" the services into each other (integrate - not just share a home page as a starting point). The stack example, indeed, seems misleading here. On the other hand - while you defend google here...

Huh? Google DOES have a stack, however, search works the same whether you're using Google's stack or not. Also, "defending Google" is a dumb way to characterize my post. I mentioned Bing working the same despite a non-MS stack and that Firefox works on Windows. Except for Apple not having a search product of their own, every player in the OS market has a browser and a web search tool. Everyone in the search industry does EXACTLY what Google does here.

- think back to some of the issues in the MS anti-trust case: MS used proceeds from other areas to funnel huge amounts of money into IE development - much more, than any start-up could hope to match.

More work on IE makes a better product for customers. More money spent on software development to make new software means more jobs and more personal income, which is then spread through the economy. This one was good all the way around. (Also, this wasn't an issue at MS's trial.)

By including IE into Windows, for many people (normal users, not people working in IT) they eliminated the need to even look for other browsers - no matter, whether other browsers might have been better.

The inclusion of IE also meant the end for commercial browser makers - as they wouldn't have an alternative source of income. "Netscape" failed, their browser ultimately only growing because it was completely freed and open-sourced

Not quite. Netscape failed because it was buggy and slow, and it tried to be too many things. The Firebird project, later renamed Firefox, "rose from the ashes" of Netscape's open source Mozilla suite. There wasn't too much of the closed source Netscape left in the codebase by the time Firefox got to 1.0 release.

But to address your point, if bundling is so bad, find me a graphical operating system today that DOESN'T come with a web browser made by the company that made the majority of the OS's software. (On a desktop Linux derivative, this will be the Desktop environment.) The EU order against MS with the browser choice screen is a backdoor tax that the EU is laying on an American company because Americans can't vote against the EU.

In google's case, there is no full integration of services - but:

income from the advertising (which the search engine generates / facilitates) supports an ecosystem of other software - a free calendar or documents - services that _depend_ on their ad business generating the income for them. Same as MS Office paying the bills for IE.

I'm pretty sure Google documents is paid for because there's an advanced version of Google documents that's suitable for business use that you have to pay for. In any case, a company reinvesting its profits to make a new product is a good thing.

the same landing page (www.google.com) being a straight entry point to not just the search, but other free offerings unrelated to search (like the news, play, ...) gives those extra services a big head-start over their competition - and one they can't hope to match (no ad space sold on the landing page).

Who the hell uses the landing page? When I want to do a google search, I type the search terms into my web browser's address bar. I have the apps I use bookmarked. I don't think I've seen anyone at straight up Google.com in years.

These things make it more difficult for new enterprises to form - and it's reasonable to expect that any new area popping up on the web, google will not just also try to profit from (which would be fair enough), but they can (easily ab)use their position to help their apps further by giving them

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just searched google video for the word "bees". First result was from youtube.com, second from ted.com, third from fox news, fourth from 7online.com. Looks like it does have with non-youtube results.

On bing the first 10 results were from youtube, btw.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're opposing the foundations of the superior economies and living standards of Western countries. The solution is not to create a government alternative, the solution is to tightly regulate a private entity or entities. Western countries function better than the alternatives because the people grant the government certain powers and keep the government on a short leash and in turn, the government grants private industry certain privileges and keep it on an even shorter leash.

I know that that ideal is not followed very well but that is the principle. Private industry has been granted substantial benefits through the legal system - the most fundamental being separation of ownership and operation of a company and the responsibilities those running a company have. If private industry does not behave and follow the law in return for those privileges, there should be severe consequences.

Re:No clue?

[beh]

That example isn't quite the same - noone will have a problem with Microsoft offering you a free coffee on their premises.

But, if Microsoft decided that Starbucks was a threat to them and started distributing free coffee everywhere just to screw up SBUX, then that would likely be an antitrust matter.

The same could be argued for a search engine offering a free office toolkit - as it's not really the typical pairing that has anything to do with their normal search business.

The free bag service is an anemity that you might come to expect from a hotel and AT the hotel's premises; or the free chauffeur service that they might offer to and from their hotel for your arrival and departure.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit! They're not useless or wasteful just ask a millionaire.

Re:No clue?

[scamper_22]

Regulating is not stupid. Governments have historically been very active in these cases.

Railroads being the common use case for monopoly regulation and preferential treatment.

Generally, when politicians say, they cannot do something, it means they don't want to or it is not really their priority.

Let me give you a simple example. Transit. I'm in Toronto, Canada. Transit is something people use day in and day out. Politicians always talk about how they'd like to improve transit, but there is no money.

Well... let's see. When they want to spend money on a pretty well funded education system, they have no problem finding money. When they want to spend money on healthcare, they have no problem spending money (around 50% of spending goes to healthcare). When they want to spend money on the Pan AM games on e-health, or cancelling a gas plant... suddenly the money is there. So I don't believe them when they say there is no money for transit. It is simply that transit is not worth pushing for them.

Regulating Google is the same thing. When politicians want to regulate something ,they will do it. They wanted to ban drugs, they did it. Obama wants to have ObamaCare, he did it. They want to regulate toboacco/alcohol, they do it. They want to put in a minimum wage, pensions, labor laws... they do it. They want to go to war, they do it. They want to heavily regulate medical drugs/doctors... This is not to say nothing gets pushed back, but they can get most of what they want.

Just like regulating ISPs. Look at all the regulating governments do. You don't think they could have the ISPs publish their network management rules? You don't think they could get Google to publish it's ranking algorithm or even parts of it related to particular sites... or demand it be audited?

They could if they wanted to. They just choose not to. Oh sure, there are 'reasons', but as I said, look at other areas when those 'reasons' are magically not barriers and the politicians get things done.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say Kjella's reading comprehension is fine.

To compare it with the car industry, your argument is like suggesting that the US Government should have started producing cars with a standard diagnostics connection instead of insisting on having a standard OBD-II connection fitted. (i.e. produce alternatives instead of forcing the issue with the company through legislation)

Kjella suggested a reason why they may have forced the issue.

Re:No clue?

[AqD]

non-career politician will never be possible until we set work hours to 4 max.

Re:No clue?

[jedidiah]

Regulating in this case is stupid. There is no natural physical monopoly in search to make it comparable to a railroad. There isn't any vendor lock problem to make it comparable to Windows or IE.

Search is a commodity like orange juice concentrate. Anyone can do it and the cost to switch from one provider to another is ZERO.

The question of "why can't the OS monopoly get ahead in search" is an interesting one but not one that by default justifies the kind of breakup that should have happened to Microsoft but no one had the balls for.

"Crimes" usually have "elements" that you have to prove.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case of the iPhone, I hear Verizon didn't want the iPhone until they started losing customers due to it. They favored Android because they could put their own custom software on it (to control the experience/branding and possible sell TV/movies via their network).

Verizon, other wireless companies, and cable companies actually are vertical monopolies. They try to control every aspect of the business: the consumer hardware (phones - Verizon's CDMA), video distribution, video production (Comcast), engage in protectionism (Comcast and data caps and Net Neutrality vs Netflix), avoid competition, and a host of other problems.

Meanwhile, Google raised the storage limit on my Picasa Web Albums from ~20 gigs to 2000 terabytes. I don't pay them a dime. Forgive me if I'm not concerned about Google.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell uses the landing page? When I want to do a google search, I type the search terms into my web browser's address bar. I have the apps I use bookmarked. I don't think I've seen anyone at straight up Google.com in years.

People who have a certain level of paranoia and want to know where things are actually going. Also people using Lynx or other text-mode browsers that lack an address bar and have to be told explicitly where to go. Having written that, both of these groups are rather small, so your point still stands.

Re:No clue?

[SEE]

The primary difference between the European Parliament and the Supreme Soviet is that the Supreme Soviet at least officially had legislative powers, while the European Parliament is explicitly only allowed to rubber-stamp decisions made by the European Commission.

Re:No clue?

[AK Marc]

That, and it's a bad decision. Breaking up MS makes sense. The Office division is a separate business unit from Hardware, which is different from OS. So you have separate business units that have different goals and are very divisible.

Google has much less internal separation, and at this point, no real independence. The advertising pays for everything. So if you split advertising from the rest, everything else will die.

Re:No clue?

[jmac_the_man]

Hey asshat, you left out half of the sentence. "to get the same results from Microsoft's search engine" is part of a sentence about how Microsoft's search engine is "stack agnostic" in that you can use Google and Mozilla products to reach Bing, but Bing will give you the same results either way because it's still Bing. (Google works the same way.) If Microsoft or Google was illegally tying its other products to search, YOU WOULDN'T GET THIS.

The EU shouldn't be mandating the browser choice screen, let alone the "search choice" screen. The only reason they're being imposed is because the EU is trying to implement a tax on companies operating outside their jurisdiction.

Re:No clue?

[jmac_the_man]

Now, I cannot suggest a good solution yet but I do see the problem.

Microsoft makes a maps tool, an online documents thing, and an e-mail client, all prominently displayed in their search program. Are they violating this "law" too? How are their actions any different than Google's?

Here in the free world, the government is not allowed to enact a law that it is impossible to comply with. EU regulators are just shaking down another American company. Google will probably pay their bribe, and the cycle will continue. Europeans should be embarrassed. Vote against this crap or something.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft makes a maps tool, an online documents thing, and an e-mail client, all prominently displayed in their search program. Are they violating this "law" too? How are their actions any different than Google's?

Don't be so damn simplistic, if you can. It will help you understand society and the world. No law is so specific in what it allows or forbids. Hence the justice system is used to "conclude", if you wish, whether the law in its more generic form was violated. Would you expect laws like "killing a woman with a knife is illegal", "killing a woman with a gun is illegal", "killing a man with a knife is illegal" and so on or would you prefer something more universally applicable...? Laws regulating commerce are even more complicated and thus cases become spectacular opinion fests. Undesirable but a necessary thing to ensure a competing, capitalist system which - so far - has shown to be the best for an economy.

Here in the free world, the government is not allowed to enact a law that it is impossible to comply with. EU regulators are just shaking down another American company. Google will probably pay their bribe, and the cycle will continue. Europeans should be embarrassed. Vote against this crap or something.

Companies are granted tremendous freedom in the modern world (separation of ownership, responsibilities, operation). Such freedom that you couldn't possibly get anyone from a few centuries ago to understand how people today accept it and even consider it good. Thus any violations should be dealt with severely and laws enacted in response, if existing ones do not suffice to ensure competition. Competition is what benefits consumers and thus it's normally considered a market failure, if a dominating company emerges.

If you think this is something which applies in particular to American companies in Europe, you only show that you're ignorant because you don't know how European companies are treated just as strictly.

Re:No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

So. You want to create yet another useless search engine then? Have at it.

Re: No clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, we eliminate advertising and dedicate a web page (with a fixed template). Then, make it illegal to discuss politics, forcing every individual to do their own research on the candidates.

Re:No clue?

[CHIT2ME]

When the European Union comes up with a search engine or an operating system better than Google or Microsoft, then, they would have the right to wine! I think it's time to break up Airbus. They receive huge government subsidies to compete with all other aircraft mfgs. This IMHO is cheating!!! Canada, the U.S., Brazil, etc. should be up in arms about this. It seems like the European Union thinks this is business as usual! It's time for the old "eye for an eye" in the aircraft industry!

Re:No clue?

[Plumpaquatsch]

Google doesn't give me meaningfully different results if I use Microsoft's OS and Mozilla's web browser. I haven't tried this myself, but I hear you can use Google's browser and/or Google's OS to get the same results from Microsoft's search engine that you'd get if you were using the "Microsoft stack."

Unless somebody pays Google that their products get "included" in the search results of their "topical" searches. http://marketingland.com/once-deemed-evil-google-now-embraces-paid-inclusion-13138

old news?

[Anonymous Coward]

this has been posted a while ago already.

Re:old news?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here.

Google votes to break up the EU

[LordLucless]

Because "non-binding resolutions" are so impressive.

Re:Google votes to break up the EU

[manu0601]

Because "non-binding resolutions" are so impressive.

Don't be harsh on EU parliament. It has no serious power and its members must be kept busy so that EU can pretend to be somehow democratic. This is why EU parliament produce a lot of non binding resolutions.

Re:Google votes to break up the EU

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Actually, it's well within Google's power to break up the EU. The EU is creaking and buckling at its seams in several places. Google would just need to give it a few gentle pushes in the right directions.

For instance, the UK already has one foot out of the EU with its UKIP anti-EU political party, which is eating away at the UK Tories base on the right. Google just needs to dish up the right stories when people in the UK google. Like, the story about how the EU parliament wants to create an EU standard for breakfast: One cup of muddy coffee, and a mushy half-baked croissant. Baked beans before noon will be banned. Bacon and eggs, as well, since they exploit farm animals: the chicken participated, but the pig was committed. If UK folks are constantly bombarded by stories like that when they google, they will all vote "out" in the upcoming UK-in-the-EU referendum.

The economies of the southern EU countries are basket cases, and the northern countries are sick and tired of working hard and paying exorbitant EU taxes to finance those lazy southern folks, who spend their whole day farting around in cafes drinking tiny cups of coffee. Google could put a few drops of napalm on that fire. First Italy. Google could kill the Pope, and reveal a scandalous relationship between the Catholic Church, the Mafia, and the Italian government, and that the whole Italian economy is really just a Ponzi scheme, and that Italy is bankrupt, and needs a mega-Greek bailout. Google could hire Amanda Knox to take out the Pope. She's tanned, rested and ready.

Google could upset Greece's fragile economic recovery, by posting a false story about the Greeks staging a general strike that paralyzes their country. Oh, wait. They did do that. Let Ms. Palin and I get back to you on Greece.

Spain's economy is also on the ropes. So how can Google finish it off? Hmmm . . . a long time back . . . we had this nasty Spanish Flu. Now we have Ebola. Simple. Google can spread rumors of Spanish Ebola Flu that is carried by visitors from Spain. That ought to shut down Spain's economy really fast.

The backbone of the EU is the uneasy France/Germany alliance. But the French are tired of having to do what Germany tells them to do, and the Germans are tired of paying for the French to take early retirement. So Google could post two other stories. First to pay for French early retirement, German citizens will now be required to continue working after their death. In other words, in Germany, you will be allowed to retire two years after your death. That, to finance the folks in France who retire at 45. The second article will detail that, obviously, the French are not listening and doing what the Germans tell them to do. To assist that, all French households will be required to quarter for free vacationing Germans in France. This will provide an informal mechanism for Germans to tell the French what they think what they need to do at the breakfast table. Float these two stories for a bit, and the Germans and the French will love each other like two cats shaken up in a pillow case. End of EU.

So how can Google rattle the EU relationship with the Scandinavian folks? Hmmm . . . let's start with the Norwegians. They are richer than you or I will ever be. They made butt-loads of cash with North Sea oil. But instead of squandering it away in useless Gulf State building projects, the Norwegians invested all their cash very wisely, so generations from now, the folks in Norway will be enjoying the fruits of those investments. Because they did very well for themselves, this is a perfect opportunity Google to foment envy and greed in other EU countries. Oh, and the Norwegians are kinda sorta weird when it comes to festive meals. While Americans like to stuff a turkey in the oven, the Norwegian version is a wee bit different. They stick a pike in the ground in the backyard, and skewer a sheep's head on it. Then they take a blow torch to the head. Medieval-like. Finished. Dinner is served. The eye

Re:Google votes to break up the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

So funny... This would definitely happen if google fired all managers and recruited the managers of Uber... :))))

Re:Google votes to break up the EU

[N1AK]

That's an aweful lot of writing for a half-crazed fantasy.

Re:Google votes to break up the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that Norway is not part of the EU, right?
Which is also part of why they are so well off, no euro and not having to pay for sound barriers along empty stretches of Polish highways or to finance Southern Europe.
(For the rest: great post :-) )

I voted 1-0

[Anonymous Coward]

I voted 1-0 for the European Union to kiss my ass. Better pucker up, EU.

Re:I voted 1-0

[Anonymous Coward]

This prettymuch is going to be Google's de facto response. I doubt they'll include this lovely quotation in the official press release, though.

EUgle?

[presidenteloco]

Why don't the Europeans start their own search and ad engine?

Oh, because they would lose?

What I don't understand here is Google does not have a monopoly on search services. They're just damn good at it and the market, with several other choices including Bing!, votes with its clicks. I'm not sure I see what's wrong with that.

Re:EUgle?

[vux984]

Why don't the Europeans start their own search and ad engine?

Because that would be entirely beside the point.

What I don't understand here is Google does not have a monopoly on search services.

This actually doesn't have THAT much to do with monopoly at all. Even in a highly competitive market with many search engine participants the argument to unbundle search engines from other products makes a lot of sense.

Just as unbundling internet access from other network services makes a lot of sense.

The search engines effectively are the gateways to the internet. To operate effectively it's best if they simply compete at being the best search engine, instead of being crippled by constantly being subverted by the other commerical interests of the parent company that wishes to drive consumers to particular pages they have interests in rather than merely being the best at return the pages the consumer wants.

I'm not sure I see what's wrong with that.

Because your fixated on whether there is competition. Whether or not there is competition is beside the point. If your bank forces you to open savings accounts and credit cards with them to have a mortage that bundling is anti-consumer and illegal... period. Because that sort of product tying has been deemed harmful.

Competition isn't the issue. It doesn't matter if there are 5 or 10 other banks to choose from. (Especially if they all do it too.)

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. I hope the citizens^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H subjects of the EU enjoy their slide into the Chinese model of state power.

Re:EUgle?

[wimg]

You obviously have no clue if you compare EU to China. For starters, the EU is not a country. And the rest is obvious to anyone with a little intelligence...

Re:EUgle?

[Oligonicella]

Your "analogy" fails. "Because that sort of product tying has been deemed harmful." Because there's money involved. Google forces nothing of that nature. If you're displeased with their service, pop another browser. The EU is simply displaying the puny man syndrome.

Re:EUgle?

[jellomizer]

Europeans just hate successful American companies.
The fact that a foreign source is influencing their populous makes them uneasy.

Re:EUgle?

[vux984]

Your "analogy" fails.Because there's money involved.

As there is in search.

. Google forces nothing of that nature.

Ultimately every search engine controls what pages i see when i search for something.

As a society its reasonable proposition that we would want our search engines to be competing on simply being the best search engine, without risk of it quietly subverting its integrety to push any other agenda / product / viewpoint / etc.

Unbundling them from commercial interests would be a part of that goal.

I'm not saying we should necessarily do this, or that simply un-bundling them would solve all the potential problems either. I'm just saying that its a valid argument.

If you're displeased with their service, pop another browser.

And that solves what exactly? It neither corrects the behaviour you don't want from google, nor assures you the 'next browser' isn't engaging in precisely the same thing.

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't other people make their own browser?

Oh because they would lose?

What I don't understand here is, Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on desktop operating systems. They're just damn good at it and the market, with several other choices including Linux, Mac OS, and FreeBSD, votes with its purchases. I'm not sure I see what's wrong with that.

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't the Europeans start their own search and ad engine?

Oh, because they would lose?

What I don't understand here is Google does not have a monopoly on search services. They're just damn good at it and the market, with several other choices including Bing!, votes with its clicks. I'm not sure I see what's wrong with that.

Why don't American start their own search engines to compete with Google?

Oh, because every time they tried they lost?

Go troll somewhere else...

Re:EUgle?

[Bigjeff5]

If your bank forces you to open savings accounts and credit cards with them to have a mortage that bundling is anti-consumer and illegal... period.

When did Google ever start forcing users to sign up just to search? I'm pretty sure that's not a thing. Just like banks don't force you to have savings accounts and credit cards with them in order to have a mortgage with them, Google doesn't force you to sign up for anything to either search, or to show up as #1 in search. For the latter, all you've got to do is be the most popular thing for that search query on the internet.

If you want to show up in a prominent place on the search page for a particular query, even though you aren't #1 (or even #10, or whatever) on the internet for that query, well, that's going to cost you.

For Google's services, I don't see what search has to do with any of it. Is Google artificially bumping themselves in the rankings? I'm not sure if the EU is aware, but Google is absurdly popular. I'd be shocked if Gmail didn't come up #1 in a search for email, and low and behold it does. #1 on Google and #2 on Bing, somehow Yahoo comes up first on Bing, while MS takes up #2 and #3 on Google. However, Google's cloud service comes up #4 on their own engine and #7 on Bing. iCloud is the first commercial service on both (actually #1 and #3 on Bing).

So pretty similar results, and MS certainly isn't going to fix Google results in Bing. The EU is full of shit. Bundling isn't harmful unless it is exploited, period. It often leads to a greater overall benefit, as products are more likely to be able to interconnect. If there is evidence of exploitation, that's different, and the EU should drop the hammer on them. But there isn't any evidence that that is going on here that I've seen, so this is almost certainly just politicians being dickweeds at the behest of people who paid them a lot of money.

Re: EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultimately every search engine controls what pages i see when i search for something.

True. But you control what search engine you go do, or whether you go to any search engine at all.

As a society its reasonable proposition that we would want our search engines

So you are saying that private companies should build and conduct business the way society tells them to, for the benefit of society. That's pretty much the view of economics fascism advocated. It doesn't work.

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, since the vast majority of people chose Google as their #1 search engine, I'd say bundling the search engine with other products obviously does make a lot of sense to an awful lot of people. Typing a mathematical formulae and seeing the answer directly from the search engine, typing an address and seeing a map directly from the search engine as well as a lot of other answer a search engine can provide directly does make sense.

In order to help you understand why it doesn't make sense to unbundle a search engine from other products, think of it this way : a search engine like Google is not simply something which people use to find other web pages, it's something which people use to find answers. The faster they get the answer, the better.

Re:EUgle?

[theVarangian]

Why don't the Europeans start their own search and ad engine?

Oh, because they would lose?

What I don't understand here is Google does not have a monopoly on search services. They're just damn good at it and the market, with several other choices including Bing!, votes with its clicks. I'm not sure I see what's wrong with that.

This isn't about a monopoly per se. The issue is that Google has got the same business unit that handles their web search operation also pushing Google services. The result is that Google is actively discriminating against competing services and since these competitors don't have their own search engine with a dominant market share to fall back they are proverbially stuck up shit creek without a paddle. It's a bit as if, say America Online, owned world's entire internet backbone and was preventing competing ISPS world wide from accessing that backbone on equal terms in order to gain a competitive advantage for their own ISP division. That being said Google has an 80% market share in the US/Europe and that pretty much makes them a monopoly in my book or at the very least something pretty close to a monopoly and monopolies are IMHO usually bad. Many of the people on this forum screamed their heads off in the past when Microsoft was doing something like this. Instead Googles army of fanboys is now out in force again trying to paint a big yellow smiley over the whole thing.

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a monopoly on not being useless crap. We must regulate that they are as crap as bing to be fair!

Huh. I don't see a winner there. The customers lose. Google loses. And bing still sucks ass.
And we wasted time and money on the issue.

Only the taxpayer loses.

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a bit as if, say America Online, owned world's entire internet backbone and was preventing competing ISPS world wide from accessing that backbone on equal terms in order to gain a competitive advantage for their own ISP division.

How about an actual direct comparison? Cable companies that are also ISPs that clearly are favoring their own services over the competitors, through pushing Netflix and others to pay money to not be throttled. Except that isn't even a perfect analogy because in that case it's not the difference of simply putting higher QoS on their own service or putting it otherwise first in front of the competition and leaving the user to choose not simply the first option. In the case of cable companies, it's been the throttling to sub-standard bandwidth regardless of the fact that Netflix is definitively more popular and for which honestly is the one most likely to use actual external bandwidth as local services are likely mostly last might and inherently have an advantage without any need to throttle nor are they any real bandwidth competition.

My point? No effort is being made to ban cable companies from advertising their cable internet services and all the talk of net neutrality speak of regulation, not of breaking up cable service into a separate business from ISPs. Yet cable companies in any local almost universally are monopolies of much more than the 80% variety. So, as much as one might dislike Google preferring its own services and listing them first, it's not been the case that a much worse known offender is to get anything but regulation and rules. And if you think Google using its service first and not giving users a choice is bad--and I agree that it is--, then why not push that Google provide a mechanism for people to opt-in to their service of choice (passing service providers in the http headers, if they choose, or nothing to effectively opt-out) as part of a standard regulation that all search engines must abide by? You know, like how they didn't break up MS over its much egregious bundling of IE with Windows but forced a browser choice?

Re:EUgle?

[gbcox]

Because your fixated on whether there is competition. Whether or not there is competition is beside the point. If your bank forces you to open savings accounts and credit cards with them to have a mortage that bundling is anti-consumer and illegal... period. Because that sort of product tying has been deemed harmful

Well, the fact of the matter is that Google isn't forcing anyone to do anything. They provide methods to extract your data and stop using their services if you wish. What people seem to be upset about is that they are really good at what they do and everyone wants to use their services. It isn't a crime to be successful, contrary to what Microsoft and their paid off politicians in the EU are trying to connive. Add to the fact that Google is an American company. If Google was a German company we wouldn't be talking about this. No one has alleged any crime or harm to consumers... rather this is about competitor profits. Microsoft is just playing their old FUD game. They figure even if they don't win the lawsuit or get Google to split up (which they won't) they'll sow enough FUD to make people believe Google is the evil empire. This is just a bunch of sabre rattling. At the end of the day the only way the EU is going to stop people from using Google is to order their IP addresses be blocked - and that just ain't gonna happen. People would just freak out.

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the most worthless comment I've seen in a while.

Re:EUgle?

[TWX]

We tended to scream because we were forced to pay for Microsoft's software when we bought computers, and despite non-Microsoft software being the preferred software for some types, Microsoft bundled their lesser-software with their OS and even when we changed to something else, made it prompt to try to become the preferred application again.

When I open my web browser, if it's Microsoft's, I default to Microsoft's Bing search engine. If I choose a different browser then I probably default to Google, but I can change it and it stays changed. I am also not required to use Google as my default start page, and I can visit any site on the Internet that I choose. I am not required to use a search engine if I know the URL that I want to go to, and even if I use Google to search for the name of another company that does something that Google also does, I get that company's result first, not after Google's own product. Funny enough, Bing's search for "maps" brings up Google's maps for me as the top link.

I don't think that Google takes away the consumer's choice in the way Microsoft's policies do. Microsoft doesn't provide links to competitors' software. Google may provide links to their own services first, but they don't provide only links to their own services.

Personally I think they'd have a much better argument, though still incomplete, arguing on Android instead in how it uses Google Mail and other Google services, but since Apple is so strong in phones and tablets that would be hard to support.

Re:EUgle?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Because your fixated on whether there is competition. Whether or not there is competition is beside the point. If your bank forces you to open savings accounts and credit cards with them to have a mortage that bundling is anti-consumer and illegal... period. Because that sort of product tying has been deemed harmful.

What does Google bundle with its search engine? I do not need to use Chrome to access Google search. I do not have to have a GMail account, nor use Google+. I can use Google Search from iOS or Windows Phone or Blackberry OS. What is the bundling that you're concerned about?

Re:EUgle?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Huh. I just Googled "Free email account" and the first three links were mail.com, gmx.com and yahoo.com. Google's GMail came in fourth. I guess Google doesn't understand how to properly bundle/discriminate against competitors given they're not doing what you say they can/are doing.

Re:EUgle?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I don't think that Google takes away the consumer's choice in the way Microsoft's policies do. Microsoft doesn't provide links to competitors' software

Curiously I just went to bing.com and typed in "office software suite". First link was to a review site. Second link? OpenOffice.org! Microsoft's Office suite doesn't even show up in the first page. I know I'm a bit surprised...

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

'Monopoly' in this context does not imply an ability to completly stop competitors entering the market. It's an effective monopoly if you have 90% of the market, and if you abuse that monopoly power then that is actually illegal in the USA as well as in Europe. The reason it is illegal is because it stifles competition and Americans just love competition, right?

Re:EUgle?

[x0ra]

Europeans politicians just hate successful companies.

FTFY.

Re:EUgle?

[TWX]

I did mean in the context of the market in which a particular application resides, like the browser software itself in Microsoft's case, but you do bring up an interesting point, that Microsoft has softened its stance in recent years as well.

Re:EUgle?

[jbolden]

What discrimination do you believe Google is engage in?

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you dropped?

Re:EUgle?

[vux984]

When did Google ever start forcing users to sign up just to search?

You are missing the point. The point is not whether google is illegally tying products, because they are not. The point is that as a society we deemed that tying products was harmful.

Just as we could deem that a search engine company providing other services is harmful. Not because its a form of illegal tying, but because its harmful in similar ways.

. Bundling isn't harmful unless it is exploited, period.

And that's a great study you just did. I mean, you searched for "email" and you searched for "cloud" and you looked at the first 3 results in no less than 2 different search engines. Because clearly if google was going to manipulate the results they would ONLY do in the most blatantly obvious evil with a capital E way possible.

Well, I'm convinced.

It often leads to a greater overall benefit, as products are more likely to be able to interconnect.

What needs to interconnect with a "search" engine?

If there is evidence of exploitation, that's different, and the EU should drop the hammer on them.

Because it would be wrong for society to proactively decide what the rules it lives by are? It can only react to abuse?

But there isn't any evidence that that is going on here that I've seen,

And you've clearly settled the matter there, right? ;)

so this is almost certainly just politicians being dickweeds at the behest of people who paid them a lot of money.

Who benefits financially from search engines being decoupled from other commercial pursuits and thus paid these politicians lots of money to make it happen. I'm in agreement with you that "follow the money" is a good maxim to have when looking at politics ... so where does it lead us here? That's a good question.

Re:EUgle?

[schnell]

As a society its reasonable proposition that we would want our search engines to be competing on simply being the best search engine, without risk of it quietly subverting its integrety to push any other agenda / product / viewpoint / etc.

And this hypothetical search engine makes money how again?

Re:EUgle?

[vux984]

What does Google bundle with its search engine?

You missed the point. The point was simply to note that once upon a time society decided "bundling is harmful" so we made it illegal.

And now, once upon another time, there are some in society speculating that "search engines tied to other commercial interests" may be harmful.

Re: EUgle?

[vux984]

So you are saying that private companies should build and conduct business the way society tells them to, for the benefit of society. That's pretty much the view of economics fascism advocated. It doesn't work.

That's a pretty simpleminded view of it. Next you'll be telling me that consumers shouldn't be able to regulate companies to prevent them from using lead paint in toys because: fascism.

Re: EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like a fucking Nazi.

Re: EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

More harm comes from moralistic busybody shitbags like you than ever came from a search engine.

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

And this hypothetical search engine makes money how again?

Same way every service-oriented business has ever made money in the history of man-fucking-kind: sell subscriptions, or charge a "membership fee."

Fuck, it's like you idiots have forgotten how the world works because "computers!"

It's also entirely possible that Google could sell relevant ad space on its search results pages like it always has - including to the "remainder of Google" which the search engine would be separated from. Let Chrome and Google's other services pay market rates to advertise, just like everybody else, instead of just shifting around internal funny-money to add the "Download Chrome" link to the Google search page (not the search results - go look for yourself... hit Google in a browser other than Chrome, and you get an ad already trying to push Google's own browser before you type anything into the search box.)

Re:EUgle?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I get that. However, in this case - there is no bundling. And there is no "search engine tied to other commercial interests" going on here.

Re:EUgle?

[rd4tech]

Now go to google.com and type 'advertise online' and it will all become clear.

Re:EUgle?

[Almir43]

You probably have adblock installed. For me it comes up right on top, under sponsored results.

Re:EUgle?

[kabulykos]

As there is in search.

Consumers' money? I don't recall spending money to use a search engine.

As a society its reasonable proposition that we would want our search engines to be competing on simply being the best search engine, without risk of it quietly subverting its integrety to push any other agenda / product / viewpoint / etc. Unbundling them from commercial interests would be a part of that goal.

That presumes much about what a "search engine" is, actually. If I query Bing with [how tall is Kim Jong Un], and it flat out tells me, rather than pointing me to Wikipedia or whatever, am I harmed? Is Wikipedia?

Most of the complaints the EU competition office is fielding are from other purveyors of information â" commercial information â" on the Internet, and most of what's at issue regards consumers attempting to conduct commercial activity. If you ask for the lowest-cost flight from London to Istanbul, what should the "best search engine" tell you?

I'm thus still at a loss as to what this "behaviour you don't want from google" is, precisely.

Re:EUgle?

[strikethree]

Just as unbundling internet access from other network services makes a lot of sense.

People pay directly for internet access. Nobody pays for search. If you "unbundle" search from all other offerings, you lose search entirely. Are you going to mandate that people pay search engines directly?

Re:EUgle?

[Savage-Rabbit]

We tended to scream because we were forced to pay for Microsoft's software when we bought computers, and despite non-Microsoft software being the preferred software for some types, Microsoft bundled their lesser-software with their OS and even when we changed to something else, made it prompt to try to become the preferred application again.

When I open my web browser, if it's Microsoft's, I default to Microsoft's Bing search engine. If I choose a different browser then I probably default to Google, but I can change it and it stays changed. I am also not required to use Google as my default start page, and I can visit any site on the Internet that I choose. I am not required to use a search engine if I know the URL that I want to go to, and even if I use Google to search for the name of another company that does something that Google also does, I get that company's result first, not after Google's own product. Funny enough, Bing's search for "maps" brings up Google's maps for me as the top link.

I don't think that Google takes away the consumer's choice in the way Microsoft's policies do. Microsoft doesn't provide links to competitors' software. Google may provide links to their own services first, but they don't provide only links to their own services.

Personally I think they'd have a much better argument, though still incomplete, arguing on Android instead in how it uses Google Mail and other Google services, but since Apple is so strong in phones and tablets that would be hard to support.

Like I tried to explain to presidenteloco this isn't about a monopoly per se. What we are talking here is Google leveraging their search engine monopoly to take away the consumer's right to choose services that compete with Google's which IIRC is one of the things people got their panties in a twist over when Microsoft tried to do it, i.e. Microsoft decided to get in on the some segment of the software business , so they built their own Microsoft brand specialist software and bundled it with their OS with the result that hardly anybody bothered to investigate competing alternatives. They took away consumer choice by leveraging their dominant desktop OS to kill off competitors just like Google is now leveraging its dominant search engine to put links to the products of competing service providers on the second page of search results or some similar skullduggery. That's a conflict of interest. It was recognized by German law makers back in the 12th century that it's a bad idea for a physician to be his own apothecary because they invented diseases so that they could sell drugs to cure them and for the same reason it is bad for Microsoft to have their consumer and OS software operations in the same business unit and for Google to have the same business unit that handles web searches also pushing Google services. It encourages them to abuse one to gain a competitive advantage for the other.

Re:EUgle?

[Savage-Rabbit]

Huh. I just Googled "Free email account" and the first three links were mail.com, gmx.com and yahoo.com. Google's GMail came in fourth. I guess Google doesn't understand how to properly bundle/discriminate against competitors given they're not doing what you say they can/are doing.

I suppose this could not possibly be because Google dialled down the abuse now that they are under the microscope of the EU competition authorities? I have to say I am in awe of how you managed to render any anti competitive investigation of Google's business practices unnecessary with a single web search!

Re:EUgle?

[thegarbz]

If your bank forces you to open savings accounts and credit cards with them to have a mortage that bundling is anti-consumer and illegal... period.

Yes except that's not what's going on here. In this case they are incentivising you to use other services, not forcing you to use them. What Google does is akin to the bank offering you discounted rates on credit cards and elimination of account keeping fees if you have a mortgage with them.

That is not only legal but also common practice.

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

"When did Google ever start forcing users to sign up just to search?"

Both webkit and gecko, due to google funds, require third party cookies by default. Third party cookies give them automatic sign-in to search. Your search terms are monetized across a huge portion of the ad supply, unless you jump through hoops to figure out how to disable third party cookies.

Break up their monopoly-leveraged influence on all modern web code, and users will no longer be tricked into signing up just to search, as it exists today.

Note that Safari used to disable third-party cookies by default. Since Apple became an ad platform, they have enabled third-party cookies by default.

A patch for same-origin policy on cookies was left to go stale by Mozilla. If the google monopoly influence didn't exist, cookies would, today, be protected by the same-origin policy. Now that yahoo is in the mix, things could be different, but it depends how yahoo wants to leverage Firefox.

Re:EUgle?

[TheRaven64]

When did Google ever start forcing users to sign up just to search?

If you visit the Google search engine, it will set a tracking cookie that is used to serve ads to you, so they are forcing you to sign up to their targeted ad service to use their search. If you want to be able to configure the search settings, then they do this via the tracking cookie. This is not a technical decision: DuckDuckGo, for example, sets a cookie that just has a set of preference flags in it, so any two people with the same preferences will have the same cookie, not a unique identifier, and the web server can handle these preferences without needing any kind of database lookup.

I'm not sure if the EU is aware, but Google is absurdly popular. I'd be shocked if Gmail didn't come up #1 in a search for email

That's certainly true now. But when gmail launched, it wasn't absurdly popular, it was a new contender in an established market, yet it still showed up at the top of the search results.

Re:EUgle?

[rmstar]

Well, the fact of the matter is that Google isn't forcing anyone to do anything.

As an experiment: try to get by without using google. The argument is that by being so successful and ubiquitous, people are forced to use it, giving google powers that society might not want to give them for very specific reasons. If it's "their fault" or not is completely besides the point.

If Google was a German company we wouldn't be talking about this.

Because if Google was a German company, it would have never been allowed to become the privacy busting, surveillance octopus from hell it is now.

Re:EUgle?

[phayes]

I'm not sure if the EU is aware, but Google is absurdly popular. I'd be shocked if Gmail didn't come up #1 in a search for email

That's certainly true now. But when gmail launched, it wasn't absurdly popular, it was a new contender in an established market, yet it still showed up at the top of the search results.

No. By the time Gmail was no longer an invite-only beta service, everyone had been talking about it for months. The buzz was enormous & Gmail's advantages enough to make people drop their Yahoo/other in droves for Gmail. Hell, Microsoft bought a well reputed linux based webmail service (whose name I can no longer recall) that they painfully migrated Linux>Windows to attempt to jumpstart their entry into webmail.

By the time Gmail was opened for everyone, Gmail had legitimately been linked to and talked about on the web to make it the #1 search result.

Re: EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU resolution about which the article speaks also mentions the need for strong net neutrality. Perhaps you should have read it before commenting.

Re:EUgle?

[CrimsonAvenger]

nd this hypothetical search engine makes money how again?

Same way Roger Ramjet did - government subsidy....

Re:EUgle?

[TheRaven64]

By the time Gmail was no longer an invite-only beta service, everyone had been talking about it for months. The buzz was enormous

Among geeks, sure. Among normal people? Not so much. A year after GMail launched, I still had non-geeks asking me 'what's your hotmail address?' meaning 'what's your personal email address' (as opposed to the work-run one).

Microsoft bought a well reputed linux based webmail service (whose name I can no longer recall) that they painfully migrated Linux>Windows to attempt to jumpstart their entry into webmail.

The service that they bought was called Hotmail and was running FreeBSD, not Linux. They bought it long before Google was a major player in the online space. When they bought it, it was (by quite a large margin) the dominant player in the webmail space (it was also the first mover). They tried once and failed to migrate to Windows. Windows Services for UNIX exists solely because of that PR disaster: they eventually migrated everything to Windows via a POSIX compatibility layer.

Re:EUgle?

[MMC Monster]

I was kinda thinking the same thing.

If there is any bundling going on, it's exceedingly subtle. The only thing I can think of is the link to gmail and apps on their homepage if you aren't logged in. A hell of a lot less links than on Bing's or Yahoo's home pages.

Come to think of it, one of the reasons Google gained popularity is how sparse their pages are to begin with.

Re:EUgle?

[CrimsonAvenger]

it will set a tracking cookie that is used to serve ads to you, so they are forcing you to sign up to their targeted ad service to use their search.

Of course, if you have Adblock up, that doesn't seem to be an issue. I haven't seen an ad on Google for years.

Re:EUgle?

[MMC Monster]

Please give one example of how people are forced to use google products.

My dad's email address is via yahoo. He likely goes weeks without hitting the google homepage. He's not particularly technically literate, either. People with google/Hotmail/Yahoo email tend to use home pages associated with their email address.

Re:EUgle?

[MMC Monster]

Can you name some of these services?

Why not give some examples, and we can discuss where those examples rate in popularity vs. where they show up in search results in the various search engines.

Re:EUgle?

[CrimsonAvenger]

What we are talking here is Google leveraging their search engine monopoly to take away the consumer's right to choose services that compete with Google's

So, how are they doing that?

Re:EUgle?

[MMC Monster]

For the same search term on Google (not logged in), 'free email account', with adblock turned off, I get:
mailchimp.com
yahoo.com
gmx.com
mail.com
mail.com (yes, twice!)
gmx.com (again?)
yahoo.com
google.com
hushmail
email.about.com

Seriously. WTF. No Microsoft in the top 10 and gmail is number 8 on the list.

Re:EUgle?

[MMC Monster]

Just looked again. The top three of those were ads. I can't explain why the first two non-ads were both to mail.com.

Re:EUgle?

[N1AK]

What needs to interconnect with a "search" engine?

Nothing, but then why does the web 'need' search engines? It existed without them for years, they just make it easier to use. When I get emailed a flight confirmation it syncs to my calendar. It's hardly something I couldn't live without but it's a benefit of integrating services. Personally I wish the EU etc would push harder to force more integration data to be shared. If MS want to publish things from Outlook to google cal they should be able to use the same method as Gmail. If Gmail want to use my Gmail address book for improve my maps navigation then TomTom should.

Integrations between services only cause issues when they restrict functionality available to users who don't use the same company for all services.

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Google is absurdly popular"
It used to be when the alternatives were crap. Today they're on par, sometimes better. But Google is the default and everyone simply uses them because switching involves more steps, which is too much work. Remember Internet Explorer? Same deal.

Re:EUgle?

[AmiMoJo]

You are still fixated on the competition aspect.

The EU's other concern is that companies like Google try to tie you in to all their services when you sign up for one. Create a Gmail account and you automatically get a Google Plus account, Google Drive space, Google search account, Google Wallet, Google Play account, Google photo gallery etc. By creating an email account you have to agree to let Google profile you for everything else, and your details get added to their social network and made visible to other users (even on maximum privacy settings your name is shown, and people who email you and also have a Google account get connected to your profile).

Re:EUgle?

[AmiMoJo]

If you make a Google account, which is necessary for GMail or saving your search preferences, you get a G+ account and accounts for everything else even if you don't want them. Anyone else who emails you from GMail gets connected to your G+ account, and can try to chat with you, send IMs, add you to their circles etc.

Re:EUgle?

[phayes]

By the time Gmail was no longer an invite-only beta service, everyone had been talking about it for months. The buzz was enormous

Among geeks, sure. Among normal people? Not so much. A year after GMail launched, I still had non-geeks asking me 'what's your hotmail address?' meaning 'what's your personal email address' (as opposed to the work-run one).

Geeks, being those who do the most linking show up much more strongly in Google results than "normals".

Thanks for reminding that of the email hosting company Microsoft destroyed was hotmail & for the correction freebsd/Linux.

Re:EUgle?

[CastrTroy]

I believe that it was called Hotmail when MS bought it. It ran under than name Hotmail until quite recently where they renamed it to outlook.com. The biggest advantage that Google brought to the table was the amount of space you got. At the time, Hotmail offered only 2MB of storage. If I'm not mistaken, I had 11 MB with Yahoo at the time. Google started off with 1 GB, that's 500 times more storage than MS, and 90 times more than Yahoo was offering. That combined with reasonably good spam filtering, probably aided by the fact that they had good experience with text analysis due to the search engine expertise, make it a joy to use over the other alternatives at the time. Hotmail's spam protection at the time was so bad that most people I know who used it employed the use of a white list and everything else went to spam. It was the only way to not have your entire inbox full of spam. Of course you missed messages from new friends, but it was better than using the default spam protection.

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the EU competition authorities have heavily punished many EU based companies for anti-competitive behaviour. Look it up sometime (unless you want to carry on believing the myth that they only punish US companies; most Americans seem to believe this falsehood).

Re:EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Yellow pages favours paid advertisers in their index
Even the free phone book that my (monopoly) telco provides features paid ads for more prominence.
Is this illegal ?

As a user of the "google stack " I get great benefit from
- personalised search
- google now
- "important" categorisation

And given that all free stuff is ad driven I'm glad google at least gives me relevant ads. They certainly don't get in my way.
The EU would reduce that usefulness. To whose benefit ?

Next they'll be saying that Amazon should show Barnes and Noble stuff in their product searches.

Being a monopoly is not a crime. Nor is playing hardball with the competition.
Abusing it is (like the MS Tax) generally.

I see no reason whatsoever why google should give MS owned businesses any prominence in search results.

The most they should be asked to do is denote which (if any) search results are businesses google has an interest in (in trhe interests of "full disclosure"). Perhaps a google logo by the search results,. But so what ?
If the best vid for my query is on youtube SO WHAT ?

Re: EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps you should read *MY* comment? No shit the EU talks about strong net neutrality. But, again, do you see the EU calling for the break-up of cable ISPs or mere regulation of them?

Re:EUgle?

[Bigjeff5]

The point is that as a society we deemed that tying products was harmful.

When did this happen, and where was I? If this is true, society is fucking stupid and needs to take some economics courses. Bundling, when it is not exploited to artificially restrict markets, is almost always more efficient, and therefore more beneficial to everyone, than disparate entities attempting to provide the same service. Interconnection between services is a very, very good thing. I was on the internet in the 90's. I remember what it was like when advertisers couldn't target ads. It was like the internet was a used car salesmen's convention, with syphilis included for free.

I'll grant you that if we could somehow get complete integration between disparate services, that would be ideal. I don't see how that will ever happen, though, and eliminating bundling definitely won't get you there. You'll need some kind of legitimate market pressure to make interconnection between companies the most profitable direction to take. I can't see how that would ever happen. It would have to be a government entity, and they'd almost certainly screw it up.

In any case, tell me which of these scenarios do you prefer:
1.) You've been wanting a laptop. You've been talking about it all day. You get home from work and the first thing you notice is your open mailbox, clearly stuffed so full with crap that it won't close and you can hardly get anything out. You do pull out the crap, and lo and behold your mailbox was filled two dozen full size posters in garish colors. Six of them are for some stupid children's toys you aren't interested in. Five are identical posters for different companies that say you're the 10,000th customer and have won a prize, even though you've never bought anything from any of those companies. Interspersed among these eleven posters are five posters with a graphic picture of a penis, apparently offering to sell you penis enlargement pills. The last eight posters are incredibly graphic porn advertisements. Worse, they've got some kind of sticky goop on them that makes it really hard to get them into the trash once you've accidentally grabbed them. FML. You spend all evening cleaning the goop off your hands. Maybe tomorrow you'll go see Jim at your local computer store about a laptop.

2.) You've been wanting a laptop. You've been talking about it all day. You get home from work and check your mail (which is not stuffed full of anything) to find a handful of letters. A couple are from your bank, telling you about a new service they provide that could save you money. You aren't particularly interested right now so you ignore them and check the last three letters. It's three legitimate offers for a laptop, and you're definitely interested. Ultimately though, you decide that you can get a better deal from your buddy Jim at the local computer store.

Scenario 1 is the internet without trackers for advertisements. I was there, reality was worse than that. Please, PLEASE don't make us go back to that!

Scenario 2 is the internet with trackers for advertisements. Just look at your internet now. Some websites still suck at advertising, but for the most part it is clean. Particularly with sites that use Google ads, you don't get the glaring, flashing banners when you hit a new site, there aren't dozens of links everywhere, there are just a line or two of text advertising something that you actually might be interested in. I swear it seems like once every couple months or so I'm thanking God that Google fixed the internet. And I'm an atheist!

So yeah, watch Google like a hawk, because they are in a position to do some incredibly bad things. However, thanks to bundling, they make a shitload of money doing GOOD things for users, and thus far have no reason to do bad things. All of Google's non-business products are FREE. They have always been free and we can expect them to always be free. Not only are they free, in most cases they are better than what (if anything) came before. G

Re:EUgle?

[Bigjeff5]

You are still fixated on the competition aspect.

The competition aspect is the only one that matters. With healthy competition, other services can come in and hit the niche that you prefer, and everyone is happy. You simply don't use Google if you don't like the way they operate. There are other options to everything Google provides, and you know what? Thanks to competition, they are all pretty good. There is nothing to suggest competition for these services is anything but healthy.

If you don't like Google+, you can delete your profile and go back to not having one. I do admit, they make it difficult to sign up for a new account without Google+, but you can always use a fake name and set everything else so that it isn't shared, so I really don't see that it matters. Syncing and sharing are options you can set for every service Google provides. If you still don't like it, then don't use Google!

The EU's other concern is that companies like Google try to tie you in to all their services when you sign up for one.

If that's what most people prefer (which is what it means when one leader dominates a market with not artificial restrictions), why in the hell should the EU want to restrict it? WTF? I mean, seriously! What business is it of theirs? Why is this at all a concern?

Again, this problem is solved with healthy competition. If there is a market for people who don't like the bundling Google does, someone will (and already has) provide an alternative. It's not going to be one company though, and it won't have any of the interconnectivity features bundling makes possible either. You can't have both, and forcing Google to unbundle just fucks over the (apparent) majority of people who prefer the bundle. Thanks for that.

Re:EUgle?

[gbcox]

As an experiment: try to get by without using google. The argument is that by being so successful and ubiquitous, people are forced to use it, giving google powers that society might not want to give them for very specific reasons. If it's "their fault" or not is completely besides the point

Because if Google was a German company, it would have never been allowed to become the privacy busting, surveillance octopus from hell it is now.

That is just ridiculous... there are many choices for a search engine... bing, yahoo, etc; as there are a multitude of alternatives for the other services they offer. I would wager that Bill Gates doesn't use Google search, GMail, Google Calender, etc. - and I'm sure there are many others that don't either.

Re:EUgle?

[AK Marc]

The issue is that Google has got the same business unit that handles their web search operation also pushing Google services. The result is that Google is actively discriminating against competing services

What discriminating is Google doing? If you search for MS Office, you get Google Docs as the only result?

I've heard lots of complaints, but no examples. When Google returns "google glass" as the only result for "wearable computing" then I'll believe it. But bundling isn't discriminating.

Instead Googles army of fanboys is now out in force again trying to paint a big yellow smiley over the whole thing.

I'm not a Google fanboy, but I'm accused of being one for simply asking for examples of wrongdoing. Or maybe that's the chant of the Google haters who can't come up with a reason they hate Google.

Re:EUgle?

[AK Marc]

I just typed in "office suite" and got MS office as #3.

Re:EUgle?

[AK Marc]

Adwords were #9 on the list. Is that supposed to be shocking? Bing ads showed up before it did.

Re:EUgle?

[AK Marc]

The Google haters say that having a free Play account, and free Google+ account provisioned with every Gmail account is unfair to the competitors to Play, though I'm not sure who that would be, since the MS store and Apple stores don't compete on the same devices with it. Maybe Amazon's store is disadvantaged? But that one is linked to a book sales site, so buy a book get a free included store account, so I don't see how they could really complain.

And nobody uses Google+. Google does it because it uses Google+ as the social background for YouTube and other things. Even if users don't really use Google+ as a social media platform.

Re:EUgle?

[AK Marc]

I tried the same search and got Google as 14th. Outlook.com was on the list well ahead of it.

Re: EUgle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually yes because Companies are a construct of society and in their CURRENT form could not exist without he infrastructure provided by their hosts.

Re:EUgle?

[TWX]

That's odd. I use what's currently called the Google Play Store only for pulling reviewed applications for my smartphone down to it, as opposed to having to browse random developers' websites to find apps without having even a basic review process for them. I've never bought anything through it, and unless there's some absolutely killer app for my needs I probably never will.

Google doesn't make any money from me directly in doing that. I suppose they may manage to extract some advertising dollars through data-mining my session, but that's still not going to make me buy something.

Re:EUgle?

[AK Marc]

I use what's currently called the Google Play Store only for pulling reviewed applications for my smartphone down to it, as opposed to having to browse random developers' websites to find apps without having even a basic review process for them. I've never bought anything through it,

So you don't believe in a $0 purchase? They don't link you to a non-play web download. So the terms and conditions are set by Play. And those conditions treat all Play orders, even $0 ones, as "purchases". One of the important reasons for that is if you "buy" something for $0, when the price goes up to $5, you still own it. You don't have to re-buy updates, upgrades, or price changes (unless it's re-published as a new title).

Google doesn't make any money from me directly in doing that. I suppose they may manage to extract some advertising dollars through data-mining my session, but that's still not going to make me buy something.

So you assert that because they don't extract cash from you, they don't extract value from you. I assert you are wrong.

While they're at it

[rossdee]

They could abolish the speed of light and make the internet go much faster.

Re:While they're at it

[Anonymous Coward]

abolish the speed of light ...

Light moves and therefore will always have a speed rating. What we need to abolish is relativistic constancy. That, in a roundabout way, requires banning gravity.

Henceforth there is no gravity: All matter just sucks.

How about EU should be broken up?

[roman_mir]

Fuck governments and Mega governments, I say break up all governments and do not touch private enterprises.

This is like a government coming out saying that a person should be dismembered or a family should be divorced because it's just 'too strong'.

Re:How about EU should be broken up?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tinyurl.com/lrnv6ag

Re:How about EU should be broken up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol. I disagree with you, but thats a fun way to make an argument.

link
For those too lazy to paste in their URL.

Re:How about EU should be broken up?

[Anonymous Coward]

A real live strawman, lets dismember him too.

Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

It IS their service... they can do whatever the F they want with it. They aren't governmental and aren't receiving money from any government either. Don't like it? Don't use it, it's that simple.
You're basically telling someone to stop doing something with their possession right now.

Re:Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd fall out of my chair laughing if the EU forced Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, and others to allow each others ads on their services. Seeing ads for Chrome or Steam or even UPlay on EA Origin would be quite funny.

As H.L. Mencken said...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."

Reach 90% dominance? Break it up

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a no-brainer.

Re:Reach 90% dominance? Break it up

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much this. Anyone with any understanding of competition law and where it comes from should know why Google should be broken up. For once the summary got it right; it's not merely that Google is large, but that they're using the dominance to favour its own services over competitors. If that's not anti-competitive I don't know what is.

Re: Reach 90% dominance? Break it up

[Anonymous Coward]

So you think Google should favor its competitor's services? The whole thing is stupid and doesn't make any sense. The entire point of business is to favor your own services, no? I'm all for abolishing capitalism, but as long as we're being capitalistic we should at least attempt to understand its principles..

Re: Reach 90% dominance? Break it up

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thoroughly mistaken if you think simply having companies do whatever they want defines capitalism, and in turn shows how little you understand about anti-competition laws (which are rooted precisely from the economic ideals where capitalism has grown).

If anything, breaking up Google is supportive of capitalism and market growth, as one of fundamental mechanisms to stop monopolies (as Google is with its search engine).

Problem Solved

[Anonymous Coward]

Google just needs to stop providing services to EU for 1 day. That should have them begging for G-everything to come back.

market share in USA = 67.6%

[Anonymous Coward]

67.6% market share for Google in USA, and 90% share in Europe.

So Europeans choose to use Google more than Americans, and then turn around and bitch about the very thing they're choosing to use? Hmm. What's wrong with this picture?

The simple answer is to not use Google so much. Using any of their many competitors is as simple as can be. There's no vendor lock in. You just go to a different URL to search, or install a different browser search plug-in.

Re: market share in USA = 67.6%

[Anonymous Coward]

One has to remember that the people who use the search engine are not its customers. In the world of search, users are a natural resource. The advertisers are the customers. And they have very little choice, since google dominates the European search engine market.

Winning in competition does not equal monopoly.

[jpellino]

Of course when after eons of warring you finally create an exclusive federation then see it threatened financially by less-than-egalatarian reality, I can see where that mistake could be made.

aha

[superwiz]

And if UN thinks that EU should be broken up, does that mean it should?

Re:aha

[turkeydance]

+1. break-up the EU first, then break something else.

Re:wtf

[onkelonkel]

"the Gaul" - I see what you did there.

ITT:

[Anonymous Coward]

ITT: Fools who are apoplectic over the idea of Apple exercising control of its app ecosystem and Microsoft bundling a browser with their OS find a way to contort themselves into the illogical stance that Google engaging in the same type of practices is "totally for our own good, fuck the EU."

You nerds never cease to amaze me.

Re:ITT:

[Notabadguy]

ITT: Fools who are apoplectic over the idea of Apple exercising control of its app ecosystem and Microsoft bundling a browser with their OS find a way to contort themselves into the illogical stance that Google engaging in the same type of practices is "totally for our own good, fuck the EU."

You nerds never cease to amaze me.

IOS isn't free. Android is.
Windows isn't free. Google is.

Perhaps you forget that you couldn't uninstall IE, choice was hard to come by, and today is nothing like then. You can choose to not use Chrome easily. You can not use google easily.

Re:ITT:

[Anonymous Coward]

They're just looking forward to having a Google Car drive them to their Google House to be with their Google Families and eat Google Turkey on Thanksgiving (sponsored by Google).

Re:ITT:

[x0ra]

iOS updates are free, moreover, Google Mobile Services are licensed with a fee to the manufacturer. So your point is invalid...

Re:ITT:

[Anonymous Coward]

IOS isn't free. Android is.

Which has exactly zero to do with whether or not somebody is engaging in abusive business practices.

In point of fact, there's a practice known as "dumping" that's considered quite anti-competitive. And that practice involves pricing a product below its cost to produce in order to essentially drive your competitors out of business. Android and Google are free? Yep, that's a pretty fucking good reason to regulate Google. They're dumping their products into a market in order to establish market share and drive competitors out.

Perhaps you forget that you couldn't uninstall IE, choice was hard to come by, and today is nothing like then. You can choose to not use Chrome easily. You can not use google easily.

And you can "not use" iOS easily. And you could, even back in Microsoft's heyday, "not use Windows" easily. There were ALWAYS options. The question was, and always has been, whether or not a business is using its market position to unfairly stifle competition or otherwise distort the market. And Google is *absolutely* doing that, just as Microsoft was doing it with IE and Windows, and its abusive practices towards OEMs.

Or did you think it was easy to build alternatives to Google's "free" services? Apple Maps. Microsoft Bing. There's two examples of exactly how fucking deep your pockets have to be to even hope to build a competitor due to Google's dumping practices.

Thanks for illustrating my point, your post was timely.

Re:ITT:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I can't wait until Google starts building company towns. That'll truly be the way of the future!

Re:ITT:

[perryizgr8]

BUt you can't uninstall any of Google's apps from the "open-source" android either. How is this not like Windows not allowing you to delete IE?

Re:ITT:

[thegarbz]

Google Mobile Services are licensed with a fee to the manufacturer. So your point is invalid...

Google's services are. Android is not. You're more than free to make an Android handset and not pay Google a cent.

Re:ITT:

[thegarbz]

Erm the AOSP doesn't come with any Google Apps. In fact it doesn't even come with access to Google Play, or Google Search / Maps or anything. AOSP has no Google anything in it and won't have it because it's against Google's terms and conditions for licencing it's mobile services.

Re:ITT:

[perryizgr8]

AOSP is mostly dead now. They have stopped updating even basic apps like messages etc. Anybody who wants to use android without google's apps has to roll their own version of everything.

Re:ITT:

[Anonymous Coward]

It really is not 'easy' for non-tech-sawwy people to NOT use Google, or volunteer their data to Google.

Same goes for many other databanks.

Re:ITT:

[Anonymous Coward]

Google and Android aren't free. Linux is.

Just because they aren't taking money out of your pocket, doesn't mean they're not taking something.

Re:ITT:

[AK Marc]

And that practice involves pricing a product below its cost to produce in order to essentially drive your competitors out of business.

A defense to "dumping" is profit. And Google is making a profit on Android, so it's provably not "dumping"

Re:ITT:

[Anonymous Coward]

A defense to "dumping" is profit. And Google is making a profit on Android, so it's provably not "dumping"

Claiming that Google makes profits off Android is disingenuous at best, and willfully dishonest at worst. They are *provably* dumping, because dumping involves selling something at less than its cost to produce -- giving something away for free, while spending money on its development, is automatically a loss. If it costs you something to produce, and you are dumping it for free to shore up your market share, then you are engaged in predatory pricing.

They are NOT making a profit off Android, they are making a profit off the search services, and Android is a convenient way for them to fill the market with devices they have control over the development of.

Re:ITT:

[AK Marc]

So if they are profiting from the Android ecosystem (Play and other parts), then how is that dumping? The true test to dumping is if everyone bought all they could of it, would the company stop pupplying it or go out of business? No? Then it's not dumping. Dumping is a temporary loss targeting future profits off the same thing. If Google never sells Android, it's provably not dumping, the problem is that proof requires a time machine.

market share in USA = 67.6%

[Anonymous Coward]

Bing & friends utterly suck at non-english searches, which is probably why google does so well over here.

It's just a political vendetta

[chowdahhead]

Europe spent 4 years investigating Google's practices. What did they come up with? Not a damn thing. There was no evidence of abuse of market position, so a new law is now being created for the sole purpose of enforcing against Google. It would be very different if Google was actually disrupting other markets using their dominance in search, but that's not what's happening here.

Re:It's just a political vendetta

[gbcox]

Yup... this is just Microsoft and their paid off politicians trying to do what they do best... generate FUD. I have to hand it to them... they sure are experts at it. Just when you think they could think up nothing more scatterbrained than the "right to make public information hard to find" they come up with "let's recommend a company be broken up because it is successful and it's competitors suck".

Re:It's just a political vendetta

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the same polititians that spent the last 5 or 6 years imposing huge fines on MS and making them have separate versions of windows for the EU? seriously you can say the case is bullshit, but to suggest MS has some influence over them is moronic, they have been and still are being screwed far worse than good by the EU.

Re:It's just a political vendetta

[Zontar The Mindless]

Here's another theory, from an MEP (Julia Reda, Pirate Party, DE) who thinks it's German publishers wanting to charge "ancillary copyright" licence fees for linking to their publications.

Re:It's just a political vendetta

[Dutch Gun]

Note in the article that they've all but admitted they're going to fine Google billions of dollars no matter what - hell, they've already figured out how much they want to extort. To me this sort of sounds like prep work to justify a shakedown yet to come.

Predecessor Joaquin Almunia tried and failed to settle the case. A series of concessions made by Google were rejected, leading Mr Almunia to suggest that the only option was a fine. This could be up to $5bn.

Re: It's just a political vendetta

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no new law being introduced. The democratically elected European parliament is asking the European commission to consider these issues and act on them. The investigation into Google is ongoing.

Re:It's just a political vendetta

[spyfrog]

Yes, that is probably the reason behind this. But it isn't only German media maffia - it's the french also.

European Union should be broken UP

[Cyberax]

Yours, truly --- Google.

Sure we will just redirect all European IPs

[bhenson]

This would quickly become a moot point if they redirected all European IP's to a page saying they cannot do business in that area because of the vote and to call their representatives and complain. Google to the world: Let us do our thing or we will make your life hell

Re: Sure we will just redirect all European IPs

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, block the EU. After all, what could stop a company from leaving the biggest market in the world? I'm sure the shareholders won't mind.

Well Europe

[Dunbal]

It's been said before. "F-ck the EU..."

Re:Well Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

AND FUCK AMERICANS who believe they have an automatic right to money because they are Americans and it is there,

Re:Well Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

AND FUCK AMERICANS who believe they have an automatic right to money because they are Americans and it is there,

We have an automatic right to the wealth we create, asshole. Google isn't stealing anyone's money, they're providing a service, and people find it to be a good enough service that they use it. Advertisers find that as a result, advertising with Google will get more people to see their ads.

It's not a monopoly. There are search engines abound. Don't like Google? Go to Bing or whatever else floats your boat.

Re: Well Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertisers need Google. They have no choice. Bing is too small in the EU. Hence, Google has a monopoly.

Re:Well Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Our house , Our infrastructure , our rules if you don't like the rules leave the money and fuck off back to America and buy some politicians there to structure the 'free' market just how you want it.

The directive does not mention google.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

No Clue indeed. No clue from almost anyone reporting on this piece of news. (it is dissapointing that the BBC headline is so wrong)

Have a read of the Euro Parliament's Press release or (unbelievably better than the BBC) Tech Crunch.

Its a general resolution about online search engines bundling services & about the need to enforce European Competitions laws in the online space.

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[BarbaraHudson]

The resolution underlines that "the online search market is of particular importance in ensuring competitive conditions within the digital single market" and welcomes the Commission’s pledges to investigate further the search engines’ practices.

It calls on the Commission "to prevent any abuse in the marketing of interlinked services by operators of search engines", stressing the importance of non-discriminatory online search. "Indexation, evaluation, presentation and ranking by search engines must be unbiased and transparent", MEPs say.

And it's also not only unenforceable, but impossible. Every evaluation and ranking algorithm that is not based off a random number generator carries, by definition, biases favoring some criteria over others. There will always be someone crying foul because they're lower in the rankings. This is a tar pit.

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[theycallmeB]

The company I work for has a list of "brands we do not advertise" as a result of the agreements we have to buy stuff from the makers of those brands. But when a print ad goes out listing a "Major Name Brand" laundry detergent next to a picture of a big orange jug, everyone still knows its Tide. The oblong yellow box of melting cheese is Velveeta. And a directive to separate search from all the things that help search make money is an attempt to screw Google.

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[jopsen]

Every evaluation and ranking algorithm that is not based off a random number generator carries, by definition, biases favoring some criteria over others. There will always be someone crying foul because they're lower in the rankings. This is a tar pit.

Sure, but this is about ensuring that there is competition in the field, having multiple player, instead of a single algorithm sitting on the whole market is a good mitigation of the technical issue you describe.

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[Anonymous Coward]

The manner in which Google displays its own vertical search services compared with other, competing products
How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - to include within its own services
The exclusivity Google has to sell advertising around the search terms people use
Restrictions on advertisers from moving their online ad campaigns to rival search engines

About those four.
1. Could we compare this to Comcast advertising their Xfinity Home service on television for Comcast TV subscribers?
2. It's not just this. I think they copy Wikipedia among other information sites. I think there's a line between getting a snippet of a site for search results, and copying information from a site which can cause a person to not even bother clicking that URL anymore. This is a fair use issue that probably should be dealt with.
3.Don't understand this.
4. So an advertiser has to choose, and can't use both? I feel this should be illegal, that it's in the anti-trust/monopoly area. That such contracts should be made null and void.

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you complaining there ain't no such thing as a perfect solution? I agree with you. BUT there exists BETTER solutions! The actual situation is far from being satisfying. Let's find one! This is what the parliament is doing.

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[phayes]

"Competition" is the smokescreen justification, the excuse they give to the public to attempt to appear noble. The EU doesn't care about competition, the real justification is the EUs volition to control online search. The right of EU politicians to erase old scandals trumps free speech & the public's right to know.

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[BarbaraHudson]

Trying to solve a technical problem (that any good search algorithm is going to have be biased rather than pick sites at random) with political action isn't going to solve the problem. It's like the politicians who wanted to make a law saying that pi=3.2 because it's "easier to deal with."

And of course, having two competitors would end up having the lesser of the two trying to imitate the algorithms of the more successful one (which is just history repeating itself with PageRank).

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[BarbaraHudson]

The parliament isn't *doing* anything. They're studying the issue.

The more dominant one search engine is, the more likely that other search engines will try to implement the same search algorithms the dominant player is using, in order to gain market share. So this will not create a diverse ecosystem, any more than having 100 clones of Facebook or Twitter will.

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[ultranova]

Every evaluation and ranking algorithm that is not based off a random number generator carries, by definition, biases favoring some criteria over others.

And, believing this, you of course browse at -2, since Slashdot's moderation system is a kind of ranking system and thus carries bias, and all biases are equal?

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[BarbaraHudson]

Every evaluation and ranking algorithm that is not based off a random number generator carries, by definition, biases favoring some criteria over others.

And, believing this, you of course browse at -2, since Slashdot's moderation system is a kind of ranking system and thus carries bias, and all biases are equal?

Two points:

1. My original statement still stands.
2. Unfortunately, I'm stuck at -1 because that's where a lot of the action is. If there were a -2, sign me up :-)

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[jopsen]

The right of EU politicians to erase old scandals trumps free speech & the public's right to know.

There are two sides of that... If you let politicians throw mud the way it's done in the US, you get a political system where all the politicians contemplate how to make each other look bad. Take a look at US politics, it's not like anything gets done...

Crazy baseless accusations and non-scandals/mud should be forgotten...


Note, I certainly see the right to be forgotten as an let's call it interesting experiment... We'll see how it plays out...
Either way, please don't claim that all EU politicians are conspiring to control the internet so their sex scandals can be deleted from public record. That's crazy talk...

Re:The directive does not mention google.

[phayes]

It's illuminating that you think that I was referring to sex as the reason that EU polititians want the right to be forgotten as more important than free speech.

The condemned past corruption in political candidates should NOT be forgotten.

As a means to get their financial & corruption scandals swept under the rug, well, that's not crazy talk at all. Also note that while it may not be all polititians as you are attempting to paint it, it suffices that enough party leaders think so to influence the vote. Do you want to attempt to argue that the EU doesn't have enough corrupt polititians for this to be a factor?

One thing.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably tinfoil hat level but still couldn't help but notice......

This didn't become an issue until Google started stepping on the toes of other powerful companies.

I mean honestly, they literally have zero to stand on with this one while others in the past (Microsoft) has done legitimate criminal activities and were not anywhere near this level from them that I can remember. As all they wanted Microsoft to do was unbundle their products, not break up the company entirely

But as soon as Google starts butting into other areas and upsetting the balance, this happens. I am honestly wondering if we will end up discovering later on where the US Government requested this due to the corporate pressure locally from the current internet and content providers upset over google killing them in their own markets everywhere they go.

Not just Google

[c]

They voted to "separate search engines from other commercial services".

They just voted to break up Google, Microsoft, maybe Yahoo, Baidu, and as a consequence have ensured that no large corporation would bother getting into the search engine market.

At least, that would be the case if it actually had any teeth. I can't imagine it sticking...

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians are always late. Technology overload the "money" concept, economy is by now just an accessory for the world. And I'm not talking about e-currency in specific(eg. bitcoin and similar). If you figure out what Moore law mean to mechanical calculators you could project what object oriented programming will do to humanity brains. It's not about google, market like monopoly, its easier and cheaper to sell, but market will be and already is becoming nothing compared to what content means and google is not content google is a search for content, but content is connected by a countless number of medias(eg. facebook, email, skype, cellphones, intranets, games and so on).

Why bash Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bash Google? This is insane! They let a monopoly that has destroyed the computer landscape with 'bundled operating system and applications' get away with a near monopoly for 30 freakin' years with not a peep, yet the only company giving that monopoly *any* competition, and they get their collective panties all twisted in a knot and now they can't pee pee like tinkerbell. Its absolutely insane, and I sense that there is a rat paying off some corrupt European politicians. And don't tell me they are incorruptable! That same 'bundled O/S and applications company got an ISO standard, one build on paid corrupt votes. And they let it through without batting an eye. Rat Bastards!

Re:Why bash Google?

[91degrees]

Actually, they "peeped" pretty loudly

Re:Why bash Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bash Google? This is insane! They let a monopoly that has destroyed the computer landscape with 'bundled operating system and applications' get away with a near monopoly for 30 freakin' years with not a peep, yet the only company giving that monopoly *any* competition, and they get their collective panties all twisted in a knot and now they can't pee pee like tinkerbell. Its absolutely insane, and I sense that there is a rat paying off some corrupt European politicians. And don't tell me they are incorruptable! That same 'bundled O/S and applications company got an ISO standard, one build on paid corrupt votes. And they let it through without batting an eye. Rat Bastards!

Not sure if this is meant as sarcasm or not, but EU have directed multiple very severe directives and fines at Microsoft over the years. This can't have escaped anyone who cares about this topic at all. As forcing them to offer competing browsers as part of Windows installation procedure (ballot screen), forcing them to offer a version of Windows without bundled Media Player. And very, very significant fines.

Break them into two

[chriswaco]

One spin-off can handle A-M searches and the other can handle N-Z.

Why is competition not a good criterion?

[Tenebrousedge]

So why isn't anyone making a big deal about Microsoft any more? The big issue at their trial was bundling the browser with the OS. They are still doing that.

If you can't define why this particular (loosely-defined) bundling is bad, then I submit that it's a matter of opinion, and I for one am confused as to why we're focused on one technology giant as opposed to another. Saying something is anti-consumer is easy; any commercial entity is going to be anti-consumer to some degree, most often to whatever degree they can get away with. Why is market competition not a good criterion here?

Re:Why is competition not a good criterion?

[vux984]

So why isn't anyone making a big deal about Microsoft any more? The big issue at their trial was bundling the browser with the OS. They are still doing that.

That was the American anti-trust trial, and America ultimately fell on its face when it came to enforcing the antitrust issues it was pursuing.

On the other hand, for better or for worse, The Windows "N" editions available in Europe actually do not come with Windows Media Player, in compliance with EU law, as a result of the antitrust case that took place in Europe.

Re:Why is competition not a good criterion?

[TheRaven64]

So why isn't anyone making a big deal about Microsoft any more? The big issue at their trial was bundling the browser with the OS. They are still doing that.

The big issue was using a monopoly in the OS market to gain a monopoly in the browser market. Bundling the browser with the OS was one aspect of that. Giving away the browser for 'free' (actually for free for the Mac and UNIX editions, while they lasted) was another. Tying ActiveX to IE and pushing server products that only worked with their browser was another. Forcing OEMs to pay more for Windows if they included Netscape or other browsers was yet another. The shipping of a browser with the OS was a relatively small part of the complaint, just the part that got the most press coverage.

And this was addressed in Europe, by requiring Microsoft to allow OEMs to bundle other browsers and to provide a box on first boot that would allow the user to select their browser of choice. ActiveX is basically dead and it's been a while since Microsoft launched any IE-only services, so this seems to have worked.

Re:Why is competition not a good criterion?

[Bigjeff5]

That was the American anti-trust trial, and America ultimately fell on its face when it came to enforcing the antitrust issues it was pursuing.

Right, which is why IE still dominates the browser market, and there are no insanely popular alternatives like Firefox or Chrome or Safari. Most importantly, MS can still leverage it's OS dominance to force retailers to not bundle other products.

Oh wait, that's not true, because the anti-trust case did exactly what it was supposed to do - it severely punished MS for extorting computer retailers into not bundling specific third party software (i.e. Netscape Navigator). Note that there is no IE mentioned there, at all. This would be just as harmful if IE never existed, and MS was simply extorting retailers to be assholes to Netscape. IE's poor showing in the market, despite coming for free with the OS, was the reason MS did bad things, but IE itself was basically irrelevant. It's the bad things we don't want, and the bad things we should punish. Or are you contending that an OS shouldn't come bundled with, say, a file browser? Or a text editor? Or a calculator? After all, these and many more products bundled with MS have third party counterparts that are not bundled.

The problem was never bundling, and the EU was far too stupid to realize that. The problem was MS abused its dominance in the OS market (NOT the browser market!) to force retailers into not bundling Netscape with their computers. MS wanted this because IE was losing the browser wars. In spite of being bundled, most people paid for a browser instead of using IE, and most people who paid for a browser bought Netscape. MS used its market dominant position to force Netscape out of the market not via bundling, but via extortion!

It's the EU that failed miserably by not understanding where the problem was. Unbundling is stupid. You want a default browser, else how do you download a different browser? Duh. Even the EU's unbundling still has to allow bundling, precisely because the idea is so idiotic. Who gives a shit about bundling? It's the extortion that you need to prevent.

Remove anti-competitive adsense clauses 1st

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't find this to be a terrible idea, but one of the things that has wigged me about Google is one of their use of dominance with advertising. Since their search engine makes money from advertisements, it's pretty difficult to unbundle because no one is buying google search directly. That's basically how they all work.

Did you know if you have a website and want to put some google ads on to pay for your domain and hosting account, you are prohibited from using any other context-related ads? You violate their ToS, and get your account closed and domain struck.

Right now, it's the largest market with the largest share for ads, so you can't add duckarooney ads to your site as well, to see that duckarooney actually pays you better than Google might. Your only way of knowing would be to stop using adsense, the current largest market, use duckarooney for awhile, and see how it works out.

No one does, which Google is well aware of. So new competitors are starved of revenue, and which means they can't really compete without a gajillion in the bank to throw at it until they can convince people to take a chance with their livelihoods. If you google around, you can find all sorts of weirdness where Google might be taking a lot of advantage of their ad network with both publishers and advertisers getting screwed over.

Just make them remove that clause, so people can actually compete. They would still be the biggest monkey in the room, but right now they have a stranglehold.

You have it wrong. Its about who decides elections

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys have it all wrong. You're looking like one move ahead in the chess game, if that.

It's about who decides elections. The nature of power.

This starts out with newspapers fighting Google because Google is linking to the newspapers websites and OMG that's a copyright violation. So Google stops linking to them and the newspapers get even more upset when all their clicks go to competitors. Turns out they saw Google's revenue and they wanted a piece of it cause God knows they can't turn a profit to save their life! So now they're trying to find ways to legally force Google to link to them, and force Google to pay them money.

It doesn't help that those newspapers are publishing blatantly slanted articles designed to inflame public opinion. They make Pravda during the height of the cold war look like an ivory tower bastion of respectability! Which in turn lets the newspaper publishers pretty much control public opinion and decide elections.

What, you thought we had democracy? The only consistent deciding factor in who wins elections is who spends the most money. It's all about the advertising.

By the same token, papers want to sell more issues and thereby more ads. Look at that Fergurson thing. The papers made that cop look pretty bad. Why wasn't he convicted? Why didn't the papers print all the evidence in favor of the cop? Why did they print all those lies against him? For that matter, how does anyone magically hit a target 150 feet away with iron sights on a handgun? 75 feet is considered a major challenge. Even 50 is hard, and many folks can't manage 25. 150 is like magic.

Here Google lets anyone speak up and point out the emperor has no clothes. Anyone remotely competent realizes this doesn't pass the smell test. And everyone can find someone on the web who knows enough, in this Ferguson case about firearms, to contradict the bullshit the papers are printing.

Which is why the right to be forgotten is so important to these folks. You'd think they'd go after websites hosting the content instead of Google's index of the content if the right to be forgotten was a straight-up issue. But noooo. And that's your clue that this is not a straight-up issue.

Now it's about breaking up Google. What bullshit will they come up with next?

This battle is far from over. Make no mistake. It's about power and control!

Meh

[snowsnoot]

I'm all for breaking up companies that abuse their power of controlling content delivery by favoring their own products (waves to Verizon/Comcast RE: Netflix) however in this case I dont see it. A quick Google search for "tablet" where there is competition between Android, Windows and iOS based devices shows no slanting of any kind in the search results. I'm not in Europe so I can't say that I would get the same results if located there, but I would be interested in exactly what kind of evidence there is to suggest that Google is acting in an anticompetitive manner?

Poe's law

[ShanghaiBill]

create a government body that provides the same service ...

This post is a great example of Poe's Law. I honestly can't tell if it is a joke, or if you actually think a search engine built and managed by bureaucrats and politicians will be better and less biased than Google. Either way, I had a good laugh. Thanks.

Re:Poe's law

[rtb61]

Keep in mind Alta Vista, Info Seek and MSN search and how Google came out on top. So private search engines where basically after initiating your search you skipped straight to page 5 or more of the results and started from there, that how Google gained it's initial advantage and since it has become dominant stated to abandon. Governments routinely outperform private industry especially when their actions are subject to public purview. Give up on your ohhh ahhh private bullshit, it is a marketing PR lie and has been routinely exposed over the decades. Of course you post is a prime example of for profit, private, public relations smear and I am not laughing, I am just tired of the PR=B$ lies (lies for profit).

Re:Poe's law

[TheRaven64]

When I started using Google, its results were not better than AltaVista. The thing that caused me to switch was the fact that AltaVista took 30 seconds to load the search page and another 30 seconds to load each results page on my modem (with calls charged per minute), whereas Google loaded almost instantly. That meant that I'd find the result faster with Google, even if it happened to be lower down.

Would this kill Google?

[BorgAssimilator]

It seems to me that this would either kill or severely wound Google. I'd assume that all of Google's services work hand in hand (search, apps, etc) to generate revenue or information needed for Google to generate more services / better the existing services.

Disclaimer: I say the above not really knowing about Google's revenue stream or any specifics really, so it's possible there's something going on that I completely missed, or don't understand.

Re:Would this kill Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct - Google relies on product dumping of "free" applications which are tightly integrated to maintain its market share. It needs that market share to generate ad impressions, which generate the overwhelming, nearly-100% majority, of their revenues. Those revenues subsidize the production of more tightly integrated "free" products that Google can dump into other markets, and thus expand its advertising revenues even more.

This is, at its heart, tremendously anti-competitive behavior - Google has erected enormous barriers to entry, and guards them aggressively. Let's stop pretending that Google is this warm fuzzy mom and pop service provider - they're not. They exist, at this point, to stifle competition (and thus innovation) in every market they enter into.

Reply

[sohpieevans]

Dont think so. Lets see what happened

I know what their solution will be...

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be a mandatory "ballot screen" in Google's search engine! If they happen to miss having it by a simple bug, the EU will get billions of dollars!

Europe is jealous

[xonen]

Europe is jealous because we not have a major ICT culture. Yes, we have some `big` companies filling pockets with overpriced projects that never finish in time and always need maintenance after delivery doubling the price.

What we do not have is a (economic) culture where start-ups can flourish. Where smart entrepreneurs can easily find investors and employees. Europe looks at Silicon Valley and is very jealous. But instead of some self reflection and trying to catch up with USA - and other players like China - we turn to more legislation, more import taxes, more protection of the own markets and eventually more unemployment, more taxes and less knowledge.

The only knowledge we build is heavily institutionalized - like universities and the R&D departments of some multinationals. The only thing politics care about is how to collect tax - not how to improve economy and freedom and prosperity.

Re:Europe is jealous

[wabrandsma]

According to the new European Commissioner for the Digital Economy, Germany’s Günther Oettinger, there would be no "break up and no expropriation" with him. Oettinger: Such measures would be "instruments of the planned economy, not the market economy". Only a more competitive Europe could recover lost markershare in the digital economy. Link: Keine Zerschlagung von Google (in German).

But he also suggested a EU-wide "Google Tax": New EU Digital Chief Floats Tough Anti-Google Regulations
"If Google takes intellectual property from the EU and works with it, the EU can protect this property and can demand a charge for it," Mr. Oettinger told the daily Handelsblatt, adding that such a law could be in place by 2016.

Google isn't American

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at all the nerds here defending a Cayman/Irish/Dutch/Luxembourg company as if it was American

Yanks go home.

[pigsycyberbully]

Good for Europe. You know the saying if you don't like it go home!
Google NSA spy network should fuck off back to the U.S. what would it do without its European knowledge books Art culture money news. It has purchased offices all over Europe don't like it yanks then fuck off home.
Yanks go home. I enjoyed that! so one more time. Yanks fuck off home There's nothing worth searching for in the U.S. yanks fuck off home.

The EU should be Broken Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to break up the EU. They think they're more important than they are. They think their rules should apply worldwide. Wrong-o.

Next thing we know we're going to have the EU extremists starting WWIII to enforce their rules on all of us. Time to just break the EU up now and be done with it. Preventative maintenance.

They're overstating the effect

[Godai]

I was a conference, GeoWeb I think it was, in 2008. It was for web-based GIS (Geographic Information Systems), basically cartography & the web. This was maybe a year or two after Google bought out Keyhole, and Michael Jones (I think it was him) from Google was there. Also, Google had just released Chrome so there was a lot of discussion about it. I wanted to pick Jones' brain about some KML eccentricities because I had just written a KML reader & writer. I had to wait behind about five other people who just wanted to talk to him because he was from Google.

One conversation though sticks out. Some guy (who seemed somewhat sycophantic for some reason) was going on & on about how Chrome was going to change the world because it was from Google, and they'd make sure it was awesome and because they could use their influence to make sure everyone used it. I remember that Jones cut him off there (sounding more than a little annoyed) and he told the guy (paraphrasing): "Google can't make anyone use anything we write. The search engine lets us put anything we create in front of their eyes at least once -- that's it. If they try it, it has to live or die on its own merits, we can't force people to try or use it."

MEPs clearly go techno-stupid.

[MrL0G1C]

Google has around 90% market share for search in Europe.

This is a near monopoly and the biggest reason they have this monopoly is because their search simply works better, I've often tried other search engines and they're just not as good.

complaints that it favors is own services in search results

This is like complaining Mcdonalds favors it's own burgers. It's their search, why shouldn't they point to their own services. Would anyone expect a search on IBM's site to offer HP services?

Re:Google Results varies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Google bubbles you, "personalizes" search-results so there's no way to compare results any more.

Google heavily favors its own products to get more profits. Just as all greedy commercial sites do.

Long-running anti-competitive dispute with Google

[lippydude]

"politicians are desperate to find a solution to the long-running anti-competitive dispute with Google."

And we all know who's really behind this 'dispute'.

link

link

Duck, Duck...

[Anonymous Coward]

...GO!

100% wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

What has happened is that 100 very big influential US (mainly) multinationals have hired expensive lawyers to tell the EU that Google is being uncompetitive and it has worked: Google hasn't been able to field as many solicitors therefore have not been able to counter the fraudulent (in the main) claims.

FUCK ALL to do with the EU, but 100% about how companies don't like government intervention until they can benefit from it.

Care to point the fingers? Point them to Microsoft for a start, not the EU.

Google plus/Youtube

[Anonymous Coward]

Ring a bell?

This may be one reason why the claims gained traction this time: Google fucked the bunny in trying to get their "new, wonderful, welcome" service that NOBODY WANTED taken up so they can then call every company and exhort them to use the service "because we have a billion people on this service!".

What is wrong with these Tech Idiots?

[Your Average Joe]

Break up Google? Huh?

WTF is Microsoft? Windows has ALWAYS collected statistics and sent them to the bINg search engine. Have you installed ANY Microsoft Office products? Windows Genuine activation? Why are they trying to break into the Tablet market with a Desktop OS? Why did the Desktop users have to suffer with the Tablet Tiles in MS office? The XBox was a money looser for years and still is not competitive with the PS4, so they are using the desktop and office cash to feed the game console.

I think the MS lobbyist have taken over the decision making of the EU, plain and simple.

and how do they think Search then would be paid fo

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the risks with bias, but if Google was to be broken up, how would the Search part be funded?
But the politicians asking for that are not interested in good quality search, this motion being triggered by a German politician most likely means it was triggered by paranoia, opportunism and very little technical understanding re the consequences

If I was google I might be tempted to turn off search for a couple of hours on Monday and just see what happens...

Or Google could be made into a public utility...

[Paul Fernhout]

Just saying, there are other options; whether we pursue them is a different story. Google's non-search activities (like Google Apps, Chromium, other Google Lab stuff) generally only make significant financial sense to the company in the context of their search business, so breaking up Google means those spinoff businesses would probably immediately go bankrupt.

What was really wrong with an AT&T that funded Bell Labs and created UNIX with government-mandated 5% or so of revenue to be spent on (free and open source) R&D like was the case with AT&T? As someone once said, Bell Labs was funded by people dropping dimes into boxes across the country. Telephone costs have changed in the USA since the breakup, *but* it is not really clear how much of that had to do with the "baby bells" and competition and how much had to do with Moore's law an an exponential reduction in computing costs per MIP that made packet switching (even in the home) so much cheaper.

See:
"The End of AT&T: Ma Bell may be gone, but its innovations are everywhere"
http://www.beatriceco.com/bti/...
"It's 1974. Platform shoes are the height of urban fashion. Disco is just getting into full stride. The Watergate scandal has paralyzed the U.S. government. The new Porsche 911 Turbo helps car lovers at the Paris motor show briefly forget the recent Arab oil embargo. And the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. is far and away the largest corporation in the world.
AT&T's US $26 billion in revenues--the equivalent of $82 billion today--represents 1.4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. The next-largest enterprise, sprawling General Motors Corp., is a third its size, dwarfed by AT&T's $75 billion in assets, more than 100 million customers, and nearly a million employees.
AT&T was a corporate Goliath that seemed as immutable as Gibraltar. And yet now, only 30 years later, the colossus is no more. Of the many events that contributed to the company's long decline, a crucial one took place in the autumn of that year. On 20 November 1974, the U.S. Department of Justice filed the antitrust suit that would end a decade later with the breakup of AT&T and its network, the Bell System, into seven regional carriers, the Baby Bells. AT&T retained its long-distance service, along with Bell Telephone Laboratories Inc., its legendary research arm, and the Western Electric Co., its manufacturing subsidiary. From that point on, the company had plenty of ups and downs. It started new businesses, spun off divisions, and acquired and sold companies. But in the end it succumbed. Now AT&T is gone. ...
Should we mourn the loss? The easy answer is no. Telephone providers abound nowadays. AT&T's services continue to exist and could be easily replaced if they didn't.
But that easy answer ignores AT&T's unparalleled history of research and innovation. During the company's heyday, from 1925 to the mid-1980s, Bell Labs brought us inventions and discoveries that changed the way we live and broadened our understanding of the universe. How many companies can make such a claim?
The oft-repeated list of Bell Labs innovations features many of the milestone developments of the 20th century, including the transistor, the laser, the solar cell, fiber optics, and satellite communications. Few doubt that AT&T's R&D machine was among the greatest ever. But few realize that its innovations, paradoxically, contributed to the downfall of its parent. And now, through a series of events during the past three decades, this remarkable R&D engine has run out of steam. ...
The funding came in large part from what was essentially a built-in "R&D tax" on telephone service. Every time we picked up the phone to place a long-distance call half a century ago, a few pennies of every dollar--a dollar wo

Airbus should be broken up

[Anonymous Coward]

Airbus should be broken up, says Google's lawyers.

Looking for resolution document

[dumky2]

For some reason, none of the news reports include a link to the text that was voted on.
I was unable to find the resolution document on the various EU sites. Please share if you know where it is.

Standardized Tests

[SarfarazJamal]

In history we learn that Socialism knows all the answers but gets every answer wrong on the test. No Surprise here.

propose

[eddie.dunckley]

Goo... and Gurl. Broken up. Done. One takes maps.. the other takes Android. There! Done! Now lets get back to going on with Life.