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EU To Hit Google With Antitrust Charges
Bruce66423 sends news that the European Union has decided to hit Google with antitrust charges that could lead to fines of over $6 billion. The EU has been investigating Google for five years now. "The European Commission has highlighted four main areas of concern in its investigation: potential bias in Google’s search results, scraping content from rival websites, agreements with advertisers that may exclude rival search-advertising services and contracts that limit marketers from using other platforms." They're also keeping an eye on Android-related business practices.
Pretty much captures it. You can also go, with Politicians: They don't care why they'll take your shit anyway, Or "Google didn't bribe enough people in the EU"
Or butthurt Microsoft fanboys sodomizing each other in joy at the news.
For all of the problems they listed, isn't Apple far bigger and far worse with said problems? Why do I need Apple hardware to merely develop iOS?
Isn't Android something of a problem? At least I can change search engines no-cost, who cares if they show a map with their search results (that's kind of what I'd want if I'm searching for a location or business, isn't it?). But Android has become progressively more closed-source, Google-specific, and if I want to adopt a different app store, that's going to cost $200 at least.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
The bigger problem is not for people who use the engine to find things, it's for owners of things to be found. When a single search engine has 90% of all traffic, whether your business shows up in its search results or not, and if it does, then how high relative to its competitors, can easily become the single biggest determinant of your success. If such placement is not fair (whatever that means), there is an issue.
You sound like a laissez-faire unregulated market proponent, so let me put it this way. Such markets, presumably, work fine when all actors are rational and base their decisions on facts. When a single company becomes in charge of delivering those facts, to the extent that most people implicitly trust them, it becomes trivial for it to skew the market by selectively withholding facts or downplaying their relevance.
Actually the problem is that Google was telling businesses "You must give us all your advertising business or we won't show you in our search results" (or some variation of that statement. Which is to say, they were using their near-monopoly position to blackmail people into giving them their business. Preventing that sort of extortion is exactly why anti-monopoly laws were passed in the first place.
Antitrust isn't really about consumers (although arguable it is ultimately) but about making sure the free market is both a market and free.
When the entire industry is subject to a single companies whim, then its a bad thing. Microsofts anticompetitive practices in the 90s and early 2000s held the IT industry back years, because web browsers stop being competitive and for the web industry that meant we where stuck with a bloody awful lowest common denominator (ie6) for nearly a decade. At least until EU sanctions gave firefox a fighting chance, and web browsers had to compete again and we saw real innovation finally.
Wheres the innovation in searching, when the only engine one needs to care about is google. Wheres the innovation in content, when the only rule in web presence is "does googles algorithm like it". One company holds millions of IT workers fates in their hands, and thats not safe and its not a free market, just a market.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
No they can't. I know it's hard for Americans with company worship to understand, but companies are held to account for their actions in the EU, and EU consumer laws have the express purpose of limiting the abuse of consumers by sociopathic profit-seekers. Anti-trust is part of that, because anti-competitive behavior screws other companies that are behaving responsibly. The relevant example here is consumer data protection which Google despises.
Sorry, but that's not how it works here. If companies don't want to be a part of EU consumer-friendly civilization, they can go wreak their havoc elsewhere. Here companies are expected to serve the public good, not just seek profit without rules nor accountability.
I don't think this is really being brought about by anti-competition but rather a rebuke of US intelligence gathering practices.
I know that because I just looked it up with Google su it must be true!!!!1!!1!
As soon as I read the headline, I hoped that Google would beat the EU. It took effort to remember the Microsoft anti-trust case of 25 years ago, and how -- for many of the same issues -- I wanted the DOJ to grind MS into the dust.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
It's their product, they can do whatever they want with it. Don't like it? Use something else. It's not like you are forced to use Google services.
It's the EUs market, they can do whatever they want with it. Don't like it? Go somewhere else.
Even the highest fines anyone's given out so far are still marginal enough to be considered the cost of doing business for the penalized corporation.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
and the only advertisement was for adwords. Then, I searched for 'adwords competitors' and found competitors to adwords among the search results, but still no advertisements from competitors to adwords. This seems like the sort of thing they're complaining about. But, while I use Google search as if it were a utility, I don't think search is considered to be a public utility at this time. When I think about an analogy other than common carrier requirements, what comes to mind is requiring the Parcelforce logo and phone number be painted onto a corner of DHL vehicles so that people might consider the alternative service.
Exactly! Looks like we need to have all the antitrust discussions again - how it's ok to have a monopoly but not ok to use that to grab market share on other markets, how monopoly power does not mean 100% market share etc. Too many are too young to remember from the MS antitrust days or maybe they have forgotten all that.
And if you think that it's wrong of EU to investigate an American company, think about it this way: with EU and US doing these investigations, we can have more faith in that all monopoly abusing companies will be investigated somewhere - even if their home country is turning a blind eye. This is good on both sides - it's not like this will really have a huge effect on Google anyway.
Google does have an effective monopoly in search, and it's not a bad idea to have some degree of regulation in place to make sure that it doesn't harm consumers. (Though nonsense like a 'right to be forgotten' is going too far, and should be dropped)
The problem is that that very well may not be the EU's only motive here. At about the same time that the charges were announced, Gunther Oettinger, the EU's Digital Commissioner gave a speech where he said:
Maintaining a level playing field and ensuring fair competition is one thing. Using the law to rig the market in order to engage in protectionism, however, is not acceptable. If the EU wants to pursue Google, they're going to need to do so in a way that is justifiably beyond reproach. Otherwise it's relatively easy for Google to restructure the way it does business internationally to avoid the EU from having any power over them, while still offering its services to persons in the EU, and to have many people cheer them on in the process.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
They're at 65% market share, with Bing at 20% and Yahoo not far behind. That's not a monopoly.
Maybe if an EU company like Nokia could figure out how to put an open source smart phone operating system like Android on their phones, this lawsuit wouldn't happen.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
..or EU's financial problems.
I think you're confusing them with Yelp.
You couldn't buy a computer (and still can't) without Windows. You couldn't uninstall IE. Windows was actively preventing users from using competitor's products, and it was costly and time consuming to do so. Google is in trouble for not sufficiently advertising competing products. There's no barrier for entry to use bing instead of Google, or amazon instead of google shopping.
All one has to do to use another search engine is google "search engine".
Google doesn't even return Google when you google "search engine". It does return half a dozen other search engines, including Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo. A market leader perhaps, but not a monopoly.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
Your point of view essentially says: "All and any anti-trust laws should be abolished because 'It's their product and they can do with it whatever they want'".
That bit about "backdoor deals" is just an ad-hoc argument not to apply anti-trust law in this case. Right? Abuse is abuse, back-door or front-door.
I'm curious what other laws you'd want to see abolished for reasons like that. Sarbanes-Oxley? FDA regulation of new drugs? Wildlife preserves? A lot of legislation is there for a very good reason: society at large is worse off without it. Don't cherry-pick just because you like the company.
Perhaps the reason you feel different is that Google isn't forcing people to use Google. This is a little bit different than Internet Exploder, which MS was forcing people to keep installed when using the OS. But one could just as easily type www.yahoo.com into the URL, or even www.bing.com into the URL. Heck those are easier, less characters. Perhaps people don't want to do this because Google is a better search engine?
Google isn't a Monopoly by any means. At the time of its Anti-Trust case, Microsoft was effectively a monopoly on all PCs, and was acting like a monopolist dickwad. Microsoft well deserved the Anti-Trust treatment. The unfortunate fallout from the Microsoft cases were that governments got the bright idea to bring Anti-Trust lawsuits any tech market leader. Google just happens to be in line this week.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
This. You guys should look for a job at the EU commission.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
What Google should be investigated for is linking their search service to their failed social media service - in order for Google to establish canonical authorship on content, you have to link the page to a Google+ account, no other well known public profile (Twitter, Facebook etc) will do, you have to have an account on Google+.
That's something worth looking hard at.
I really love the speed of the EU. Tomorrow they will fine Jesus after a complaint of Zeus about a non-competitive religion...
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
And if you think that it's wrong of EU to investigate an American company, think about it this way:
Google is a European company.
Actually, many European companies.
http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/locations/
Google's European headquarter is in Ireland... well, actually, it's an Irish company that is headquartered in Bermuda.
Google USA licenses its IP to Google Ireland Holdings (headquartered in Bermuda).
In turn, Google Ireland Holdings sub-licenses the IP to its wholly owned subsidiary in the Netherlands: Google Netherlands Holdings B.V.
Then Google Netherlands Holdings B.V. sub-sub-licenses the IP to another Google Ireland Holdings subsidiary: Google Ireland Ltd.
To coordinate all this, Google has a network of corporations in individual EU States, usually just "sales support" staff who run the ad-sales and ad-placements.
TLDR: The EU can't break up Google USA, but they can force Google Ireland Holdings to GTFO or change the way it offers services in the EU.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
He could buy Mac, SGI, Sun...
Antitrust isn't really about consumers (although arguable it is ultimately) but about making sure the free market is both a market and free.
You should have prepended that sentence with the qualifier "American"
In Europe, anti-trust philosophy and regulation is most definitely focused around consumer welfare.
If you re-read the reporting a bit more carefully, the problem with Google's actions is not that it is bad for competition, but that it is bad for consumer welfare.
This is a major difference in thinking between Europe and the USA.
There are other large differences, particularly as a result of the EU's need to integrate markets across its member Countries.
That need to integrate was never a factor during the formation of the USA's anti-trust policies.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
And the government is the property of an individual (no corporation/company/business of any size is owned by a single person, none of the stock exchange listings), so the same logic applies.
Unless that isn't logic you're using but rationalisation of your preconception as somehow rational.
Which it isn't.
I will bite. I live in Leuven next to Stella Artois. That became Interbrew, then InBev, which is a Belgian-Brazilian beer coompany. It is now called AB InBev, because the Mericans thought the name is important.
So this Brazilian/Belgian company should start selling beer to 16 year olds in the USofA, because they are not an American company and if people don't like it, they can just NOT buy it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
TLDR: The EU can't break up Google USA, but they can force Google Ireland Holdings to GTFO or change the way it offers services in the EU.
But aren't they just holding companies for the IP (as you explained) and the actual services are provided by a completly different entity? Your search request may run on servers not owned by Google Ireland or Google Netherlands.
bickerdyke
Google has changed from their original "don't be evil" attitude to a "grow, grow, grow" attitude. And it's showing up in court. From their 0 year lawsuit with Skyhook Wireless, ;documented at http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com...:
> Later on, while Skyhook had signed a contract with Motorola where the device maker was to use Skyhook XPS technology, but shortly after the deal was publicly announced (April 2010) Google forced Motorola to used its own geo-location technology threatening its licensee to not give them access to the Android App Store.
And they've apparently kept pulling similar stunts with Android phones in the years since. So yes, they've been an abusive monopoly.
I'm actually in favor of lowering the US drinking age, at least to allow consumption with family at home. College drinking was much less of a _surprise_ when I went to college, and the binge drinking I see among college students unaware or rebelling against their parents is appalling. A "small beer" with dinner in places where the water was untrustworthy, or a sip of champagne to toast with on New Year's Eve with family, was part of growing up.
It's been said before, but bares repeating: If you're using Google's "services" for free, then you are the product and not the consumer/customer.
Such an antitrust case is about protecting Google's consumers/customers from Google's de-facto monopoly in the market.
You (the product) switching from google to another search provider only means that Google has 0.00000001% less product to sell, and is unlikely to impact anyone.
However a business (the customer) switching to another provider, could (and would) cut that business off from over 90% of its potential customers (you). Something that is likely to impact them greatly (if not kill the business).
If you are going to make the claim that the EU Microsoft Anti-Trust penalties were responsible for the popularity of other browsers, your going to need to support it. The EU ruling / measures had almost no impact on the use of Mozilla/Opera. What I remember from the time was that the only real result was to help curtail the bullying of system builders, and of course a nice influx of cash for the EU.
Google isn't a Monopoly by any means. At the time of its Anti-Trust case, Microsoft was effectively a monopoly on all PCs,
Actually, if you look at the EU anti-trust case against Microsoft you can see that it wasn't the fact that Windows was installed on 99% of PCs that they objected to. It was the fact that they used that position to then lock others out of other markets, such as media players and web browsers. The fix was to require the creation of Windows N, which is just Windows without Microsoft's media player pre-installed (thanks EU for cutting out some bloatware), and to implement the browser choice window.
Google is now in the same position, where they use their dominant position in search to push users to their other products like YouTube, Gmail, G+ etc. If you create a Google account so that you can customize your search settings you automatically get a Gmail account, a YouTube account, a G+ account and basically everything else they offer. When you search for "email", the first link is a "sponsored" link to Gmail (Google paying themselves for advertising) and the first real search result is another link to Gmail.
The solution that the EU has proposed (according to leaked documents) is to split up all the different services so they have separate accounts again (like the stopped Microsoft from bundling), and to require other competing services to be given equal prominence in search results (similar to the browser choice window).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The article is about increased scrutiny from Europe for a range of tech companies on a variety of issues. In terms of Google it mentions there is no specific list of charges yet. The summary indicates there is a specific list of charges and names a dollar figure. So for example when talking about hypothetical charges the articles says, "If Google fails to rebut any formal charges, Ms. Vestager could levy a fine that could exceed 6 billion euros, or $6.4 billion" which is very different from the summary.
Good post. When I read the summary, I thought it would have been snarky but somewhat truthful to revise the summary to reflect the true situation:
The European Commission has highlighted five main areas of concern in its investigation: potential bias in Google’s search results, scraping content from rival websites, agreements with advertisers that may exclude rival search-advertising services, being a US company, and contracts that limit marketers from using other platforms."
The EU selectively targets these large fines only at non-EU based companies, which I don't think is coincidence. I agree it was smart to investigate, but they haven't really produced much in terms of evidence to substantiate a $6bn fine. This isn't nearly as egregious as what MS pulled in the past, but its being treated as such.
Or build his own ... and it's not like if you didn't like IE you couldn't install another browser.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"a company is property of an individual"
No, it isn'. It is the commonal property of its shareholders (whose count may sometimes get down to one), whose interests are represented by the Board of Directors.
But then, (democratic) countries are the commonal property of their citizens, whose interests are represented by the Government.
This means that whatever rationalization you want to come with in order to preserve companies can and should, ipso facto, be applied just the same to countries.
Yes, it's the EU market... For the moment. The transatlantic treaty will take care of that. How cute for the euro-peons to believe they have some measure of leverage and then cut off their own throat by siding with the US against Russia. :)
The GDP of the EU is the highest of any market in the world, $1trillion more than the USA. The EU has absolutely tons of leverage.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
You should have prepended that sentence with the qualifier "American"
In Europe, anti-trust philosophy and regulation is most definitely focused around consumer welfare.
Effectively the two are one and the same thing. A non-free non-market is bad for consumer welfare.
I have found Google is now setting up Google Plus accounts for local businesses. Without their knowledge or permission. If you're a small business you had better start filling in your G+ profile, because it looks bad if the contact details are wrong or incomplete. If you have a website is irrelevant - the G+ profile appears first.
Has Google decided to create a G+ account for me?
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
And yet, we didn't learn a single thing about the IE "incident". Chrome is the "dominant" browser now, and many websites are designing around chrome ("ugh, no one uses that SlowFox anymore!").
I had a security camera application (Ubiquiti's AirVision) running fine. It kept nagging me for an update. The update now only works with Chrome. Fuck me, right?
The end goal is the same, but both approaches start from different ends of the track, meaning each will solve different smaller problems before reaching the bigger ones.
You can enter www.yahoo.com any time and use yahoo instead of google. For a while now. Since Yahoo Search used to be powered by Google.
But anyway. You could also download and install ANY OTHER BROWSER, even using IE. Microsoft DID NOT force you to use IE to browse the web.
And Google is in a dominant position, and, while it doesn't force anyone to use their products or services, they showcase them in a very special way. Go to www.google.com. Do you see any ads? YES, ONE: An ad for CHROME, which, guess what? Is the dominant browser now. Fine. Let's say I'm the Mozilla Foundation: google, how much would it cost to put the Firefox ad in google's home? Google: "we don't sell ads for the google home".
THAT, my friend, is abusing a position of power.
You couldn't buy a computer (and still can't) without Windows.
But with a computer you could always buy the parts and build your own. Slashdot will regularly feature posts from companies selling non-Windows computers. Just because IE is installed doesn't force you to use it.
This is a little bit different than Internet Exploder, which MS was forcing people to keep installed when using the OS. But one could just as easily type www.yahoo.com into the URL, or even www.bing.com into the URL.
But could just as easily launch Netscape from their desktop as they could IE from their desktop.
Where in America is tapwater untrustworthy?
You can leave the left/right thing at the door, and instead pin the lion's share on the Greek national sport of tax dodging.
You seem to be under the impression that everyone is as well-informed as you are. Unless you are calling for a centralised education system where everyone is forced to know the ins-and-outs of every company they do business with, some oversight from the people who know as much of that stuff as humanly possible is needed. This is a particularly tricky situation, as a company whose rank is lowered by Google will suffer, whereas the users of Google might not notice, and so keep on using it thinking everything's fine.
So no, you appear to have missed the point exactly, be it on purpose or by accident.
Yep. Got all those things when I created a google account. Don't use any of them. And they've never tried to force me to use them, nor forbidden me from using something else for the same purposes...
So, where, exactly, is the monopolistic behaviour?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You don't seem to understand what this is about. If Google hurts a business's page rank because of some business practice, the general public who resoundingly do use Google will not find said business as quickly (or at all), meaning Google can skew an entire market if it wanted to, as long as it did it quietly enough to not scare people off from using Google.
You are just guessing, it seems. There is no evidence to suggest these different organisations are all in cahoots to overturn Google. Plus, them having a monopoly doesn't matter - it's about abusing their position in the market. They just have to be sufficiently large to abuse that position, way before becoming a monopoly.
There is something wrong about investigating a large company whose non-related business practices are capable of influencing untold markets? The horror!
At what point is that abusive versus just good business. What if Google had two prices where one was for customers that used their android services (store, geo-location, etc.) and the other was for those that didn't want the geo-location service. It makes sense for Google to offer the clients getting everything a lower price as they can make it up with their geo-location service.
Is that considered abusive? If so then most companies would have to be considered abusive.
Google is not a European company. Google has subsidiary companies that are registered in many countries, but they are mostly just sales offices. From your link: "We moved into our headquarters in Mountain View, California—better known as the Googleplex—in 2004.". Most international companies have subsidiaries where necessary -- either for tax purposes, or because the local governments require it.
Same thing for McDonalds, IBM, or any other multinational company.
Personally, I'd like to see Google just close their EU sales offices and let the EU eat dirt. Then they will just complain that they have absolutely no way of getting any EU companies listed in the search engine at all.
This is the EU's method of paying for their massive social spending. Every few years they pick a successful American company and file bogus "anti-trust" charges, then extort billions from them. They all need to just tell the EU to go fuck themselves and pull out - and make a very public announcement as to WHY they're leaving. After the people actually living there find out that they'll no longer have Amazon / eBay / Windows / Xbox / Android / etc, they'll be pretty pissed at the greedy politicians who drove those companies out.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Step 1: Offer a compelling product.
Step 2: Offer it in a cheaper *and* more open way that the competition.
Step 3: Repeat step 2 over and over while network effects kick in. As trust and network effects continue to escalate, you become the "default choice".
Step 4: Only go here when you want to be evil. Stop offering such a good price. Don't be as open as you used to be. Structure your prices around keeping competition out rather than simply being "better". Hire lobbyists and start offering regulatory officials vacations in order to provide "an environment conducive to product education".
Google is now just sticking its toe in the water for Step 4. Microsoft charged into Step 4 as early as they could.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
" When a single search engine has 90% of all traffic, whether your business shows up in its search results or not, and if it does, then how high relative to its competitors, can easily become the single biggest determinant of your success. If such placement is not fair (whatever that means), there is an issue."
So Europeans need to be forced to use Bing and Yahoo.
What it comes down to is Google provided too good of a service.
Simple truth is that I almost never use Google to find a product to buy. It does not have the best product search by far.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Umm.. No they didn't/
You can not pay to be placed in search results on Google. You can pay to have your ads show up in the ad space to the right and at the top marked as an ad.
Try it and Google iPhone.
First you will see an ad and then the results. The ad will have an icon marking it as an add and then you will see results below that.
Or try Art by Lori Ramatar and you will see no ads.
I know the artists and she does not pay for any ads on Google.
So no. You are wrong.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
So Europeans need to be forced to use Bing and Yahoo.
No, but Google needs to be forced to not abuse its position of dominance.
You could certainly buy a "computer" without Windows. Just like you can now --- except now it's easier.
IE could always be uninstalled, you just couldn't do it the "easy" way via Windows "Uninstall Programs".
You could also customize your Windows Install - since 98 all the way through to Win 8.1 and choose NOT to install IE. Although it required some effort and work, and if you so chose to not install IE, it was still recommended that you keep MSHTML among a few other pieces. Otherwise you would wind up with internal renderings that wouldn't work, and would be unable to read help files. Now if you didn't care about those internal renderings, then you could install a standalone help-file reader, CHM-reader. That would also bring quirks and issues, as the reader from sourceforge didn't really work as well.
Making a bunch of bullshit statements doesn't make them true.
The EU press release (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-4782_en.htm) mentions it received two complaints regarding Google and Android.
I wonder who might have initiated them (maybe Apple and Microsoft?).
The allegations revolve around the infamous agreement manufacturers have to sign if they want to include any Google apps in their Android devices (including the Play store, Gmail, Youtube, etc...). If you don't know it states that if you want to include any of Google's apps you must include a certain group of them (it was around 15 I think). It also states that you shall not develop any Android forks.
I do agree this agreement is abuse of power and I'd really like it if this resulted in we being able to uninstall (without rooting or other trickery) Google apps from Android devices, even if it means I have to pay some money to Google for the base OS.
Exactly how are they abusing their dominant position?
They do control default search on Android but you can put any search engine and or browser on Android unlike ios.
Also Apple and Microsoft do not use Google as the default search engine so the mobile market is not dominated by Android.
On the Desktop the default search engine on the default browser on the most popular OS is Bing.
It is so easy to change search engines that the end user lock in is just not a problem.
Google does not offer pay for search placement. If you google search engine Bing the top result.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Exactly how are they abusing their dominant position?
I don't know, you'll have to ask the EU commission about that. TFA says that they have found "potential bias in Google’s search results, ..., agreements with advertisers that may exclude rival search-advertising services, and contracts that limit marketers from using other platforms". I assume the details are in their report.
It is so easy to change search engines that the end user lock in is just not a problem.
It doesn't matter how easy it is or not if people aren't doing it, and Google is taking advantage of that. You can achieve a position of market dominance entirely by fair means - by being better than all your competitors - but once you do that, regardless of how it happens, you have to play by some special rules to prevent that dominance from infringing on freedom of competition in other areas.
A quote out of context? Seriously?
"At the time of its Anti-Trust case, Microsoft was effectively a monopoly on all PCs, and was acting like a monopolist dickwad"
You left out the "acting like a monopolistic dickwad" and the went on two paragraph rant about how I missed that point. How very Microsoft of you.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
"Their customers are advertisers, who cannot choose someone else to advertise with because google will not show them on search if they do. Or will artificially drop their rank."
So are you saying that if someone advertises with Google and Bing, that Google will drop them simply because they use Bing? Or are you complaining because search engine results are provided based on advertising dollars?
For Google, I'm not sure either is true - Google claims advertisers are given space around the search results, but the search results themselves get taylored to the searcher, not advertisers. Maybe Google is lying here, but at the moment that seems more speculative and cynical than factual. But simply giving advertisers better results still isn't illegal, and both Bing and Yahoo admit to the practice.
Maybe the EU has hard evidence on how Google rigs results for advertiser that exclusively use Google, but one would figure if the proof exists it would be rather big news already. Or at least it would be big news on Bing and Yahoo.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
But then, (democratic) countries are the commonal property of their citizens, whose interests are represented by the Government.
Several problem with this. First, the claim to communal ownership of the entire country is extremely suspect. Was it homesteaded from unowned land or purchased? If purchased, did the seller have the right to it? Governments generally move in to a country by conquest, i.e. theft on a grand scale. They don't homestead the land they rule, or purchase it from the rightful owners (though sometimes they do purchase territory from another government). Second, unlike shareholders in a company, citizens can't cash out if they happen to disagree with the direction taken by the board of directors. Citizenship is non-transferable, and even abandoning it is very heavily penalized. Citizens are opted-in involuntarily at birth and aren't allowed to opt out in any practical sense—being forced to give up everything you've earned, move to another country, and never see your family again doesn't count. (And even then the U.S. will try to keep claiming you owe taxes.)
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Many cities have had problems with E. Coli contamination in their water supplies during flooding in the spring, and many farm districts have had water contamination as larger agribusinesses are careless with runoff water from larger fertilized croplands, and large grazing areas. It's a serious problem for low-rent districts near large, high yield farms that become careless when reducing costs and seeking higher profits. Areas that experience hurricans fairly frequently, such as Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, and others have had problems after destructive hurricanes.
The general availability of high quality drinking water is not a given, especially if you're poor.
First, I'm not blindly exonerating Google. Google isn't a monopoly. That is not an exoneration, that is a fact.
As far as this "like" of Google you claim I have - you are full of shit. For instance, I don't like Google's data collection tactics, and I use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine. You are spouting off without knowing what the fuck you are talking about.
Second, the article you linked to is not excellent, it is complete bullshit. The author starts off saying that Google has been crappy for the Internet. A hardly a reasonable position, but its nice of him to start off telling us he is an irrational Google hater. The claim that the US courts don't look at how companies treat competitors in Anti-Trust is complete nonsense. And is it vertical or verticals? I don't think the author knows. His explanation of what Google has done to deserve the EU investigation is opaque - so Google is controlling verticals to punish companies that are spamming? It makes no fucking sense.
If this is why the EU is going after Google, then it is sad. It would be nice if governments tried to better regulate what Google does with the data it collects, but this EU Anti-Trust nonsense is none of that. It is just a thuggish shakedown by a government.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
BTW the issues seems to be the shop google links to the right of the search results...
In other words a tempest in a teapot.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I'm not saying that what they're doing is wrong. I'm saying that, if EU commission findings are correct, then regulating them is the proper course of action (as opposed to "free market will just sort it out").
Is it me or is Europe anti success oriented? They sued Microsoft because they put in Internet Exploder in the OS. Crazy Europeans. There are other search engines out there. Use another one if you want really.
Paul E. Bahre
You did say this.
"No, but Google needs to be forced to not abuse its position of dominance."
If google is not abusing it does not need to be forced to do anything.
I am a big fan of antitrust but frankly It does not seem to be used with real monopolies very often.
I am questioning if Google is abusing or is in a position of dominance. A large market share is not a monopoly position.
The questions on the use of Android are really silly since IOS, WP, and others are more locked down.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Yes - and this was based on the assumption that EU commission conclusions were valid. Seeing how they were valid in the past (in e.g. the Microsoft case), it's a reasonable assumption. If not, then that's what we should be discussing.
Note that the guy to whom I initially replied didn't dispute that at all, he just said that they should be able to do whatever the hell they want because it's their product. That was the point I was addressing.
I am questioning if Google is abusing or is in a position of dominance. A large market share is not a monopoly position.
The allegations are that Google is abusing its position in one market (search) to give itself an advantage in other markets, specifically online Shopping, by promoting sites on its own Google Shopping platform over other sites, and doing so without indicating to the consumer that Google has an interest in those sites. So, Google has a financial interest in people buying from certain retailers and is using its search engine to push consumers toward those retailers without disclosing that interest. This is giving Google Shopping a significant advantage over competitors, not because it has earned that advantage, but because Google Search has a 90% share of that market. This is, arguably, anti-competitive, even without a 100% monopoly position.
If this goes to court the EU would have to show that all of the above is true.
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JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
"e Shopping, by promoting sites on its own Google Shopping platform over other sites, and doing so without indicating to the consumer that Google has an interest in those sites."
I googled iPhone.
On the right hand side, outside of search results, I see "Shop for iPhone on Google" and it has a sponsored marker on it! Did I mention that it was in a box on the right hand side as well?
Really? Just how is that not indicating to the consumer?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It actually had a huge impact in firefox adoption (Opera never really had a chance, it was too unique for a lot of people) because new copies of windows gave people a choice of their default browser.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Thats a trickier one. The reason Microsoft was held to be anti-competitive was because by tying it to windows , it *leveraged* windows near monopoly to artificially create a an IE monopoly over Netscape Navigator. Chromes desktop dominance seems to be based on consumer preference which is perfectly legal.
Now as to mobile phones, THAT is a completely different kettle of fish and one that might just get it in hot water.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.