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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"
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.
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.
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.
They're at 65% market share, with Bing at 20% and Yahoo not far behind. That's not a monopoly.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.