Google Offers To Treat Rivals Equally Via Auction (reuters.com)

Google has offered to display rival comparison shopping sites via an auction, as it aims to stave off further EU antitrust fines, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters. From a report: Google is under pressure to come up with a big initiative to level the playing field in comparison shopping, but its proposal was roundly criticized by competitors as inadequate, the sources said. EU enforcers see the antitrust case as a benchmark for investigations into other areas dominated by the U.S. search giant such as travel and online mapping. Google has already been fined a record 2.4 billion euros ($2.9 bln) by the European Commission for favoring its own service, and could face millions of euros in fresh fines if it fails to treat rivals and its own service equally.

Comments

Anti trust.

[Anonymous Coward]

The trust busting beast is walking from its slumber. Goog is scared. Good. Now they need to have their fears realized. DOJ needs to bust them big time.

Re:Anti trust.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when you let SJWs run your business.

Re:Anti trust.

[GrumpySteen]

The US DOJ is too busy trying to bypass state laws and reinstate asset forfeiture. They aren't going to take on corporations who can hire lawyers when there are innocent people with money that they can take.

There was nothing about auctions in the link

[H3lldr0p]

The article only spoke to how Google wanted to reserve the first two results for their own and when that was rightly criticized it wanted to set a floor price so it could be "outbid" by competitors. Which, once again, was right criticized for entirely missing the point.

This is really sad to see Google, which was a bastion of good search results come to this. The avarice which has infected the company is no longer overcome by the innovation of product and delivery it once had. I'd be fine with paying a couple bucks a month to have the calendar, email, and a few other things. I'm already paying for their steaming music. Maybe it's beyond time for YouTube to become 100% paid since advertisements are screwing over the reason it became popular in the first place.

Advertisement is distorting everything Google has done. I'm no longer comfortable with paying for use with my time and eyeballs. I want to pay with money.

Re:There was nothing about auctions in the link

[Anonymous Coward]

The article only spoke to how Google wanted to reserve the first two results for their own and when that was rightly criticized it wanted to set a floor price so it could be "outbid" by competitors.

Outbidding implies an auction. Clearly Google wanted to open shopping result spots up for a real-time auction the way they do with ads.

I suspect the only remedies that the EU will accept are for Google to to remove its own shopping results entirely, or just to remove all shopping results. The companies that are complaining want the former remedy, but I think the latter is more likely what Google will do. The complainers will howl, but Google will be compliant.

The winner, of course, will be Amazon. In the absence of Google shopping results, people will just go straight to the one online store that has basically everything, rather than using some alternative shopping-focused search engine.

This is the core problem with the complaint, BTW. Google's shopping results aren't the dominant player closing out second-tier players. Google is the second-tier player, and its shopping results are the only thing maintaining any semblance of competition. Killing Google's shopping results will just ensure that joining Amazon's marketplace is the only way to effectively sell goods online. That was probably going to happen anyway, of course.

And there's no obvious anti-trust argument to make against Amazon.

Re: There was nothing about auctions in the link

[AvitarX]

I'm confused though, does google sell anything in the shopping?

It's usually eBay, some chains, and such not when I use it, and it seems to sort on price.

What exactly do they want?

Re: There was nothing about auctions in the link

[Anonymous Coward]

Google offers a paid version of YouTube that doesn't contain ads. Are you going to be signing up for it?

Re:There was nothing about auctions in the link

[ArmoredDragon]

You speak as though Google and Youtube have been without ads before.

Thanks EU

[Anonymous Coward]

For nothing. Google's rivals suck. That is why we don't use them. But thanks for forcing the sucky option upon us.

Re:Thanks EU

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm finding Bing search about the same as Google's, and they're not run by SJWs who want to censor me. Gmail is better than Hotmail, but they both suck in their own ways.

About the only thing I can't easily replace is Goolag Earth VR.

Re:Thanks EU

[GLMDesigns]

Brave is a fairly good browser and an excellent replacement for Chrome.

DuckDuckGo is not bad; with !G it's just as good. It's worth two keystrokes when you need it. :)

Protonmail is good for replacing ones' person email. It's privacy centric from end to end. However the free version is limited to one account, 150 emails per day and 500 MB of storage. So it's not good for having multiple accounts.

I'm still checking out zoho as a replacement for google docs. Not certain yet how I like it.

Re: Thanks EU

[Godwin O'Hitler]

When Brave lets you install it in the location you want on the partition you want, let me know.

Re: Thanks EU

[AvitarX]

I have bing at work, I try to use it (to support Firefox), and it sucks.

I'll type a medium sized business name, the business is the fifth result.

I'll type local business name, zipcode, no map.

I go to the map and type the same it centers me on the zip code.

I switch to google, the first search gives me the business, the second brings up a map showing the business.

About 50% of the time I search I end up changing to google results to get what I want.

Perhaps Bing is as good when I'm not looking for a specific thing from my memory but most of my searches are trying to find things I know about, and bing sucks for it.

Google Search Sucks

[sexconker]

I use Bing and run an ad blocker on my PCs.

On my phone, Chrome and the built-in Chrome-lite that other apps can load default to Google search and I don't have any decent ad blocking options without resorting to root (which I had on my prior phone but is a pain to manage because of fucking Safety Net).

The Google search "experience" in a Google browser on a Google platform with Google ads is fucking intolerable. The location-based ads (and notifications for them) are particularly egregious. I don't give a shit if Google is abusing their power in terms of who gets those ad slots. They're abusing their power by having so many fucking intrusive ads tied into the Android platform so closely.

Google need to be broken up far more than MS ever did.

Re:Google Search Sucks

[GLMDesigns]

Use Brave.

How would that work exactly?

[hey!]

So Google sets up an auction in which bidders compete to pay Google the most money. Then Google enters the auction as both the seller and also as a bidder?

Am I missing something here? Or is Google actually proposing something you wouldn't have to be stupid to believe might work?

Re:How would that work exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

So Google sets up an auction in which bidders compete to pay Google the most money. Then Google enters the auction as both the seller and also as a bidder?

This is already the case when Google chooses to use AdWords ad slots for its own goods/services. Essentially, Google decides it's willing to pay, say, 10 cents for an ad click on its own product. If another advertiser bids 12 cents, Google's bid loses and Google displays the other ad. If Google wins the auction, Google doesn't actually pay anything, but effectively pays because they have forgone revenue they could have received if they'd showed the non-Google ad.

Forgoing $X revenue has exactly the same effect on net profit (and tax liabilities) as spending $X. So the Google division using Google AdWords to advertise is doing exactly the same thing as another company spending its money to advertise with Google AdWords. They're competing for the same ad slots, on the same playing field.

Re:How would that work exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

it might work if the winner was forced to distribute in sum of the bid to the losers in proportion to the amount risked during the auction -- then google would have a disincentive to drive the price up and the competitors would have an incentive to participate.

Expected Outcomes

[Jodka]

from the /. summary:

Google has offered to display rival comparison shopping sites via an auction..but its proposal was roundly criticized by competitors as inadequate.

Well of course they did; Google's European competitors do not want a level playing field, they want one tilted for themselves. Because "EU enforcers" are biased in support of EU companies, these competitors know that they can achieve a better settlement for themselves than one balanced and so are rejecting the offer of a neutral process.

Regulatory outcomes depend on who holds political and financial influence over and among regulatory bodies as well as the ideology of the regulators. (See: regulatory capture). In Europe, Google is a foreign company, and the "EU First" attitude and internal EU political influence will prevail over principals of law and even-handedness.

Re:Expected Outcomes

[AmiMoJo]

Your conspiracy theory is rather undermined by the fact that FTA includes their fairly reasonable complaints. Therefore your conclusion is unwarranted.

The current proposal is to have the first two slots reserved for Google, and then set a base price for the auction based on Google's bid minus operating costs. Does that seem reasonable to you?

As for "EU first", I think there is some projection from "American First" going on there, but ask yourself this: If that were the policy, why hasn't the EU done more to curb Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, eBay, Amazon and all the rest and more to boost its own competitors? Compare with China, where Chinese services like Baidu and Wechat and QQ dominate because the government firewalled off the competition, and then made setting up local subsidiaries extremely difficult.

In fact, just look at Trump's policies regarding "America First", and ask if the EU is doing any of those things. Look at the trade deal it just did with Canada, does that look like the sort of thing Trump would sign?

Re:Expected Outcomes

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed]

If you have any actual examples of the EU treating similar cases of native and foreign firms differently, I'd love to see them. Until then, I'll just chalk you up as another "wEre NUmbER OnE!!11" nationalist.

The fact that you even view Google, MS et al as US firms when they keep most of their money overseas to avoid tax just illustrates how clueless you are. We're under no illusion that European-born multinationals have our national interest at heart, which is precisely why we apply things like competition law to them.

um

[Anonymous Coward]

wat

Google search should search and not advertise

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody wants Google search to do what it is supposed to do: show fair search results and nothing else.

No one wants to see fake search results which are there just because someone has paid Google or because Google wants them to be at the top.

Oh yes, totally equal

[fyngyrz]

Google Offers To Treat Rivals Equally Via Auction

Oh yes, totally equal. The supplicant with the most money in their pockets gets what they want.

Works just like politics.

Totally fair.

You bet.

(checks pockets... nope)

the EU needs to be careful

[Danathar]

I wonder how much pain Google can endure before it's worthwhile not to be in Europe at all? I'm sure there is a point where it's not worth it. But exactly where that is I'm not sure.