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Google Says India Anti-Trust Ruling Could Cause 'Irreparable Harm' and Reputational Loss to the Company (reuters.com)
Google has said an Indian antitrust ruling that found it was guilty of search bias could cause "irreparable" harm and reputational loss to the company, Reuters reported Thursday, citing a legal document. From the report: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) in February fined Google $20 million for abusing its position in online web search and also slammed the company for preventing its partners from using competing search services. After the ruling, Google had said the verdict raised only "narrow concerns," but in its plea challenging the CCI's ruling the search giant signaled the impact could be far greater. The order, the company said, "requires Google to change the way it conducts business in India on a lasting basis and the way it designs its search results page in India," according to a copy of its plea which was seen exclusively by Reuters. The CCI, among other things, had ordered Google to stop imposing restrictions on its direct search agreements with other publishers.
Make them poo in their own loos.
"Preventing us from doing the things we do now to make money will cause us to make less money." --- Google
(((dB)))
America First.
Google does from the search engine its own results's generator based in a controlled measure of what things should show their first rows.
And it does sort their priorities by U.S. interests.
For instance, when an Internet user wants to search products, Google will show 1st the U.S. products before than the national products.
Should we fly our flags at half mast
But I read that as, "Irreparable Ham", and I was scared for a moment.
Yes, please! I'm in!
On a more serious note: they're whining as loudly as they can to bring their case in front of one of those disgusting extra-national trade courts. Gotcha.
Slimeballs.
Wouldn't google's prior actions, and not the ruling against those actions, be the reason for google to lose its reputation?
Turn off all google services for india. wait a few weeks and when the citizens complain enough to their politicians they will likely beg google to come back under the current system.
Or competitors will move in gobble up Googles market share when Google goes back to California to sulk and then lobby for Google not to be let back on the market. After a while with a number of competitors, some of them probably local, who cater to the Indian market better than Google can nobody will miss Google. This is probably what Google is afraid of too because this is also one of the biggest reason why Google has trouble penetrating the few bastions of resistance like Russia where a local competitor (Yandex) simply does a better job. Google is a company that gained a dominant market share here in the west and many other places like India (where their search market share hovers between 95 and 100%) thanks to a set of fortuitous circumstances and it knows that losing market share is an awful lot easier than clawing it back. So I think it is pretty unlikely that Google will ever voluntarily exclude themselves from a market and leave their 95% plus market share to the competition since a 95% market share constitutes every businessman's nirvana, a monopoly, and Google ain't letting go of that without a fight.
That's a fair trade. No more Indians in tech.
Thatis why they did it. Togibe you less power.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
In Spain, when i want to search "buy shoes" in Google, it shows mysteriously the 1st rows:
1 https://www.amazon.in/ (for India?, but it is an U.S. company!) ...
2. https://www.shoes.com/ (closed)
3. https://www.zappos.com/ (another U.S. company)
4. https://www.myntra.com/shoes (i am not sure)
If a company's freedom would require "extortion," that tells the whole story right there.
You seem to think that India has some sort of Right to have foreign companies provide services there, even if the Indian Government doesn't like the services. But both sides of that might be bullshit; the company has to continually agree to provide the service, withdrawing it would never be "extortion" because they're not withholding something that belongs to somebody else or that somebody has a right to. And if their Government claims that the service isn't legal there as provided, then the most obvious, natural, and neutral answer is to simply not offer the service in that place.
Maybe India is making a wise choice, but still, the obvious answer for Google is to withdraw the service because India isn't as important as China and if you alter your service for small fish, then every country is going to completely run your business; and in conflicting ways.
we refused to be manipulated into buying ADs from them over 10 years ago.. phewww.. cease fire stand down... will the #realnazis please raise your mice in support of more goo?
Whenever you setup Android or install Chrome, you should be offered a choice of search engine
Luckily for google and others, the penalty in India is nominal. Had they done the same in US or Europe, the million would have changed to billion.
Irreparable harm is a legal term. It's just saying that if the court enforces the ruling, there's no going back, so it's normally used to argue that they should wait before enforcing some ruling so that Google can appeal. The idea is that if the court can't undo whatever they ordered should the decision be overturned on appeal, they should wait to do anything until they have a final answer.
They can then argue over whether this is actually true or not, but most courts will err on the side of caution. It's best not to break something you can't fix until you're sure that's what you're going to do.
Just stop all google services all over the world
Please please please please please
No, I would disagree with your statement, although it is technically correct.
When we look for the cause of something, we are looking for an event or action that is the least reasonably expected, and/or one that was by least coerced choice.
For example, if some sniper shoots a car driver and the car swerves into a deep ravine, we don't say that the crash was caused by the driver slumping over the wheel as s/he died, or by the presence of the ravine, because slumping is what a dead body naturally does, and the presence of a ravine is reasonable. We say that the shot from the sniper caused the crash, because that is not a reasonable expectation of driving along a ravine, and also because the sniper took deliberate action.
If you asked, "Well, if there wasn't a ravine there, the car would not have crashed down a ravine, right?" the answer would have to be yes, but to consider that as anything even near to the principal cause of the crash is to mislead one from the true and overwhelmingly unexpected cause of the crash. By that yardstick you could do reductio ad absurdum and say that the cause of the crash was the car manufacturer or the mother who gave birth to the driver.
When we refer to crime and punishment, an event can be considered "reasonable" if it follows morally, even though the chance of that event might not be very high.
When Google does something nasty for which it probably won't be caught, but actually ends up being caught, the cause of the reputation loss is not due to the reasonable prosecution of the nasty action, which follows and is more or less obligatory, but by Google's choice to do the nasty thing in the first place, something it could have chosen not to do.
It's the crime, not the punishment; to say otherwise would be as ridiculous as Anonymous Coward's delightfully sarcastic answer (currently modded 0): "And falls from great heights don't kill you, it's the sudden stop at the end."
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
That word could die. All in favor?
Good riddance. A lot of Indian guys use DuckDuckGo now.
I notice Google did NOT claim the finding is WRONG!
if Google is guilty of allowing bias in search, those harmed have a valid civil case for reimbursment, and if that bias is systemic, those harmed have the valid right to order those services terminated until the failure is repaired.
it's costing someones LARGE money losses in lost opportunity costs.
India is not by any conceivable stretch of the imagination a "small fish". It is, after all, the world's second biggest country, after China.
Would you suggest Google simply bail on, say, Mexico or Spain or Australia? India is twice as wealthy as any of these.
"I object!"
"On what grounds?"
"It's devastating to my case!"
"Overruled."
"Good call!"
Google's argument sounds a bit like the one here in Liar Liar, (quoted from memory, forgive me if I've missed something).
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Everyone knows you are evil, Google, so go fuck yourselves.
Just like the problem that guy at microsoft has.
It's all about clawing your way to the bestest godhead you can in this life, so you'll be reincarnated as an even better one in the next life :)
If you think I'm joking. Just look at all the privileged white cock Ajit Pai has been sucking (who is also a light skinned Hindu I might add.)
I assume it's Americans demanding that Google use their monopoly power to abuse other economic parties; exactly what got them fined in the first place. This reveals that many Americans don't want a free market with corporations being answerable to regulations and people voting with their wallets. I wonder if the Americans declaring "fuck you, I got mine" to one-seventh of the global population are the same ones bleating that Facebook abuses them.
This is exactly why the USA is declining; 'patriots' still believe they're saving the world, socialism-capitalism doesn't work, minor-party politicians are powerless and rich people will give everybody a job (after corporations have been 'saved' from paying taxes to the community that subsidizes them). The evidence it's all lies has been visible for a long time but Americans drink the cordial (US-ian: kool-aid) they've always drunk and nothing changes.
If answering "narrow concerns" is too expensive, Google can leave: That's best for everyone; Alphabet keeps their shareholder value and new service providers can create the legally-compliant service that Google can't.
Great that you're proud of your excessive population, but I was talking about economic importance to advertisers like google.
Income per capita is very important for advertisers.
India is not a very interesting market for advertisers.
China has lots of people who buy two smart watches... for their dog.
Mexico is largely irrelevant to advertisers, other than on Mexican television. That much is true.
India has a GDP per capita of $1709. Spain has a GDP per capita of $36,340.
China is only around $8000, same as Mexico, but China has a total GDP over $10T. India's is only $2T.
Australia's GDP per capita is ~ $50,000, with a total GDP of $1.2T. That makes them way more important than India to almost any business. Australia might have more disposable income in one city than India has in the whole country!
Well, it depends on if Google wants to service the users or if they want to kow tow to goverments. But I do like you pointing out that Google has an option to not offer the service in a particular country.
Hmm. I can see a stockholder lawsuit against Google for not being in every country even if it means changing the product by accepting censorship.
This can get messy.