Slashdot Mirror
Google To Comply With EU Search Demands To Avoid More Fines (bloomberg.com)
Google will comply with Europe's demands to change the way it runs its shopping search service, a rare instance of the internet giant bowing to regulatory pressure to avoid more fines. From a report: The Alphabet unit faced a Tuesday deadline to tell the European Union how it planned to follow an order to stop discriminating against rival shopping search services in the region. A Google spokeswoman said it is sharing that plan with regulators before the deadline expires, but declined to comment further. The EU fined Google a record 2.4 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in late June for breaking antitrust rules by skewing its general search results to unfairly favor its own shopping service over rival sites. The company had 60 days to propose how it would "stop its illegal content" and 90 days to make changes to how the company displays shopping results when users search for a product. Those changes need to be put in place by Sept. 28 to stave off a risk that the EU could fine the company 5 percent of daily revenue for each day it fails to comply. "The obligation to comply is fully Google's responsibility," the European Commission said in an emailed statement, without elaborating on what the company must do to comply.
A corporation obeys laws. The way it should be.
You can't use the service you own to advertise your products over others? Huh?
Obeying the law is much harder when they make the law as vague as possible, then just tell the company they are in violation and have to fix it - without telling them what "fixed" looks like.
Unlike, say, MS-Office or Adobe Acrobat, no one is forced to use the Google search engine, for compatibility or any other reason. If users don't think it's showing them the best prices, they can use Bing or Yahoo or whatever. People use Google because it still gives the best search results. It's a free service after all, and if Google doesn't want to include comparison-shopping sites in the results, that should be its right. If Google were an EU-based company, it wouldn't be an issue.
We often see the EU drag Google and Microsoft on to the carpet for another kangaroo court session, but does the EU actually do anything more than just be an instrument of xenophobic anti-Americanism? They need to clean their own house.
A good example: If VW were an American company and was discovered breaking the diesel emissions requirements, how long would they exist in Europe before being fined out of existence?
2.7B fine to ensure that Google will route your shopping click to search vendors making millions off from affiliate kickbacks. That's why these shopping search vendors are mad, it isn't the advertising revenue, it the up to 10% affiliate kickbacks they want. And you're a fool if you think stores paying large affiliate kickbacks have the lowest prices.
As long as they're making more money than they're spending they'll stay.
Please do, the door is over there ->
Adieu and thanks for all the fish.
Gee, it sucks that big successful corporations have to obey the laws
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Re "The EU is going down the road of China and other totalitarian regimes."
Small steps on the way to 100% positive EU news.
Happy government news.
Happy movie reviews.
Good news from all local community reporters.
Communist nations tried to really push positive spin on their failing nations in the 1980's. Their closed populations craved US freedoms.
The more the EU now tries to reshape the internet the more the internet move on to become more fun and free.
The EU can regulate social media, news and ads all it wants.
People will just get a VPN service and enjoy their time and money on the US internet.
Returning to the EU internet to pay their taxes. Why would anyone risk using the internet in the EU anymore?
Retroactive internet laws make investing in the EU a risk.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
How is making a company obey the law socialism? Or stifling innovation? How is abusing your dominant market position in one market to gain an unfair advantage against the competition in another market a form of innovation? If anything, it is an impediment to innnovation.
That Google happens to be financially succesful does not matter. They were breaking the law and they were hurting consumers. The EC made sure that they stopped doing so. That is how it is supposed to work.
Disturbingly, a company deciding to obey the law is considered news. Let that sink in...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Wake me up when the EU gets as bad as a certain shithole to the north of Mexico that tries to spy on every citizen around the world and has set the world record of trying to apply its crazy laws to the rest of the world. Keep your unfounded paranoia to yourself till that day.
The UK is the only EU member state with a meaningful degree of internet censorship. After Brexit, the EU won't be there anymore to protect the British against their nanny state, so it will only get worse.
breaking antitrust rules by skewing its general search results to unfairly favor its own shopping service over rival sites
Google has a shopping service? If so, they haven't been very good at favoring it, because I live in the EU, and I've never had it come up in search results.