Microsoft's Role As Accuser In the Antitrust Suit Against Google

HughPickens.com writes Danny Hakim reports at the NYT that as European antitrust regulators formally accuse Google of abusing its dominance, Microsoft is relishing playing a behind-the-scenes role of scold instead of victim. Microsoft has founded or funded a cottage industry of splinter groups to go after Google. The most prominent, the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, or Icomp, has waged a relentless public relations campaign promoting grievances against Google. It conducted a study that suggested changes made by Google to appease regulators were largely window dressing. "Microsoft is doing its best to create problems for Google," says Manfred Weber, the chairman of the European People's Party, the center-right party that is the largest voting bloc in the European Parliament. "It's interesting. Ten years ago Microsoft was a big and strong company. Now they are the underdog."

According to Hakim, Microsoft and Google are the Cain and Abel of American technology, locked in the kind of struggle that often takes place when a new giant threatens an older one. Microsoft was frustrated after American regulators at the Federal Trade Commission didn't act on a similar antitrust investigation against Google in 2013, calling it a "missed opportunity." It has taken the fight to the state level, along with a number of other opponents of Google. Microsoft alleges that Google's anti-competitive practices include stopping Bing from indexing content on Google-owned YouTube; blocking Microsoft Windows smartphones from "operating properly" with YouTube; blocking access to content owned by book publishers; and limiting the flow of ad campaign information back to advertisers, making it more expensive to run ads with rivals. "Over the past year, a growing number of advertisers, publishers, and consumers have expressed to us their concerns about the search market in Europe," says Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel. "They've urged us to share our knowledge of the search market with competition officials."

Comments

Perhaps not lost on the editor...

[pushing-robot]

Fact of the day: "Satan" is the Hebrew word for "accuser".

Re:Perhaps not lost on the editor...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fact of the day: "Satan" is the Hebrew word for "accuser"."

Satan is Hebrew for "adversary," not accuser. I think you're mixing up Lucifers original role for God, which was basically going around poking and making sure people weren't just giving lip service to their face. The dude had a serious hardon for Jehovah, and hated pretenders -- it's part of where the whole "lightbringer" name came from. The whole story of Job in older interpretations is him acting in that capacity.

The whole Satan as the devil thing seems to have gotten really mixed up in later generations, amongst a gazillion other things, in the same way jihad is now becoming only seen as a holy war against infidels. At the same, your adversary could be any challenge you faced, even internally, the same with jihad -- your spiritual war with challenges of character or external forces. People would even (and are) named Jihad, in the same way westerners might name a child Hope or Peace.

As a side note: I'm always amazed some of Google's adsense stuff doesn't get more press response. I turned my head on them when people were losing accounts because they used adsense on their sites, and tried out bing on a few pages, which you aren't allowed to do in order to see what works best.

there's a strange bias on slashdot

[circletimessquare]

microsoft is eternal evil , it always does wrong, and google is eternal good, it can never do wrong

this might have made sense 15 years ago, but google has immense power ripe for abuse

google needs to be reigned in and bought to heel on issues where it's power is too complete

i'm glad someone is doing it. i don't really care if microsoft is along for the ride or not, and it doesn't really matter

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

So here is my take on the EU and Google battle and every American should be outraged.

The EU has found the deep financial pockets of our American Tech companies located in Silicon Valley California and they want a piece of that financial pie. There must be at least a few people in the EU government who believe that excellence must be eliminated at all costs. How dare these Americans work hard and become successful. Don't they know that the government is suppose to control everything.

The EU has already siphoned off billions of dollars in fines that should have been used by American companies to create jobs, develop new technology and further their business models. Like one analysis said: "Google must follow the rules and do business the way business is done in each area of the globe". To that I say bull. Its my understand and by the EU's own admission, Google has not violated the law. This has nothing to do with the legal requirements or any specific violation of the law.Its about the EU needing the money and it knows where to go get some. And they are going to go get some from "we the people" of the United States of America.

This constant EU siphoning off of money earned by American companies is going to end up really hurting European and U.S. relations mark my words. Once the American people realized that they are becoming unemployed and living on government handouts so someone in the EU can have free health care; watch attitudes change. This is a direct frontal attack on American business and the employees of those companies. There must be someone out there that realizes that at least a few hundred of the recent Microsoft layoffs were because of the EU fines. After all, a couple of billion dollars pays lots of salaries don't you think? And I will bet you a good steak dinner WHEN Google gets finished paying their fines; they will also be laying off a few hundred of their workers unless I am unaware of some new magical way to pay salaries.

Maybe its time for the United States to go after a few EU companies doing business in our country. We can certainly use the same principle of - we don't like the way you do business. Forget the law. That would be fair don't you think? Maybe its time for the U.S. to stop paying for the defense of the EU? Maybe it time we stop spilling American blood to pay for someone's socialists government. Maybe its time to begin lobbying our American government to implement trade sanctions until we can recover what our American companies have paid in fines because someone doesn't like the way we do business. That's fair don't you think?

Or do you just want to roll over like a bunch of sheep and turn your back on these creative tech companies like Microsoft, Google and others who provide thousands and thousands of jobs. Maybe no one cares and we will all just end up working at a Walmart for $12/hour. That's also fair don't you think?

Its my hope that this EU trend of penalizing American business is quickly eliminated. There are significant cultural differences between many of the EU countries and the US. To the average American this is a PERSONAL attack against "we the people", their families and the jobs these companies provide. It is highly unlikely that the American people will stand by and do nothing while their jobs are being eliminated. The EU may view their action as against a giant corporation. To each American it is far more personal than that, its their job and food for their families.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[msobkow]

Meh. With any large organization, there will always be those who bleat and whine about the "potential" for abuse, and cry that they're not getting their "fair" share of the market because their product(s) just flat out aren't good enough to earn it.

Don't get me wrong: I don't buy the "don't be evil" mantra, but I don't see Google actually doing anything wrong.

And it's kind of laughable that Microsoft is resorting to whinging about the situation given how shitty the results Bing produces are. I've tried it. Many times. They rarely, if ever, produce results that are even vaguely related to what I'm searching for. They don't have market share because THEY SUCK.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a really simple equation here. If you want to do business in a country or a region, you follow their laws. Or you pay their penalties. Google can easily afford some of the most skillful corporate lawyers available in the event they are falsely accused of breaking a law.

Portraying a huge multinational corporation as the victim is just plain ridiculous. This isn't some big bully picking on a little guy who can't defend themselves. By pretending that it is, you present three possibilities: 1) you're extremely naive and ignorant, 2) you have bought into some PR/propaganda (likely the finest money can buy, no doubt), or 3) you have a vested interest of some kind in making Google look good, whether you're receiving money from them or you're simply a fanboy.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[whoever57]

They rarely, if ever, produce results that are even vaguely related to what I'm searching for. They don't have market share because THEY SUCK.

Exactly. I find that Google produces better results for searches relating to Microsoft products.

Some time back when Microsoft was advertising their website the showed Google results side-by-side with Bing (with the intent that Bing would give more useful results), I tried the side-by-side website and the Bing side did not even load.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[circletimessquare]

the eu can do whatever the fuck it wants

in the eu

frankly, i admire a society that brings corporations to heel

rather than the sick pathetic american society where corporations buy the government, corrupt it, and then propagandized morons think that's actually ok. as the middle class shrinks more and they work harder for less. the morons think that's "capitalism". no it isn't, it's cronyism. healthy capitalism is a strictly regulated market, not the biggest players in the market buying the government, regulatory capture, and then abusing smaller players and consumers

i really don't know why there are so many americans so eager to suck plutocrat cock

exactly as they are robbed and raped by them. and think it's the governments fault. because the corporation controlled media channels tell them that. when it's the corporations corrupting their government

fucking morons

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[circletimessquare]

there doesn't even have to be any malice

abuse can happen simply as a function of market dynamics where one player is so suffocatingly dominant

the eu might want to make some corrections to that

it's their right. and they have a plausible case

yes, microsoft may have some obsessive grievances about google's dominance and might be cheer leading

and?

the real story here is microsoft just doesn't fucking matter. it's yahoo or aol. a geriatric has been puttering along to mediocrity and obsolescence

wang computer. sony. ibm. microsoft

middle age and elderly

oh they'll eke out a respectable slow fade for a long time. they should try to fade away with some dignity i suppose

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[93 Escort Wagon]

Huh. So what flavor is that Koolaid?

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it comes off as politically motivated, with vague laws that might or might not be broken, applied almost entirely to foreign corporation. It comes off as an alternate form of protectionism.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[NicBenjamin]

Frankly I can't figure out Microsoft's long game on this.

They're alleging that google is breaking EU rules by a) being really big, and b) relying on revenue from sponsored results. If it works this will drive google out of Europe, but it won't help Microsoft because then Bing will become the number one European search engine and 100% of Bing's revenue (which also comes from sponsored results) will be illegal. Pardon me, there's Yahoo, but Yahoo and Bing have an alliance running their sponsored ads through Microsoft.

I suspect they're going for some weird side-deal from google (ie: let us have a Youtube app), but that doesn't seem like a very smart strategy. Google is not the kind of company that gives up to this kind of BS until it really has to, and by the time it really has to it'll be too late.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[NicBenjamin]

The alliance's website is:
http://advertise.bingads.micro...

I tried to link in-post, but apparently my HTML skills are rusty.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[storkus]

Oh, please, pot meet kettle:

Google has only been acting really evil in the last few years; for M$, Oracle, and many other companies, doing evil is corporate policy and they have *NEVER* STOPPED being evil. To put it another way, Oracle is the Monsanto of software, M$ is the DuPont of software, and Google is more like factory farms, doing both good and evil at the same time. (I freely admit the Google comparison is weak--please feel free to come up with a better one.)

I have no problem with Google being investigated, but they should go after M$ as well, especially with what they did to Nokia, Linux, and Android; fat chance that'll happen, though.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[NicBenjamin]

Pick the hill you want to die on.

In 1900 Latin American was richer per capita then most of Europe. They are no longer richer then most of Europe primarily because most of the region periodically insists on throwing the foreign corporations out. Then after the economy collapses they they are forced to invite the foreigners back in under ridiculously generous terms. Many of the countries (especially the Central American ones and Argentina) have yet to figure out that if you let the foreign companies in under reasonable terms once, things go so much better in the long-term.

Like it or not you don't get a growing economy without large corporations. You clearly have to regulate the shit out of those corporations, but you also have to let them make their 3%-10% profit margin every year or they go away and instead of having a bunch of investment and new jobs you get to be Argentina. In this case google makes money by sponsored results. no sponsored results, means google goes away. Since there are no alternative models for funding a search engine on normal computers (as opposed to Phones, where Apple and co. make enough on the hardware to fund Siri); the EU winning this case means that it will be very difficult to run a search engine in Europe. That's not a smart hill for the EU to die on.

The difficulty google has given Microsoft in getting apps onto Android, OTOH, is a smart one. Google and Android will survive fine if Microsoft has the right to sell it's services on those devices.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[Solandri]

microsoft is eternal evil , it always does wrong, and google is eternal good, it can never do wrong

this might have made sense 15 years ago, but google has immense power ripe for abuse

While I agree Google has immense power ripe for abuse, they are nothing like Microsoft was. If Microsoft in the 1990s were behaving like Google is today:

• They would've released Windows as open source. If you wanted to roll your own version of Windows that competed with Microsoft, you could. The only restriction would've been that Office would only run on Microsoft's version of Windows.
• Windows would be free. So would Office. They'd make money by charging Windows program developers, and selling information to marketers about how Windows and Office were being used.
• When you first tried to run a web browser, it would list every web browser in existence in order of popularity for you to choose. Internet Explorer may or may not have been placed near the top of that list regardless of its true popularity.
• Same for every Windows program made by Microsoft. Office, Publisher, etc.
• If you had your data in the format for Microsoft programs, and decided to switch to a competitor, you could use the Microsoft-provided tools to convert your data into a generic format which could easily be imported into the 3rd party app.
• They would've made subtle changes to Windows to make sure DR-DOS couldn't run it, like Google is making it hard for Bing to index YouTube. Oh wait, Microsoft did do that.
• When an internal audit revealed that they had accidentally collected user information beyond what their user agreement allowed, they would've reported themselves to the regulatory agencies for the privaacy violation.

Maybe you weren't using computers back when Microsoft was pulling their shenanigans in the 1990s. Those of us who were see Google as good because despite a few problems here and there, they've been behaving a helluva lot better than just about any predecessor who was in similar positions of market power.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[Shakrai]

Heaven's Gate didn't commit suicide with poisoned beverages, they used phenobarbital, vodka, and plastic bags. You're thinking of the Jonestown cult.

Re: there's a strange bias on slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Google decided to structure themselves legally as a non-American company...
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/to-reduce-its-tax-burden-google-expands-use-of-the-double-irish/

Google's IP is owned by a Bermuda company. It is licensed by Irish and Dutch companies. They're pretty European and very much in the domain of EU investigators.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[circletimessquare]

In 1900 Latin American was richer per capita then most of Europe. They are no longer richer then most of Europe primarily because most of the region periodically insists on throwing the foreign corporations out.

i stopped reading there. that's not history. that's not a remotely accurate or true statement. i don't know if you think you are a clever liar or if you mindlessly believe some ignorant crap shoveled at you, but you can't present a coherent and credible argument by saying such dumb shit. your words serve as a pretty good example of the kind of feeble ignorance some low iq types depend upon to defend the moronic pap they believe in

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[ArmoredDragon]

healthy capitalism is a strictly regulated market

I disagree, I think healthy capitalism is where the competition is so strong that regulations aren't needed. When the forces of supply and demand (aka free markets) regulate the market, things have a way of turning out much better.

For an example, look at the net neutrality situation. Sure, the government can regulate that Comcast be fair when it comes to peering disputes, they might even be able to one day regulate Comcasts prices, but one thing they'll never be able to regulate is the fact that Comcast are total assholes to their customers. Comcast will always be assholes unless they have a competitor taking customers away.

I remember how during the 80's, the local phone companies had really asshole policies (Need to reconnect a phone line after you suspended it because you were leaving the country for 6 months? That'll be $300 please, or $700 in 2015 dollars) and they were HEAVILY regulated, both in terms of price and service. It wasn't until just about everybody could finally offer phone service that adding a new phone line became dirt cheap, and long distance became basically free.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[linearZ]

Microsoft didn't do anything to Nokia, Nokia did it to themselves. Microsoft was just being the vulture it is.

Google shouldn't be investigated for its business practices with regards to competitors, unless all companies are investigated. Google acts no differently than any other large company.

Google should absolutely be investigated for the way it collects and manages user data. But that really isn't a monopolistic practice as much as it is an ethical issue.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[linearZ]

Have you used Windows 8? Microsoft is eternal evil.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[walshy007]

Couldn't agree more.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[SuricouRaven]

That approach runs into escalation problems. If the US starts using the legal system as a tool to surpress European companies and milk them for fines, the EU will respond in kind - and you end up with both sides suffering. It's a reason there are international treaties intended to hinder protectionism. Not that this has done anything to stop Russia or China from using the strategy.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[SuricouRaven]

And Surface (non-pro) tablets would initially be restricted to only running Microsoft-approved software from their store, but would have a trivial option you could change to remove this restriction without having to resort to dangerous hackery.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[moronoxyd]

Maybe its time for the United States to go after a few EU companies doing business in our country. We can
certainly use the same principle of - we don't like the way you do business. Forget the law.

Except there are laws that Intel, Microsoft and (potentially) Google have broken.

And what people like you love to ignore (or, more probably, don't know, as it doesn't involve Americans): The EU judges European companies by the same standard. A few years back Gaz du France and German E.On where found to break anti-competition laws and had to pay high fines. And there are many other cases not involving American companies.

The problem is NOT that the EU is going against American companies, but that American companies sometimes don't understand that in Europe they have to play by European laws, not by the lawlessness that's the American reality.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[YukariHirai]

microsoft is eternal evil , it always does wrong, and google is eternal good, it can never do wrong

this might have made sense 15 years ago, but google has immense power ripe for abuse

You're right, things have changed in 15 years. But just because Google is now evil, doesn't mean that Microsoft suddenly isn't. Which of the two is more evil is a matter of debate, but I still cannot see Microsoft as good.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare these Americans work hard and become successful.

Criminals also think of what they do as working hard - their "work" just happens to be illegal.

It must be hard to understand that if you do business in the EU, you obey the law or otherwise you're punished. European companies don't seem to understand it either, considering that e.g. Deutsche Bank and Société Générale were fined 1.7 billion. A certain car-tel (pardon the pun) also hasn't understood it because they're facing a 4.5 billion fine and it's as if the EU wanted to punish European truck makers exclusively (Daimler, Volvo, Volkswagen's MAN and Iveco) to the benefit of all non-European ones. Or could it perhaps be consistent law enforcement of laws which benefit the people who ultimately grant corporations the legal privileges under which they operate?

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[tnk1]

8 is annoying, but it's basically 7 with some stupid shit added in. I use Windows 8.1 every day and aside from the Start screen, it's not really all that much different. Yes, you do have to make sure you don't have any of those stupid Metro apps opening up, but that's about it. There are even one or two improvements over Windows 7, although nothing huge.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[tnk1]

Microsoft ISN'T good. And it isn't pretending to be, really. It's just turning around the monopoly stuff used on them and pointing it Google. It's corporate tactics, nothing more, nothing less.

Google isn't a horrible company, but it is definitely in a position where I expected it to be at this point. No longer the Messiah, it is just trying to adeptly make money for their shareholders while still doing a few interesting things. If they can make some of their interesting things stick, I'm good with that, but we know they're going to keep playing hardball with search, because ultimately, that's still where Google makes all its money, and that's what it needs to protect.

Re: there's a strange bias on slashdot

[AvitarX]

Also, they mention the shopping aggrigator, and the flight listing. Google's flight search is so far superior to any other site, that I don't even cross check prices. I'm very happy they popped that up randomly one time for me.

When I see their shopping search I see plenty of sites. I went to Google to use Google. I don't want to see another companies flight results, or shopping results.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[allcoolnameswheretak]

You realize that the U.S. also fines and sanctions many European companies for misconduct or anti-trust settlements? For some reason when this happens it usually doesn't make news on Slashdot.

Also, it's a little ironic that you as a citizen are so eager to defend those companies that set up their financial HQ in some foreign tax haven so they have to pay next to nothing in taxes in the U.S., giving nothing back to society.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[TheRaven64]

The EU also fines more EU companies than US ones, but those tend not to make the news in the US either. Actually, most of them don't make the news anywhere, it's only when it's a household name that it is considered newsworthy at all, and when it's a household name that's considered American then it becomes more newsworthy in the US press because they can run with the tired old 'EU picking on US companies and jealous of their success' narrative rather than bothering with any real journalism.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[TheRaven64]

I switched to DuckDuckGo a while ago. I periodically check Bing and Google (adding !bing or !google to the DDG search line will send you to either) if I don't find results that I want. On one occasion in the last year, I've found a useful result on Bing that I didn't get with DDG or Google. The last time I had anything useful from Google was about 18 months ago. Note that Google and Bing may be fine for most searches - I only try either if I don't quickly find what I'm looking for on DDG. I had one fairly obscure search a couple of days ago (FPGA synthesis problem) where DDG only returned six results (one of which was helpful), so I tried the others to see if there was something more useful. Google gave 10 completely irrelevant results (pages that didn't even include my search term), Bing returned no results at all.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[TheRaven64]

Sucking at HCI doesn't make you evil (if it did, a lot of open source projects would be evil too). Though given their network settings UI, I can't help wondering if there's a little bit of malice in there...

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree, I think healthy capitalism is where the competition is so strong that regulations aren't needed. When the forces of supply and demand (aka free markets) regulate the market, things have a way of turning out much better.

That happens only as long as there are many players, all small. But some will do better than others, and grow. And you eventually get a monopoly. remeber that "antitrust law" is one of those regulations. Without it, you get a monopoly in someting - such as "standard oil". When something like that isn't broken up, they will diversify and monopolize more sectors - until they eventually own all business there is. Nobody will be able to compete, because the growing behemot will have the power to undercut any competition. (Regulations that currently prevent someone from spending profits in one sector on dumping prices in another sector prevents this today - but you want no regulation of the market.)

Once someone gets big in a completely unregulated market, they have so many ways of squashing competition. Want to compete with McDonalds? Possible today - not possible if all the farms & food producers are owned by the same entity - who simply sells to McDonalds only. Not possible if everybody in the area work for the same behemot, and their work contracts specify that they eat at company-owned restaurants when they eat out.

You will probably not be able to operate a competing gas station from land owned by Shell. They simply won't lease it to you for that purpose. Imagine the situation when one company owns the entire town - and no regulation. They will only allow businesses not in competition with themselves. And when they move into another sector, they crank up the rent for competitors. They become unpofitable - and is then bought with their own rent money.

Similarly, consider banks part of such a scheme - no more loans for anyone competing with 'the company'. No bank business at all, in fact. Try running a business without a bank connection. Try running a business when they buy land all around and disconnect you from the road system.

Completely unregulated capitalism is not done anywhere - for very good reasons. All existing regulations happened to counter blatant abuses. Abuses that may seem unthinkable now, but that happen again as soon as something is 'deregulated.'

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[sosume]

Perhaps, if the companies were to pay their fair amount of tax, the EU wouldn't be chasing them for their money. instead these tech companies choose to employ the most drastic of measures to prevent paying up. I'm not surprised the EU takes drastic measures as well to recover these losses.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[NicBenjamin]

Apparently you don't know much actual history. In 1900 Latin America was much wealthier per capita then much of Europe. Chile for example, was 16th on this list beating Norway. Argentina was particularly wealthy because in 1900 they all ate meat, and since most of the world hadn't industrialized eating meat made them one of the wealthier states in the world.

According to the University of Gronigen in 1900 Chile, Columbia, Argentina, and Venezuela were all above $2k per capita. Nobody in Eastern Europe was at $2k. In the West Finland, those poor Norwegians, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy were all well below $2k. The total regional income (which is biased towards low numbers because there are a lot of poor states in the Caribbean and Central America) of $1.1-$1.2k is above Yugoslavia and Albania, and comparable to the Bulgarians, Greeks and Portuguese.

So yes, the numbers indicate that in 1900 Latin America was richer per capita then much of Europe.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[houghi]

The fact that they are not as bad as others does not mean they are not a monoipoly and should be stopped being one.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[swb]

I think strange, convulsive, politics could be a major component of this. Argentina in particular could have been on par with Western Europe if it wasn't for the poltiical insanity from the 1950s onward.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[thegarbz]

Monopolies are not inherently bad, they just need to be regulated. Monopolies exist in every market and every country around the world both on the local level and the global level. The only time you need to worry is if there's an abuse of disproportionate market power.

Typically the resulting regulation sits on price as a monopoly is likely to drive that up. The second monopoly is on anti-competitive practices against competitors. Given how much I pay Google to use their services I don't really see a problem (yet).

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[silentcoder]

Trying to smuggly correct "everybody else" for groupthink - and getting the most basic facts wrong.
This is irony.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[ilguido]

google needs to be reigned in and bought to heel on issues where it's power is too complete

i'm glad someone is doing it. i don't really care if microsoft is along for the ride or not, and it doesn't really matter

The big flaw of your idea is the same that tricked the US to act in Iraq the second time: thinking that fighting something evil is good per se. It is not.
You're basically hoping not just that the evil of Google is diminished, but also that the far worse evil of Microsoft is strengthened. Microsoft is not fighting Google just because, their aim is a stronger Microsoft and I don't think there's a need for that.
If the end result would be a less evil Google, an equally evil Microsoft and a third party rising from obscurity, you'd be right, but that's absolutely not what it is shaping up here.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[John.Banister]

I have it on good authority that a monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. Google does not have a monopoly. Title Seven, Article 102 of the Lisbon Treaty addresses "a dominant position within the internal market or in a substantial part of it." A company doesn't have to have a monopoly to be subject to special extra regulation by the EU, just the largest percentage of market share.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[cavreader]

The US does not have to go after any EU based companies looking to give them a hard time all it has to do is create a more favorable business climate to encourage those companies to move some of their operations to the US. And that has been happening. Lower energy costs, reduced shipping costs, and far less government regulation will produce far better results than trying to shakedown successful companies with deep pockets which is exactly what the EU has been doing. The EU say they want to provide space for competitors but there are really no viable competitors in the areas they control. They should have addressed their concerns when Google and MS were just starting out but the Europeans were a sleep at the wheel when the IT revolution was happening in the US and have been trying to play catch up ever since.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[DogDude]

Competing with other companies is not what I, or most people would describe as "Evil", so quit with the hyperbole.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[DogDude]

Oh, my lord! The shenanigans! They provided their web browser as a default with their OS! Lord, I feel like I'm getting the vapors!

Drama queen.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[GuB-42]

So, where can I download my own, Open Source, copy of Google's search algorithms and databases? Or of their other moneymakers? G-Mail? Google Apps? Google only opensources stuff they don't really need.

Google uses open source software the way is should be used by companies.
The point of open source is not charity. For FOSS to work, it needs commercial players, and you won't make money just by giving away stuff. Open sourcing must be profitable somehow.
So obviously, you won't open source your moneymakers in a way that can help your competitors. Opensourcing Chrome, Android or a few libraries, however, makes a lot of sense. These products only serve to support their moneymakers, Google doesn't intend to profit on them directly. As a result, they lose very little by opensourcing and they gain reputation and potential help from other developers. It's a win-win situation.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[circletimessquare]

did the person who voted the lying moron up hover over his links?

the first is an unrelated bing advertisement come on and the second is an xls that no one security aware is going to click on

here are the real facts:

http://www.nationmaster.com/co...

great time to be a kiwi

then there is this assertion:

"They are no longer richer then most of Europe primarily because most of the region periodically insists on throwing the foreign corporations out."

any serious economist or historian would assert a couple dozen reasons for latin america's problems, nevermind the fact that the temper tantrums of venezuela over the past few decades is not germaine to 1900 nor can it be extrapolated to a dozen other countries, which is where this "fact" about "throwing foreign corporations out" seems to come from, some propaganda addled mind

this guy comes across as an alex jones HURR DURR blowhard spouting low iq "facts" and he gets modded up?

this guy is a moron, a liar, and a troll. and someone modded him up because he provided "links"

i can do the same

here is my link proving that fusion power has been blocked by the illuminati in the year 1970

fact!

pfffft

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[circletimessquare]

all markets degenerate into monopolies and oligopolies naturally. all of them

unless they are regulated, they stay that way. smaller competitors are unfairly treated (just undercut prices until the upstart goes bankrupt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... one of a thousand ways to abuse a market unfairly with no competition) and consumers are gouged

of course, there are corrupt regulations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

so the point is to remove the corruption

remove the regulations and what you have is far worse

the statement

I think healthy capitalism is where the competition is so strong that regulations aren't needed

is a religious belief (free market fundamentalism?)

there is zero evidence in reality for your statement

in fact, simple economic history proves the opposite

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[farble1670]

that does not correctly paint the picture.

it's simple undercutting strategy. no matter how favorable an environment for business nation A provides, there's always a nation B that will undercut them. not because nation A is unfairly taxing business, and not because it's economically viable for nation B in the long run, but to get business to move their and then raise taxes to a point where they can break even in the long run. once businesses are entrenched, they are less likely to leave. and if you don't offer the carrot, they'll never come in the first place.

relative to other western nations, overall the US is extremely favorable to business, to the detriment of it's citizens in many cases.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[LordLimecat]

My "bias" comes from history. Google has continually been the most open, the quickest to admit fault, and the least likely to betray your data to some repressive regime that wants to imprison you.

You can talk of faults till the cows come home, those factors to me are crucially important. When Microsoft actively works with the CPC to hand your skype data over, and Google is blocked in China due to resisting their repressive BS, I sort of stop caring whether Google has closed such and such service or their Android Play services are a binary blob. Theyre a Good Actor, and thats what really matters.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[LordLimecat]

How is Google a monopoly? Have you heard of Baidu, Bing, Yahoo? All get decent shares of the search market. Apple competes with Google quite effectively on many fronts. And you're going to have a really difficult time arguing that the market has significant barriers to entry, especially given the way in which Google broke into that market in the first place.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[LordLimecat]

You forgot the part where Google decided to stop cooperating with repressive regimes in outing dissidents. Still waiting for Microsoft and Yahoo to do the same.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[farble1670]

If it works this will drive google out of Europe, but it won't help Microsoft because then Bing will become the number one European search engine and 100% of Bing's revenue

i suspect microsoft would love to be in their position right now, lawsuit and all.

ironically, the fact that google is being sued like this is a good for them. not directly, but if you are big and powerful and lack competitors, that's a darn good problem to have as a business.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[tbannist]

I don't think you understand as much as you think you do.

For one the post you replied to was about what Microsoft would have done if it had been "as evil" as Google. Re-read it.

On the topic of your other claim, Microst didn't not just provide "their web browser as a default with their OS". That's just part of one of the tricks that they played. They provided Internet Explorer for the sole purpose of preventing and delaying the development of web-based alternatives to Windows and Office. They licensed Internet Explorer (guaranteeing Spyglass a percentage of every copy sold) and provided it for free to cut off Netscape's money supply (screwing Spyglass over as well in the process). Mind you, Netscape wasn't even a competitor of Microsoft's until it made the deal with Spyglass. Microsoft was scared of the power of the Internet and the Web and purposely engaged in a campaign to sabotage the development of software that was operating system independent and subvert the internet, if they could.

They also forced manufacturers to sign deals where if they wanted to be able to sell any computers with Windows on them, they had to agree to ship them with Internet Explorer and only Internet Explorer.

Furthermore, they then tied Internet Explorer into the operating system and spread it's code across other system DLLs so it couldn't be removed easily without breaking Windows. They made it load on boot so it would load faster then competitors, and used undocumented APIs that were faster than the standard ones to give themselves an advantage. When competitors tried to use those same undocumented APIs, Microsoft would introduce changes to sabotage their competitor's products while simultaneously updates for IE that worked around the newly introduced bugs.

However, once Netscape had been destroyed and the threat of "operating system-less software" was gone, Microsoft essentially dropped Internet Explorer into a deep dark hole. They barely touched it for almost 9 years, which just goes to show that it was all about destroying a potential threat to the monopoly. Sure when you say they gave something away for free it doesn't sound bad, but it is actually an anti-competitive practice called flooding the market and it is evil and illegal when you have a dominant position in one market and use that tactic to extend your dominance into another area.

I understand that some people are too short sighted, too stupid, or too libertarian to understand why this was important, but this is just one of many campaigns of reckless destruction that Microsoft has engaged in to protect their cash cows.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[cavreader]

The US has the 3rd highest corporate tax rate in the world. The first two places being held by the economic powerhouses of Chad and the UAE. And while the US does allow corporations to reduce their tax burden using complex tax statues and even more complex accounting practices the fact is that European companies that move some of their operations to the US stand to significantly increase their bottom line operating in the US. The European tax rates, energy costs, excessive regulations, protectionist mindsets, and extravagant employee benefits make it harder for them to compete internationally. Employee benefits are without a doubt an area where most US companies need to make changes but the European alternatives come very close to creating an expanding public dole that rewards people who contribute little in the overall workforce creating a situation where people are more willing to take government handouts than to enter the workforce. The EU's weak immigration safeguards also exasperates the problem. Quality of life for workers is one thing but rewarding those who would rather subsist on government handouts instead of actually working for a living is not a model for success. The EU's investigations into both MS and Google are nothing more than mafia style shakedowns dressed up as anti-competitive investigations and have very little to do with actually providing local competitors with a leg up. There is currently no European competitor for Google and while Linux is a viable alternative and competitor of MS in some areas there is no other desktop centric OS and application stack vendor that could challenge the MS dominance. If you are going to penalize anti-competitive behavior you should at least make sure there are other competitors to begin with. While most people in the world have major complaints about their government leadership leave it to the Europeans to create a whole new layer of bureaucracy that sits on top of their own national governments and then expect corruption and governmental inefficiency to decrease. An extra level of bureaucracy that is even less accountable to those they oversee than their local governments are. Besides a unified currency and open border policies I don't see one damn thing that the EU has provided. They have no unified defense agreements because they still think the US has their back when the reality is far different. Even their unified currency policies are falling apart because a minority of members dominate the economic policies to the detriment of the small countries.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[NicBenjamin]

Or Venezuela. That oil wealth is more then enough to build a real economy where everyone can participate. In theory there was also no reason that Nicaragua of 1870 couldn't invest in public education and railroads (it is the 1870s after all), and end up richer per capita then damn near anyone.

The problem is a whole suite of interlocking problems, but they all center on a) these countries have intricate US-inspireed political systems that are designed to fail miserably in the absence of near unanimity among the people, and b) their total lack of unanimity on any issue. The US works, for exdample, because for everyone involved a functioning system almost exactly like the one we had last week is much preferable to saying "fuck it, let's shut down the government." Thus the life and death struggles over whether the extremely rich should pay a marginal tax rate of 35% or 39.6%.

For an example of how this system can fail catastrophically, check out the recent i>coup d'tat in Honduras. The Old President repeatedly refused to drop plans for a referendum allowing him to run for a third term, even after the Supreme Court ruled that he could not implement such a referendum. More then once. Legally speaking the Senate had every right to fire him, the New President had every right to order the Army to storm the Presidential Palace, and the Old President had every right to call it a coup d'tat. And literally none of that shit could have happened if they'd had a Constitutional set-up similar to India, South Africa, or Canada. They have no term limits law to fight over, Checks and Balances consist almost entirely of the Court System enforcing the Constitution (with possible residual use of the Head of State's power in extreme circumstances), and the Head of Government is always 100% responsible to the Legislature so there's no need for a coup d'tat like maneuver to get rid of him when he pisses off one House or the other.

In this case one of the issues they are extremely divided on is their nation's relationship with the global economy as represented by foreign (generally US) Corporations. It's simply true that if the region had some political consensus on the issue which allowed the corporations to operate in the country under reasonable legal terms earning a reasonable profit the political instability would have been less poisonous for economic growth. And if there's economic growth it's much easier to maintain political stability, because you can do shit like cut taxes and increase public spending at the same time without going into unsustainable deficits.

OTOH, if half the country is convinced that letting US Fruit have a profit margin lower then 20% will reduce them to pecuniary, and the other half is convinced that USD Fruit's profit margin could easily be seized by a High School educated politician and redistributed to make everyone rich, you're gonna have some pretty big fucking problems. And the political system won;t let you paper them over until they go away.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[NicBenjamin]

Goddamn it the Microsoft link was for another post. I really hate having to think in HTML for one goddamn board. The Nationmaster link was actually my first intended link. Which you knew because it's the first thing you found, and I specifically quoted Chile's place on the list. If you were actually worried about the excel file you would have gone to the main site, seen it's a reputable university, and downloaded. Which strongly implies you're the one whose trolling because he knows he's been caught with his facts down. Especially when combined with your insistence on ad hominem.

You are very poorly versed in Latin American history. The reason for most of our interventions in the 30s were attempts to throw the foreign (read: American) corporations out. We didn't put up with that shit back then. A major point of the Communist movements of the 70s and 80s was to get rid of those corporations. If you deal with actual Latin Americans you will quickly find most of them conflate US Foreign Policy with the policies of [insert appropriate corporate overlord] because from 1900 through the 70s that was true. Most of them will say they think this has changed, and the US is highly unlikely to order the local air force to level the Presidential Palace because some corporate overlord gave the word, but they don't seem to believe it in their hearts.

BTW, you've got my politics 100% wrong.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[circletimessquare]

the nationmaster link clearly shows your statement to be a lie

moronic thread over

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[NicBenjamin]

Like every piece of "evidence" you've offered, it only makes sense if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

It has six Latin American countries. Two of them are richer then five of the 12 European countries on the list. There were several dozen countries in both Latin America and Europe during this time period, the European list does not even include the UK (but does include 26-County Ireland, which did not actually exist at the time).

But please tell me I'm stupid because I spent time learning facts about how the world has changed over the past four or five generations, and you're a genius because you can make ridiculous rationalization about how the past was just like today.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[swb]

Argentina really only has its internal politics to blame. Unlike the rest of Latin America, they weren't just a hacienda for United Fruit agricultural exports, they had a large, Eurocentric population (and in the first half of the 20th century, probably a European *educated* population) and a reasonable basis for creating a self-sustaining internal economy neither overdependent nor incapable of exports or imports.

Extractive economies, especially oil states, never seem to use the financial windfall to develop non-oil economies. It's almost always used for dubious modernization efforts (ie, building underutilized skyscraper cities), buying poltiical loyalty, building up an unsustainable and outsized military or subsidizing prices for staple foods, fuel and substandard housing.

All of these probably have convincing arguments -- you can't attract business without modern office space (and bonus, we get to develop a construction sector that can build more than cinderblock and tin shacks), you need political stability to develop an economy, you need military security from your neighbor (plus developing military bases furthers your construction industry goals, making weapons improves your manufacturing base), and making food, fuel and housing available *now* is both popular and a humanist policy.

But they almost never develop sustainable *economies* that do anything else. I can't think of one thing Saudi Arabia does besides sell oil and they have probably taken in a trillion dollars in profit. Given quite literally "more money than God" why haven't they been able to buy their way into pharma, water purification, semiconductors, information technology, polymers, agriculture, shipbuilding, or any other industry that has grown up in the last 75 years? They have been politically stable, have good trade relations with the West and are at the geographic crossroads between the East and West.

Yet all they have to show for it is a bloated aristocracy, ridiculous overbuilt cities, a high tech military they can barely operate let alone fix or make parts for.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[NicBenjamin]

Don't get me wrong. I'll never argue that Argentina isn't uniquely fucked up by it's internal politics. They are self-centred to the point of self-parody (nobody else would propose ending an Arms race by proposing the other side sell them half their Navy), and they started from a remarkably good condition.

But you know who had a worse economic position then most of the world, including all of Latin America, in the early 60s? South Korea. Much of their economy was based on mercenaries they sent to fight the Vietnam War, their leader was maniacal dictator who'd overthrown a democratically elected President, per capita income in '61 was somewhere between $80-$160, etc. And now they're fucking rich because he had turned out to be the right maniacal dictator.

So while I agree that Argentina's results are a warning to all sane people, I also submit that much of the rest of the region is still poor because they refuse to deal with their core problem: that their politics are nearly as screwed up as Argentina's. Google Bolivia's "Day of the Sea" if you want a particularly extreme example of a Latin American country rallying around a quixotic demand for something everyone (including themselves) know they can't really have.

I agree on oil wealth. You get a lot of really rich guys who want to turn their cities into London, a strong military to keep somebody else from grabbing the money, and (if you're lucky) a local civilian population where everybody has multiple advanced degrees in geology and nobody knows how to change a tire. That's what immigrants are for, native citizens are much better off joining the biggest industry in the country, extraction. It works until the oil runs out, and then there's no money to pay the military and no work for several million highly educated geologists.

Re:there's a strange bias on slashdot

[Kartu]

I missed how does M$ "being even more evil" somehow justify Google's evilness?

MS doesn't need Google to

[fred911]

"block Microsoft Windows smartphones from "operating properly" with YouTube" or any other app.

  They did a great job of that all by themselves (not to mention killing off a top shelf hardware producer).

Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[Taco Cowboy]

Remember who was behind SCO on its patent claim against Linux?

M$

Do you know that M$ still has patent claims on Linux and Android?

Do you know that Samsung had to pay M$ to use Android on their smartphone?

Do you know that because of the so-called settlement in between M$ and Samsung on the Android patent thing, Samsung is obliged to use Microsoft's apps on its new smartphones?

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[rtb61]

Now to play the neutral bad guy, at least in both parties eyes. Targeted advertisements, this is what the fight is about, who controls the scam and who makes the most money from it.

Consider this, legal responsibility for targeted adds. Consider you are a type 2 new on the market diabetic and they target you with high sugar content foods, what is their legal liability for purposefully doing and endangering your life, keeping in mind they are either trying to manipulate you into harming yourself or they are claiming advertising does not work.

So who do you blame for obesity, McDonald or the people who promote McDonald and target their ads at people who they also target with dieting ads. They really did open up a whole new can of worms with targeted advertisements, purposefully designed messages to manipulate your choices against your interests to generate income regardless of harm.

Honestly show a sugar rich junk food commercial to a person on record suffering from type 2 diabetes and you should go to jail because you intent is to psychologically manipulate their choices to the point of self harm because GREED.

So M$ or Google, meh, both just as fucking evil as each other. I just preferred the kernel under Android ;).

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[ArmoredDragon]

Honestly show a sugar rich junk food commercial to a person on record suffering from type 2 diabetes and you should go to jail because you intent is to psychologically manipulate their choices to the point of self harm because GREED.

This is going to sound ad-hom, but I'll just be honest: You'd have to be incredibly stupid to believe that. In fact, the people who started that nonsense against McDonalds are incredibly stupid. It isn't greedy to, for example, sell lemonade, which is a very sugary drink that harms diabetics.

In fact, if we're going to start calling it greedy to sell any kind of food that harms any kind of person with any dietary restrictions, then we'll have to ban commercials that advertise the following foods, because in large quantities they cause problems with people who have any kind of kidney disease: (which includes a lot of people, especially diabetics, who often end up with kidney failure)

Legumes
Beans of any kind
Tomatoes
Spinach
Melons of most varieties
Star fruit
Milk
Cheese

In fact while we're at it, let's ban every commercial featuring food that there's a known fatal allergy for, like all varieties of seafood, eggs, all varieties of fruit, and all varieties of wheat, and also all foods containing high amounts of vitamin k because it harms people taking drugs designed to fight thrombosis, so that means most green vegetables are out too.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[darronb]

He's talking about targeted advertising, not traditional advertising.

He's saying that if you have so much information about a person that you know they're diabetic, and actually use that as a factor in deciding to show them stuff that statistically they'll go for even though you know it's proven to be harming them... that should be an actionable offense.

I think there's a better example that's less politicized: It's also like working out someone goes to a gambling support group and intentionally serving them a bunch of ads for casinos in Vegas.

That's way different than just showing ads to the public. It's even quite different from having the information somewhere else in the company and not using it in the advertising algorithms.

I actually agree with his point of view to an extent... although it should be easy to avoid doing that sort of thing. Targeted advertising algorithms that include automatic inferences might go there however and eventually need some kind of 'moral guidance' instructions of some kind.

I do not agree that having so much information that you "should" know that Vegas ad was wrong to show to the gambler but didn't use it in the decision process is wrong (the OP might). Right now we're in a glut of data but the analysis and understanding of that data is not mature. I don't think the state of the art makes that negligence. I do think we might get to the point where the algorithms are so advanced that it WOULD be wrong... much like it would be wrong for a human advertiser to go through that thought process and decide to show the ad.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[robi5]

It's not "meh, both are evil". Microsoft had been evil long before Google even existed. They didn't just 'not let other large competitors index their stuff'. They went after minuscule companies like Netscape, and emailed among each other how they'd cut off Netscape's air supply, which they did, and as a result, had no real competitor in the browser space for about a decade - even though they copied Netscape's product to begin with. They were charged with abusive monopoly behavior and they were convicted.

I'm always appalled when a guy comes and lazily simplifies corporate wrongdoing saying one is just as evil as the other. No, there are differences. It almost never happens that two entities are equally this or that. Google would have to rule the Internet for like a hundred years to accumulate as much sin as Microsoft had, and Microsoft would need to exlst for a millennium to bring about as much technological progress as Google has already created. Microsoft is the new Computer Associates and the new SCO, all in one.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft didn't copy Netscape. They did worse than that.

They got a company named Spyglass to write it - for a percentage of the sales. These people were the ones that originally wrote Mosaic.

Once MS had the original product, they decided to give it away... as a zero cost. Thus they didn't pay Spyglass their percentage. And in the process put Spyglass nearly out of business, and stole the browser.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[ilguido]

So M$ or Google, meh, both just as fucking evil as each other. I just preferred the kernel under Android ;).

This is an example of what in Italian is called "qualunquismo": considering every party the same, so that you don't have to make your choices (because in all-equal world is pointless to choice). The point is that MS and Google are not evil as each other, their respective track records are much different in that regard, and even if they're as evil and it's just that Google is able enough to hide it, there's a huge difference in corporate culture (like there's difference between the corporate culture of Apple and Microsoft) and the corporate culture of Microsoft is one of the most irritating: they're like a naughty, bossy boy, that thinks he can get away with every mischief he does, and when he is caught guilty, he tries only to get revenge (and does nothing to hide it).

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[DogDude]

"Evil"? "Sin"? Please. Trying to kill the competition is what *every* business does. You're kidding yourself if you think otherwise. And Microsoft wasn't trying to kill the competition by doing anything other than competing with them. This whole "Microsoft is evil and Google isn't" is really pretty childish.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[Rob Y.]

I think it's a little worse than you paint. Take this EU case. Microsoft is not a party to the case at all. They're not claiming harm from Google's alleged tying of its various products to its search engine - because they don't have shopping search products, or if they do, you can bet they're preferred on Bing. Google is certainly in competition with Bing itself, but that's a perfectly legal competition (except, perhaps, for the fact that Bing scrapes Google searches and reports the results as their own).

The point of the original article is that Microsoft wants to hurt Google any way they can - and helping Google's other competitors sue them is a sneaky way to do it. Just like SCO. Just like wielding bogus patents as a weapon while complaining about patents wielded against you. And a kind of unethical way for EU regulators to bolster their case. Kind of refutes your argument that Microsoft is doing anything other than competing. Bing is competing and failing - so they're trying to get the EU government to make Google less profitable, and so less able to compete. How about simply improving your search engine - and acting in ways that don't earn you a reputation that makes large numbers of people unwilling to even try it. Too late for that, probably...

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[tbannist]

This whole "Microsoft is evil and Google isn't" is really pretty childish.

You know, it could be childish and true... Microsoft has a long and sordid history of going far beyond what "*every* business does" to compete. Whether or not they're evil, they have proven over and over again that they can't be trusted.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[farble1670]

Once MS had the original product, they decided to give it away... as a zero cost. Thus they didn't pay Spyglass their percentage. And in the process put Spyglass nearly out of business, and stole the browser.

they either broke a contract, or they didn't. either way, if the outcome is what you say, it's spyglass that messed up.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[DogDude]

That's funny. I trust them with my business, and it's worked out pretty well for me.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[LordLimecat]

He's saying that if you have so much information about a person that you know they're diabetic, and actually use that as a factor in deciding to show them stuff that statistically they'll go for even though you know it's proven to be harming them

Being a jerk isnt illegal (nor should it be), and ultimately the person advertising isnt DOING anything except trying to convince you to do something really unhealthy. How is that different than a friend trying to convince you to smoke? Should that too be illegal?

Seems to me the responsibility ultimately rests with the individual making the decision, and no attempt to shift the blame onto the "tempter" changes that reality.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[Dragon Bait]

Remember who was behind SCO on its patent claim against Linux?

M$

Don't forget Sun as well.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[tbannist]

A) You're not important enough for them to mess with specifically.
B) The fact you "trust them with your business" might be influencing your understanding of the charges against them.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[robi5]

They've repeatedly abused their monopoly power, e.g. by bundling IE and giving it away free, with the express purpose to "cut off Netscape's air supply" so that they project their preexisting monopoly power in the desktop space to the nascent Internet space. I don't care what you consider evil or not, but I'm glad MS ended up not dominating the Internet, and the successful conviction, and the resulting PR fallout may have had an impact on that. If you read up on the case, you may learn that being a monopoly is not in itself illegal; wanting to grab even more power is not illegal; however, abusing monopoly power in doing so is illegal. But as you say below, you're currently a merry part of the MS ecosystem so I understand the motive to rationalize and trivialize the fine line between competition and abuse by a 800 pound gorilla.

Re:Remember M$'s role on SCO?

[rtb61]

It's called psychological harm and it most definitely is actionable in civil court.

The new form of political activism, class action crowd funded law suits. Corporations love to fuck up individuals in civil court, it is time for individuals to work together via crowd funding class action law suits to fuck up poorly behaved corporations. So what if the lawyers get all the money as long as poorly behaved corporations (and the individuals in the executive offices and board room) are haemorrhaging money all over the place. A global political action campaign to bury the worst corporations in courtrooms all over the planet.

What should be the redlines (a very popular term now) that drive crowd funding to attack specific corporations in court for specific actions, hmph, all to easy, let crowd funding decide for itself (where the money goes, more honest companies can also join to defend against major corporate threats). Targeted advertising, you have been warned, not threats, just the straight up legal ramifications of specifically targeted at specific individuals advertisement, it is a minefield and extremely dangerous, due to already fully legally defined acts of 'psychological harm'. Just pointing out the obvious to those blinded by greed.

Re:Stopping Bing from indexing YouTube?

[quantaman]

Seems they have an issue with truth here, Google does not stop them indexing Youtube, see the Robots.txt below.

The Robots.txt is just a suggestion, if the blocking was in there MS could just ignore it. I suspect the issue is that Google is detecting and blocking Microsoft's web crawlers, either deliberately or as collateral damage from trying to stop hostile bots.

Duckduckgo uses youtube

Duckduckgo is a meta search engine, they don't actually build their own index but create an index based on results from other search engines. Besides, I'm guessing the issue isn't that engines can't index Youtube at all, but they can't build a good index because they keep getting blocked.

Still the worst offender

[amiga3D]

"Microsoft alleges that Google's anti-competitive practices include stopping Bing from indexing content on Google-owned YouTube; blocking Microsoft Windows smartphones from "operating properly" with YouTube; blocking access to content owned by book publishers; and limiting the flow of ad campaign information back to advertisers, making it more expensive to run ads with rivals."

The kinds of actions that Microsoft has been doing for almost 3 decades and still does today. Yes, MS is an expert on dirty competition and using it's monopolistic position to squash any sort of competition. I can't really defend Google but I have to say I'm absolutely flabbergasted at the nerve MS has to accuse Google of anything. It's like Charles Manson accusing Aaron Hernandez of murder. The Gall.

Re:Still the worst offender

[thegarbz]

From what I recall the whole reason these blocks were put in place was due to Microsoft not abiding by the terms and conditions that Youtube require i.e. bypassing advertisements on Windows phones for Youtube.

This isn't even a pot and kettle issue, it's a sad bully who's crying that someone hit him back.

Cheaper and safer to fund insurgents

[Antique Geekmeister]

Microsoft has done this before, when they provided covert support to SCO's fundamentally fraudulent lawsuits against Linux users. Rather than fund the SCO Group directly, they encouraged their business "partners" to buy from SCO Group, which kept the company afloat. It was a qu8ite "win-win" strategy for Microsoft. The lawsuits hurt business for many freeware and open source projects, especially Linux based projects. If SCO eventually failed, the nominal owners of a major UNIX distribution would go bankrupt, and their partners who wanted non-Microsoft tools would get them from a company that had collapsed. And the lawsuits from the SCO Group went on much, much longer and caused far more damage to Linux vendors than would have been possible without some outside funding. Doing the fiscal support through partners reduced any legal obligation or risk to Microsoft from their sponsorship.

These details all used to show on www.groklaw.net, whose thoughtful legal analyses and detailed reporting are missed by many.

I do not play the 'victim game'

[Taco Cowboy]

So who do you blame for obesity, McDonald or the people who promote McDonald and target their ads at people who they also target with dieting ads

Who do I blame?

Me

I blame myself for being a fucking idiot wasting my hard earned $ on Mickey-D's hamburgers for I, as a consumer, have the choice to *NOT* going to Mickey-D no matter what the ads tell me

Re:I do not play the 'victim game'

[s.petry]

You are a rare type, that is why you understand where to put the blame. Bernays, Skinner and others proved that deception works very well in advertising. Subtle hints everywhere, instead of the big old phrase "SMOKE CIGARETTES" they just posted pictures with a woman smoking in the background to normalize it and make women think they should be smoking. This type of shit happens very often, and unless you know to look for things you can, and very often will be deceived into making a bad decisions.

A couple examples: Credit scores - pure scam to keep you in debt for points.
Food, Alcohol, and drugs are everywhere in advertising and "product placements" in movies. Not a little, every single movie made today has this.

As someone stated above, if advertising didn't work nobody in their right mind would dump the hundreds of billions into advertising year after year after decade.. (you get the point). It works, they do dump the money. Studies show that fascism works better, but advertising is still needed so that people know what the government wants them to purchase.

Yeah, I sat with my son as he was growing up and showed him. The "sex sells" ad campaigns which are still strong today, the Kent "hell sells" campaigns, he knows what to look for. Most people don't.

Up to TFAs points as to the MS vs. Google thing, MS has been a scum company using shady legal deals for decades. No shock they are doing it against Google, it should have been expected given their track record. MS are Cain and Abel? Hardly, more like two serpents that nip at each other to keep things looking like competition.

Re:I do not play the 'victim game'

[rtb61]

So your claim is all of the advertising agencies are defrauding all of their customers with commercials that have no value but wait if that were true how could they sell their customers on the idea of commercials. Sorry dude, one way, ads are a fraud or there is a real and disgusting reason why they pay doctorates in psychology such high wages, especially the psychopaths. All people are not created equal, some people, in fact the majority (keep in mind 100 IQ as average and the people who are manipulating them have far higher IQ, can be more readily victimised by commercials.

Not to forget the "slimy pieces of worm-ridden filth." (Jabba the Hutts all) specifically also target children and that is seriously sick. So yeah a big ole FU to those people who think it is alright to scam the vulnerable to feed their insatiable greed, as for the lie children are to blame for their victimisation by professional adults, let me guess you have a dirty white van with lots of boiled lollies in the back (I know you don't but seriously dude, you deserved that).

Re:I do not play the 'victim game'

[Masked Coward]

No matter how many hot chicks I see smoking cigarettes or how many 21 year old gym-rats I see drinking beer & getting hot chicks while playing beach volleyball, I'm never going to suddenly forget that smoking and drinking excessively are bad for my health. Nor is my subliminal mind going to convince me that I, too, can be young again and get hot chicks on the beach if I take up a new drinking / smoking habit.

If I choose to justify it to myself, or let myself believe it, or worst of all actually believe it, then I will face the consequences.

Or maybe I know all that is bullshit, but choose to drink & smoke anyway. Yeah, it's called free will. Don't bitch at me about the fact that "well everyone else has to pay for it!!!1" because I have never advocated for such a bullshit policy.

Re:I do not play the 'victim game'

[s.petry]

Selective reading. How about "As someone stated above, if advertising didn't work nobody in their right mind would dump the hundreds of billions into advertising year after year after decade.. (you get the point). It works, they do dump the money. ".

Psychological manipulation trumps your freewill more often than you probably know.

Re:Stopping Bing from indexing YouTube?

[Anonymous Coward]

Comments+metadata indexing was the actual substance of Microsofts early complaint, the PR headline read "Google blocks Microsoft from indexing youtube [properly]" and lazy journalists just dropped the "properly" part. The robots.txt matches the actual real claim there in regard to comments.

The tags are on the page they just have to scrape them, Google do not have to provide an API to index those tags, thats Microsofts problem.

Their claim that Google should provide a Youtube API, is just nonsense. They do provide an API and its what the web browser operates.

Microsofts complaint happened just after Google changed its site and it broke Microsofts app. Big deal. Thats what search engines do, they scrape data and if you can't maintain an index then that's your problem.

Duckduckgo are Yandex, Yandex index the content without issue and update when a site changes.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/2/3828274/microsoft-claims-google-blocking-windows-phone-youtube-app

Microsofts claim here is just garbage filler. Which is presumably why they're trying to hide behind a bunch of small companies to gets a bit of "big guy vs little guy" sympathy.

Microsoft still evil

[blind biker]

MS is extracting royalties from all the Android phone manufacturers based on bogus patents. They make far more money from that than their own Windows Phone business. MS has also formed the patent troll company Rockstar Consortium, a "patent holding non-practicing entity" also known as patent troll.
And let's not forget that MS is in the process of locking down every new motherboard and laptop so that it can boot only Windows.

Ghost of Nokia

[linearZ]

This isn't a surprise, considering who ended up holding the Nokia bag.

Microsoft would love to someday get above 15% of cell phone installs. Its working the only way it knows how, buying the losers, suing the winners, and locking down every piece of hardware they can get their tendrils on.

Youtube App

[ZeroSerenity]

"blocking Microsoft Windows smartphones from "operating properly" with YouTube"

Couple of things to clear here. In the case of operating properly, Google kept trying to cut off the official WP app (made by Microsoft) just about any way possible. When the app was first out, Google complained that it avoided ads (like tons of other apps for YouTube) so Microsoft heeded the wish and disabled the app while they put the ads in. Put the ads in, relaunch the app, one day later Google revoked the API keys of Microsoft (as in all of them). You can still use IE to get to YouTube, but in that case the ads weren't available anyway!

Elop Microsoft's agent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish, Elop, ex-Microsoft exec, right from the start did Nokia in. He ran the existing product line (the MOST POPULAR Smarphone OS) into the ground first, then opted for Microsofts OS, which WAS FAR WORSE, had far less market share and no app base.

No big surprise that the Microsoft phone didn't sell. Having gutted Nokia, he then sold it at a knock down price to Microsoft, AND MICROSOFT PAID HIM A BIG BONUS.

Yeh, its right there, Microsoft paid him the $25 million bonus for the merger. Nokia didn't do it to itself, Elop did it. Every step acting against Nokias interests and for Microsofts interests.

Companies should beware of hiring Microsoft employees, they may have loyalties to their former bosses and expect a big payoff for destruction like Elop received.

Instead of bias, let's consider the specific facts

[raymorris]

Rather than vague statements that say nothing other than what our biases are, let us look at the specific facts of the case.

We can start with one issue mentioned in TFS. Microsoft complains that they aren't able to index Youtube as well as the site can index itself, with direct access to the database. Instead, Microsoft / Bing needs to either a) spider the site like every search engine does on every other site in the world, or b) use the APIs that Google has made publicly available at no charge . Microsoft complains that those APIs are insufficient. Let's consider that, by comparing them to the norms in the industry. How good are the Youtube APIs compared to the APIs that Microsoft provides for MSDN? Well, Google provides an API an Microsoft does not.

It iseasier for Bing to index Youtube than it is for Google to index MSDN.

One can imagine that it might be fair for someone say "you should give us just as good as we give you." Here Microsoft is saying "you give us an API, but we want you to provide a better one, while we provide none at all." A basic concept of fairness is that the expectations are the same for everyone- that one should not demand from others something you are not willing to do yourself. Until Microsoft makes an indexing API available for their own properties, it seems rather strange for them to demand others provide even better APIs to them.

Youtube supports HTML5 video, aka modern browsers. Microsoft complains that they are having trouble pulling YouTube's videos out of the web pages (where the ads to pay for it and track views are) and display them in their own app. Does Microsoft provide their content for free, to be pulled out of their web siye and served up separately? Can Google rip the MSDN content and display it in an app, rather than on Microsoft's web page? Microsoft doesn't allow that, so how can they insist that Google not only allow it, but make it essier for them?

Re:Argentina?

[Gavagai80]

There are of course many factors for Argentina's decline. Protectionism is one but political instability was more fundamental. Found this in depth analysis that also points to lack of investment in education as the primary predictor: http://economix.blogs.nytimes....

Microsoft victim?

[Tough Love]

These words do not fit together willingly.

Microsoft patented content scraper ©

[DougPaulson]

"Microsoft alleges that Google's anti-competitive practices include stopping Bing from indexing content on Google-owned YouTube; blocking Microsoft Windows smartphones from "operating properly" with YouTube"

You mean Google won't allow Microsoft to scrape content, like for example they do with Wikipedia. some time ago Microsoft was even caught scraping Google search results and 'incorperating' it into Bing. Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

Microsoft iCOMP ©

[DougPaulson]

"Microsoft Corp. has teamed with public relations and marketing agency Burson-Marsteller on a campaign to garner industry support for asking regulators to scrutinize and potentially block the proposed merger of Google Inc. and DoubleClick. .. So far, Microsoft and Burson-Marsteller seem to be the only companies behind the initiative"

Notice the desperate attempt to seem relevent by putting an 'i' in front of the title. In case you haven't noticed already, despite Microsofts best efforts and with a virtual monopoly on the Desktop, they still can't get people to use BING, having to rely on litigation instead.

Re:MS and its past anti-trust woes

[tnk1]

Spending millions of dollars on that is still great cost.

The cases turned out to be a nuisance to them, but don't underestimate the amount of effort that went into making them so. The most effort goes into something that ends up looking effortless. They threw a lot of money at that issue, and they also had to change their strategy.

There was serious talk of breaking Microsoft up. The Federal government and state governments all taking a whack at it. That's a combination you don't often defeat and they beat that. Ma Bell herself couldn't beat that, and you could have argued that the phone company was a natural monopoly.

Confucius say ...

[Hognoxious]

My enemy's enemy is not my friend.

See also: Hitler, Stalin.

Re:Argentina?

[NicBenjamin]

It's not just Argentina.

In 1900 a significant fraction of of Europe wasn't industrialized. Norway and Finland were relative backwaters, and the Balkans are large enough to be "much of Europe" all by themselves. Chile and Venezuela were all quite wealthy in per capita terms in 1900.

The region as a whole was comparable to Eastern Europe. I suspect that if you broke out Yugoslavia by it's 2014 borders, and split Czechoslovakia, the University of Groenigan's per capita incomes in Eastern Europe would actually be below Latin America.

We have NSA to thank for ...

[Taco Cowboy]

These details all used to show on www.groklaw.net, whose thoughtful legal analyses and detailed reporting are missed by many

I too missed the insightful analysis of Groklaw a lot

Unfortunately, we have only ourselves to blame because it is us who keep on funding nefarious cabals such as that motherfucking NSA with our tax monies

http://www.groklaw.net/article...

Re: Why

[Johnny Loves Linux]

google needs to be reigned in and bought to heel on issues where it's power is too complete

i'm glad someone is doing it. i don't really care if microsoft is along for the ride or not, and it doesn't really matter

Why? I'm being serious here. What's the justification for reigning in google? In Microsoft's case it's obvious how much karma is has burned through and why it needed to be reigned in . Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C....

But what has Google done that was so bad it needs similar treatment? Has it forced anyone to use GoogleOS? Has it forced anyone to use only its browser? Has it forced anyone to use proprietary formats that are patent encumbered and cannot be fully implemented by anyone else? What has it done?

From where I sit all I see is a company that has provided me:

1. An awesome search engine that doesn't mess with me with some lame "best viewed with our lame web browser" message.
2. An awesome maps engine that makes navigation so much easier.
3. A cloud print environment to make it way easy to print to any printer that's cloud print capable and that I have permission to use.
4. A free e-mail service whose spam filter is so good, I have only received 1 spam message in the past 10 years.
5. An easy way to share documents using a FOSS document format.
6. A FOSS operating system for both tablets and phones that does what I need it to do.
7. A FOSS browser whose javascript engine was so good, it spanked every other browser into getting their act together on javascript performance. No chrome, no awesome javascript performance.
8. A Linux based laptop that's so easy to use to browse the internet and at the same I can run my Debian or Ubuntu on it using a chroot if I want. No funkytown licenses. No funkytown registrations. No obnoxious "protect your computer from boogie monster viruses, install/update/stick with our crapware!!!" pop up ads.

So I'm honestly asking again, what exactly has Google done that was so bad? Who has been hurt by its actions?

Re:EU vs America

[silentcoder]

>In America, it does not make much progress

Oh really now ? You think so ? Forgot about SCO suing IBM ? Or Apple's case against Samsung because they BOTH made tablets that look exactly like PADDs from ST:TNG ?

The may prefer a different branch of bureaucrat (the courts), but the outcome isn't noticeably different.

Re:What comes around goes around...

[ahodgson]

All of them (including Facebook, for completeness) are fighting over who gets to invade our privacy the most. Screw them all.

Italian Translation

[Tenebrousedge]

This is an example of what in Italian is called "qualunquismo"

Would you translate that as "whateverism"? I think it works better in Italian. Good word though.

Re:Italian Translation

[ilguido]

Yes, "whateverism" is a good translation: that's as close as you can get, I guess.

Re:Argentina?

[NicBenjamin]

Just realized my response was only kinda-sorta answering your point, so here's a more direct one:
Argentina could have done fine with some level of protectionism, even a high level of protectionism. The Brazilians of the 80s famously protected themselves out of major parts of the computer revolution until the 90s and they're doing fine.

The problem is the Argentine version of protectionism involves seizing foreign business assets, which means that when the other side wins an election and decides to try to attract foreign investment it has to offer prices only a fool could refuse because only a fool wants to be in business in Argentina when the political landscape shifts again.