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In an Open Letter To EU's Competition Commissioner, 14 European Shopping Comparison Services Say Google is Not Making the Search For Products Fairer (bbc.com)
Google is not complying with European demands that it must make the search for products fairer, rivals say. In an open letter to the EU's Competition Commissioner on Thursday, they wrote: We are writing to you as leading European comparison shopping services (CSSs) to express our collective view that Google's "compliance mechanism" in the Google Search (Comparison Shopping) case does not comply with the European Commission's June 2017 Prohibition Decision. It has now been more than a year since Google introduced its auction-based "remedy", and the harm to competition, consumers and innovation caused by Google's illegal conduct has continued unabated. We therefore respectfully urge you to commence non-compliance proceedings against Google. BBC offers some background: In June 2017, European competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager ruled that Google had abused its power by promoting its own shopping service at the top of search results, and demanded that it provide equal treatment to rival comparison sites in future. She issued a record fine of $2.7bn -- the largest penalty the European Commission has ever imposed. She also demanded that Google end its anti-competitive practices within 90 days or face further costs. Google is still appealing against the fine, but has come up with a system that it says makes shopping fairer. It changed the shopping box, which is displayed at the top of search results, so that it is no longer populated with just Google Shopping ad results, but gives space to other shopping comparison services, who can bid for advertising slots.
The shopping stuff isn't part of the search results, it's an advertising box at the top that used to display results from Google Shopping. Now it also displays results from other shopping sites.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The EU's explanation of the ruling is quite enlightening: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-r...
Imagine, you want to look for a product online. You type the product into the Google search engine. What you will see right at the top of the page is a box with Google Shopping's results, with pictures and a selection of deals from different retailers. They are placed above the results that Google's generic search algorithms consider most relevant.
At the same time, Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results. The evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival appears on average only on page four of Google's search results. Others appear even further down.
(emphasis mine)
Google abused its position as the dominant search engine by artificially down-ranking rivals and giving its own service top billing. In the EU this is illegal as it leads to massive monopolies and a lack of fair competition.
Note that the solution proposed by Google and accepted by the EU is to auction slots in the special shopping area at the top of the search results page, not to offer anything for free.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well, in general no, but when you get into 'monopoly' law then it can become a yes.
This is not a new area of law here. Whenever you have a monopoly, you need to handle it to have an open market. They had a lot of caselaw back in the day on rail road monopolies. Would you want a rail road operator preventing certain goods from being shipped? If I'm a railway company and I also own an apply farm, is it right for me to not ship apples from other companies? That's an abuse of monopoly. Network system, especially infrastructure are especially prone to such abuse.
Build your own railroad is not a 'good' answer to apple farmers.
Digital networks/monopolies are more interesting because it is theoretically easier to build a competing product, but in practice it's very similar to railroads. It's not hard to build a google competitor, but it is much harder to get all the users google has.
If google, being the top search engine is classified as being in a monopoly position, then it is reasonable to have measures in place to make sure they don't unfairly mistreat competitors or trump up their own services too much.
The details can work themselves out in the courts and lawyers, but it's a pretty reasonable ask.
No, they are just asking that Google doesn't illegally discriminate against them. The EU found evidence that Google was down-ranking competing sites to page 4 or beyond, while ensuring that its own very similar site appeared at the top of page one.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC