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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.
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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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?
'Cut a check' is a long established idiom. Welcome to English.
No that's American. In English it's cheque
(ducks)!
You use Google you get Google maps. You use Bing you get Bing maps, you use Apple you get Apple maps. You use Yahoo... that's right you get Yahoo maps. Why should they link to someone else's map products? Nobody else who has their own mapping sources provides links to a competitor's maps.
Now if you Google maps, you of course get Google at the top of their list, but low and behold you get mapquest and then Yahoo and then apple. They don't pretend they are the only provider. But if you do a search for something, they are going to use their resources and provide the map info with their maps.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
They achieved dominance because they are the fastest and most comprehensive. That's how they took over the search engine market in the first place. Having the best product usually get's you into market dominance
That's great, and the EU is not having a problem with that at all.
The problem is that they abuse their dominant search engine to try take over other markets (in this particular case, shopping), which is arguably not the best shopping product, but still got ranked higher in the search results.
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