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Google Slapped With $2.7 Billion By EU For Skewing Searches (bloomberg.com)
Google suffered a major regulatory blow on Tuesday after European antitrust officials fined the search giant 2.4 billion euros, or $2.7 billion, for unfairly favoring some of its own search services over those of rivals. The European Commission concluded that the search giant abused its near-monopoly in online search to "give illegal advantage" to its own Shopping service. Margrethe Vestager, the EU's competition commissioner, said Google "denied other companies the chance to compete" and left consumers without "genuine choice." The hefty fine marks the latest chapter in a lengthy standoff between Europe and Google, which also faces two separate charges under the region's competition rules related to Android, its popular mobile software, and to some of its advertising products. From a report: Google has 90 days to "stop its illegal conduct" and give equal treatment to rival price-comparison services, according to a binding order from the European Commission on Tuesday. It's up to Google to choose how it does this and it must tell the EU within 60 days of its plans. Failure to comply brings a risk of fines of up to 5 percent of its daily revenue. [...] "I expect the Commission now to swiftly conclude the other two ongoing investigations against Google," Markus Ferber, a member of the European Parliament from Germany. "Unfortunately, the Google case also illustrates that competition cases tend to drag on for far too long before they are eventually resolved. In a fast-moving digital economy this means often enough that market abuse actually pays off and the abuser succeeds in eliminating the competition." Google has been pushing its own comparison shopping service since 2008, systematically giving it prominent placement when people search for an item, the EU said. Rival comparison sites usually only appear on page four of search results, effectively denying them a massive audience as the first page attracts 95 percent of all clicks. In a blog post, Google said the EU has "underestimated" the value Google's services brings to the table. "We believe the European Commission's online shopping decision underestimates the value of those kinds of fast and easy connections. While some comparison shopping sites naturally want Google to show them more prominently, our data show that people usually prefer links that take them directly to the products they want, not to websites where they have to repeat their searches. We think our current shopping results are useful and are a much-improved version of the text-only ads we showed a decade ago. Showing ads that include pictures, ratings, and prices benefits us, our advertisers, and most of all, our users. And we show them only when your feedback tells us they are relevant. Thousands of European merchants use these ads to compete with larger companies like Amazon and eBay. [...] Given the evidence, we respectfully disagree with the conclusions announced today. We will review the Commission's decision in detail as we consider an appeal, and we look forward to continuing to make our case," wrote Kent Walker, SVP and General Counsel at Google.
The problem is it wasn't returning Amazon specifically. It was returning Google Shopping, despite the fact nobody likes or uses Google Shopping, which is unfair to the other shopping comparison sites that exist.
But which law is broken? If they don't have monopoly, they aren't abusing a monopoly.
The law is against abusing a dominant market position. Arguing whether a monopoly has to be absolutely total is irrelevant.
Here's your citation: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal...
My emphasis in the following:
Article 102
(ex Article 82 TEC)
Any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position within the internal market or in a substantial part of it shall be prohibited as incompatible with the internal market in so far as it may affect trade between Member States.
Such abuse may, in particular, consist in:
(a) directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices or other unfair trading conditions;
(b) limiting production, markets or technical development to the prejudice of consumers;
(c) applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage;
(d) making the conclusion of contracts subject to acceptance by the other parties of supplementary obligations which, by their nature or according to commercial usage, have no connection with the subject of such contracts.
You are not punished for a monopoly or nearly a monopoly; neither of those things is illegal. They are punished for abusing a dominant market position: being a near-monopoly is one way to have a dominant market position.
That's probably because Google users use Google maps. In the US, Google just shows you a map if you search for something mappable, like a hotel, a particular store, or an address. Clicking it takes you to the Google Maps result.
Imagine if you searched for a nearby pharmacy, then had to look up their hours, then go to Google Maps to search for such pharmacies near you. Instead, if I type "CVS Pharmacy Hours" into Google, it gives me that immediately, as well as a map showing the nearest one--which takes me to Google maps. I can make decisions about new information while gathering information, and those decisions are largely supported by the next steps being right in front of me.
If I wanted to use Bing, I'd go to Bing.
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how is google showing up in a google search abuse? Will they fine Amazon for having amazon sales show up in amazon search?
Amazon doesn't have market dominance in search, so that's not relevant.
Suppose that 90% of all washing machines sold in the EU were Bosch washing machines. They would have market dominance.
Then, suppose Bosch announced that you would void your warranty unless you used Bosch branded detergent. That would be an abuse of dominant market position - muscling in on the detergent market by leveraging dominance in washing machines.
Google is being accused of muscling in on the price-comparison market by leveraging the dominance in internet website search.
Imagine if Google decided to get into the used car business, an all of a sudden searches for "used 2010 Hondo Civic" returned results from Google dealers at the top, and other dealers a surprisingly long way down. That would be seen by many as abuse of market position.
You could argue that in a free market, people will just stop using Google to search, and will start looking for new cars in Bing, and order will be restored to the world. Many people in Europe have less faith in the market's ability to just correct these sorts of things.
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'Cut a check' is a long established idiom. Welcome to English.
No that's American. In English it's cheque
(ducks)!
Many people in Europe have less faith in the market's ability to just correct these sorts of things.
And there are plenty of examples in the US, where the markets don't correct. The topic of crappy internet providers is almost a weekly item here.
Who "forces anyone to use Google"??? Well, it's the "other consumers". If all the "other consumers" use Google, then essentially the businesses are "forced" to use Google... and in turn "you and I" are "forced" to use Google
One could argue that "it's not Googles fault that they make a better product than the consumer", and that is true.
The commission if fining Google because:
- Consumers(stupidly/naively) believe that Google is showing the results that are most relevant to the customer
- Google is NOT doing that
If you search for "cheap shoes", the searcher/customer has a right to expect that they get a fair representation of the best(most relevant) sites that sell cheap shoes.
Google does NOT do this...
- They will sneakily put links to their own store, with out any indication that it is essentially an advert for their own product/store.
Google "denied other companies the chance to compete" and left consumers without "genuine choice."
We should start right there. Who forces anyone to use Google in the first place?
What forces me to use Google is the fact that they have the best searches which is to a large extent due to the fact that they have something like 78% of the global market share which in turn is a large part of the reason they are able to deliver such good searches in the first place although Google would like you to believe that it's exclusively due to the fact that their search algorithm is light years more advanced than that those of the competition. Mind you I usually try to use other search engines first, mainly because I'm a compulsive windmill jouster who loathes monopolies or near monopolies in any form, but I all to often end up going back to Google much to my annoyance because I think Google is in desperate need of some truly fierce competition (mind you Bing has been gradually getting better over the years it's just been slooooow going). What makes or breaks a search engine is not giving good results on the 20-30% of searches on very popular and therefore extremely common searches like 'big titties' it's the ability to deliver good results on the 70-80% of searches on very specific/esoteric topics like: 'error LNK2001 unresolved symbol', 'install a performance air filter on a Moto Guzzi bike', 'the silver economy in dark age Europe', 'carrot beer' or 'vegan spinach ice cream' (and yes, the last two really are a thing, just not terribly popular). Its a kind of like the chicken or the egg causality dilemma, the more traffic an engine gets the more accurate the search results get and the quicker it is able to deliver them but if your engine is only getting 3% of the traffic, Bing is getting 20% and Google is hogging the rest you're in for an up hill struggle with your search engine startup unless you get lucky and come up with a quantum leap in search technology like Google did and contrary to what you may believe those don't grow on trees. In the mean time monopolies or near monopolies are never a good thing even if the monopolist is Google.
Google displays shopping results at the top of relevant searches, or on the shopping tab. With other types of search they show other sites in the mix, e.g. video search shows YouTube and Vimeo and DailyMotion and others. The issue that the EU has is that Google's shopping results only show Google Shopping links, and not links to other price comparison sites.
This might actually improve Google Shopping, which is kind of crap. For some reason it always gives me prices in USD and shops in the US, even though I'm on the .co.uk domain. It's sorting and filtering systems are terrible. It rarely finds the best price either. It doesn't work nearly as well as Google search, which does include results from other services.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The other search providers mentioned are both Bing.
I still see more value in allowing Google to bring up their own maps rather than having to bury it behind pages of advertisement filled crap as the EU wants.
The EU doesn't want that. They just want fair and equal results. It's okay if Google puts their own results first, if that is appropriate according to a fair page ranking algorithm. In the EU case, Google Shopping was not very popular, but Google put the results prominently at the top of their search results, while at the same time moving popular competing shopping comparison sites to page 4 and further.