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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."
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.)
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.
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.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
You probably have adblock installed. For me it comes up right on top, under sponsored results.