I'm saying, that it would be awesome to have 3 or 4 actually competing search engines and teams!
What exactly would that accomplish? Google is doing everything you are saying splitting them up would do, and I can't see how they could possible do it more efficiently as 4 companies.
You only split companies when it offers significant benefit to consumers - i.e. when the company is abusing its position to restrict competition. Google is doing the exact opposite, and using its position to benefit consumers as much as they possibly can. A single large company has a lot more potential to do big things for free than four small ones do. In fact, the monopoly that is a monopoly solely because it provides the best service/product/price/etc is the ideal in any system. The problem is there is great potential for harm, but we should not punish success just because they may some day decide to screw us. If they screw us over, then we split them up. Otherwise, let them keep providing us with great services for free.
Back before Google it was the only way you had a shot at getting relevant search results - it searches the top engines for you, and allowing you to conveniently dig for what you were looking for without having to go to other sites.
Google is so low because nobody links to Google.com, everybody knows where it is - most people have it built in to their browser.
If that isn't clear evidence that their page-rank system is legit, I don't know what is.
Google is the 5th non-google link on Dogpile.com. Dogpile looks like it is kinda shooting itself in the foot, the top links they return are the adwords links for the various sites, not the actual search results. If they could eliminate them, or just move them off to the side (they tell you exactly where each link comes from), it would be a fantastic tool for the off chance that you can't find what you're looking for on Google.
It really is not the end of the world if the economy goes into the pisser and global trade shuts down for a couple years. I highly doubt that would have happened anyway. We'd survive, and the world economy would be better for it. Think of it like spring cleaning, except it happens once a century or so. Yeah it sucks, yeah you're throwing away a lot of expensive but useless stuff, but the result is more room to grow and a cleaner house. It's worth it.
Instead we quickly built a new storage shed so we could shove more junk into it, and now instead of throwing stuff out we're coming up with new ways to organize it "so hopefully it won't be a problem any more". All the while the junk just keeps piling up, and the next disaster is going to be ten times worse.
They have local monopolies, not national monopolies. Something close to 70% of Americans only have two options or less for phone service, and some 30% of those only have one.
What pisses me off is the fact that the people paid for the lines these companies own via taxes, yet there is almost no way for new competition to get into the market because they don't have access to the lines. It's bullshit.
Breaking up Google would simply increase the cost to the consumer and provide exactly zero benefit, which is the exact opposite of what antitrust laws exist to do.
Read up on what predatory pricing is. It's interesting to note that most economists don't believe there is any such thing. From wikipedia:
Critics of the concept argue that it is a conspiracy theory, that there are "virtually no... economists" who believe the theory behind the concept (although a few believe it is theoretically possible based on models, there are virtually none who believe it is an empirical phenomenon), and that there are no known examples of a company raising prices after vanquishing all possible competition.
In the US, you have to show legitimate damage to consumers caused by predatory pricing in order to be successful in an antitrust case. There is absolutely no way this is true for any of Google's services. They are certainly in a position to do such a thing, but it would be absolutely stupid for them to do so.
The key evidence of predatory pricing is raising the price after the competition is gone. Where has Google raised prices? As far as I know all of their services are free except their corporate services, which have never been free.
Regarding search engines, every search engine that I've ever used in 20 years of using computers has given away the service. There is no way for the search engine model to work without giving it away for free.
What nobody gives away is the advertisements. Old search engines were scumbags, through and through. You had to pay a mint to get your website a decent ranking on a decent keyword, so small players were forced out of the market. The only reason anti-trust lawsuits couldn't be brought on these guys is because there were three dozen search engines and they all did the exact same thing. It was a nightmare.
Then along came a couple college students who said "this sucks, we can do better". They eliminating buying keywords, and instead started ranking pages based on popularity. It only took a year or so for Google to dominate the market, and a couple years later they were the undisputed kings of search engines. They sell adwords instead of search rankings, and it's a beautiful thing.
Google never did any kind of price gouging related to searches, because they only way they could have done so would have been to pay people for searching.
They also don't charge for anything but Adwords, and the essentials of how the system works are well known. The gist of the matter is, Google adjusted their algorithm, made it more accurate, and these guys shitty websites suffered for it. They suffered because they were shitty, not because they were quality websites being unfairly driven out by Google.
The lawsuits are about Google using their dominant search position to direct traffic away from competing sites. Such a site could never compete when the vast majority of internet users use Google search exclusively.
That is a legitimate concern, Google is in a position to do such a thing. The problem with it is the fact that Google's business thrives on providing fast, accurate links that people want. Manipulating links actually hurts their business model significantly if they are ever found out, however there is plenty of evidence that Google regularly directs a lot of traffic toward their own competitors.
What is far more likely, is that these websites suck. People see the links, click on them once, and never come back. If your website sucks you aren't going to get people linking to you. If people don't link to you, you don't become popular and show up high on the search rankings.
That applies to Adwords too, by the way. The rankings for Adwords are a combination of how much you pay and how relevant your site is to the purchased link. So, it's not uncommon for lower paying Adwords customers to appear higher on the ad list than less relevant, higher paying Adwords customers.
That's the beef here, these guys claim Google is manipulating the search rankings. The truth of the matter is, their websites suck, and it kills both their search rankings and their adwords rankings.
The problem with Microsoft is that the average consumer doesn't (or didn't, before the famous iMac ads) know anything else exists, and Microsoft used its market share and financial assets to keep it that way.
The problem with Microsoft had nothing to do with how many people preferred their OS. There are a plethora of reasons Microsoft is top dog, and all of them are legitimate.
The problem with Microsoft was that they were illegally using their market dominance to force OEMs to refrain from loading competing products - namely Netscape - on the systems they sell. They were artificially restricting a scarce resource - OEM bundles.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with anybody having 99% of any market. If they provide the best service at the best price, and nobody is able to do it better, why would you want that to change? What is wrong, and illegal, is abusing that position to force competitors out of the market who would otherwise succeed. That is exactly what was going on during the browser wars, and that's why MS got their ass handed to them in court. In the US they simply had to stop their abusive tactics and pay massive fines, the EU was much harsher and eventually took away MS's right to bundle browsers with their OS.
Google isn't doing anything close to this, and that is why the dozens of anti-trust lawsuits brought against them are tossed out without much effort on Google's part. They have become the benevolent dictator of search engines, and that is good for us. If they ever turn malevolent, we have the means to destroy them.
May be something, may be nothing - TradeComet's lawyer (one of the two lawyers in TFA) is from the same firm that does all of Microsoft's anti-trust work. It's tough to imagine such a firm would take on Google in an anti-trust case without at the very least getting Microsoft's blessing. It's not impossible though, MS may have nothing at all to do with it. It could all be coincidence.
Oh and TradeComet's anti-trust lawsuit was dismissed on a technicality - the judge ruled that the Adwords contract venue stipulation applied.
Also Google has a collections lawsuit pending with myTrigger.com (the other lawyer in TFA) for unpaid bills. That's funny, because this is all about sites being redirected away from legitimate business, but the only time one pays for Adwords is if someone clicked through.
Sounds like these guys are full of shit to me. There is a reason Google faces dozens of antitrust lawsuits every year, and there is a reason none of them go anywhere, even when there are high-powered law firms behind them. It's because they have no merit.
Anti-trust is not about bundling goods, it's about restricting access to a limited resource. For example, the Microsoft case - they were not hit with an anti-trust suit because they held 95% of the computer market, they were hit with the anti-trust lawsuit because they were using their 95% share of the computer market to force alternative web browsers out of the browser market. The bundling was illegal because they were using their position in the computer market to keep OEMs from bundling third party browsers with the Windows computers they sold.
I simply cannot see how the same thing is true with Google - the only key resources regarding internet search that Google has access to are their database and mechanism for crawling web pages, and their search algorithm. Anybody can crawl web pages, I could do it right now if I wanted to, Google is in no way restricting that, and the key elements of Google's search algorithm are well known.
There is absolutely nothing stopping anybody from creating an alternative to Google using the exact same resources that Google uses, and in fact there are several. However, if your service is not better, don't expect anybody to use it. Breaking the company up won't help anything. You'll just have four Googles dominating the market instead of just one.
If they are trying to say that Google's search results are the limited resource, they are full of shit. Google is selling ad space on their web pages, which all web sites have been doing since the beginning of time. If that is their beef, they need to be looking at Google compared to the entire fucking internet when making their claims, because that is the internet ad market Google is competing with. They are also not forcing anybody to do anybody, they aren't doing anything unfair at all. They are just "winning". Unfortunately, to some losers "winning" is unfair.
What could happen is that competent scientists have to waste their time debunking incompetent analyses by axe-grinding cranks.
It's much more likely that incompetent scientists will be debunked by more competent analysis, because as soon as there is any controversy regarding a study the scientific community swarms to verify one way or the other.
Also, it's just as important to know what data was disregarded, and why (there are a plethora of valid reasons, but there are even more invalid reasons) as it is to know what was included. The GP's point about the tree ring data that was collected but never used, why wasn't it used? Was it simply because they weren't interested in doing a tree-ring study, and used the data for something else entirely? Or did it make their model not work quite right so they tossed it out? How is anybody to know if they can't look at the data they collected?
Furthermore, if the raw data is not provided, you cannot verify that the models and statistical conclusions are correct. What if there is a problem with the model the researchers were using? Well, if you plug the data into a better model, or even just a different model, you'll see a big difference if one of them is wrong. Climate science relies heavily on computer models, and often multiple researchers will use the exact same model in their study, so it's not hard to get a systemic error across multiple studies.
In other words, how can you verify anybody's science without the original data they observed to begin with? I'm never going to look at this data, I wouldn't have a clue what to do with it, but I know there are a lot of climate researchers who are chomping at the bit to verify these studies.
Sleeping after lunch is a cultural thing in China, like the Mexican Siesta - that's why they get 1 1/2 hour lunch breaks.
Seriously, the article is trash. They get caught up in cultural differences and ignore all the important stuff - which turns out to be 2-5 hours of unpaid overtime a week, nightly lockdowns, and a ridiculous live-in policy.
Frankly, I'm locked down for two weeks at a time where I work, working 14 days straight and 12 hour days. Some of the guys I work with have 14 hour shifts and a 16 hour shift is not uncommon. This is often in extreme cold conditions as well.
The only real difference between the two is we get two weeks off after every two weeks worked. It's rare but not unheard of for some contract workers up here to work 12-14 hours a day, 7 days a week for up to a year without any time off.
In fact, the only real difference between a person in that situation and one of these "sweatshop" workers is the amount of money they make.
The truth of it is, things suck in China, and for some people the option is to either work like a dog or not eat at all. Corruption is rampant, but then not nearly as bad as you might expect when you hear "sweatshop" being thrown around. Most of the report was clearly conditions taken completely out of context, and unfortunately that all but buries the real issues and abuses that you should be outraged about. And not one bit of it should you be blaming Microsoft for - though if MS hasn't done something after six months or so, I'd say they're fair game.
Even in this specific case Microsoft was simply the largest contract for the company, and even then Microsoft didn't even come close to counting for most of the work done there. There are at least a dozen other companies that have equipment made at KYE, and they hardly received mention.
It was nothing more than a disingenuous Microsoft bash piece.
It's worth noting that Microsoft is also the only company who has contracts with KYE that is auditing them, and considering moving their business to another facility. Not that it will change much, this is a Chinese cultural problem, not anything tied to one specific factory.
But, in China, the government tells you where you will work, and what you will be paid.
That's false. In fact, most people leave the KYE factory after 6 months, because the pay isn't worth the treatment they get from management.
You're thinking of the USSR, which was a lot closer to true Communism, and the conditions for the bottom tier workers were much, much worse. In China they are free to work wherever they can land a job, it's just that a lot of options aren't much better than these factories.
Without overtime it's about $1,000 a year, which is median. With over time it's $2700 a year, which is almost 3x the median. Most all the workers chose to work the overtime, because $1,000 a year is not a living wage (thought technically it would be at KYE, because they provide room and food).
The conditions there really do suck, but it's hardly a sweatshop. It's an assembly line, and they are treated the way most assembly line people are treated everywhere.
The pay is really not the issue, even though the article and the report focus on it heavily. The real issues the report doesn't even come close to spending enough time on. Things like working people past their shift without pay if they don't meet quota, or fining an entire line up to a days pay if they didn't meet the day's quota. Fining workers 5 days pay for losing their time cards, and the absurd nightly lock-downs at 10 o'clock.
There were real actual abuses going on, but they were hardly enough to call the place a sweatshop. It might be enough to move your business to another facility though, and apparently Microsoft is auditing KYE to determine if that is what they should do.
The original report was little more than a Microsoft bash piece. From the very first sentence there was an extremely heavy anti-Microsoft bias, and it continued in the language throughout the entire thing. You would think Microsoft management were dictating the conditions that these poor "slaves" were working under by the language in the report .
Any time they left the compound they called it "fleeing", even though the workers clearly state that they are not required to work any over time, but they choose to because they need the money.
They highlight cultural differences - like sponge baths and sleeping on hard mats - as though these are unusual conditions cruelly thrust upon the workers at KYE. They aren't. That's how the Chinese prefer to do things - sponge baths instead of showers and hard mats (or wood planks and some blankets) to sleep on.
Even underage workers - they make a big deal about it, but the legal minimum age to work in China is actually significantly higher than in the US. Yeah putting 14 year olds to work is against Chinese law, but it's a far cry from a human rights violation.
The things that seemed like real issues to me - being required to live in dorms and being locked in at night, and occasionally working without pay if a quota was missed - were not the focus of the article. It was all about how poorly a "Microsoft Worker" was treated.
In other words, it sounds like there were some legitimate issues, but the report much preferred pulling cheap shots and taking things way out of context instead of highlighting the real issues.
They report fudges a lot. They call it a 15 hour shift, but they only spend 12 hours of it working (four hours of which are overtime and payed at 150% the normal rate, 200% on weekends). Included in that 15 hours is a 1 1/2 hour lunch break, a 50 minute dinner break, and two ten minute breaks. The breaks are unpaid and the overtime is optional.
This is the Chinese equivalent to working at McDonald's. It sucks a lot more because it's frickin China, but they are making minimum wage and, by China's standards anyway, being paid fairly.
The problems here are:
A.) There are reports of them hiring under-age workers - their child labor laws are actually stricter than the US, at least on paper - minimum age for an 8 hour day is 16 and 8+ hours is 18. There are reports that KYE employs workers as young as 13, and most everyone works 12 hours a day.
B.) Living at the dorm is not an option for single people, and married people can only live elsewhere after 6 months with a marriage certificate and a letter from their landlord.
C.) Entering and leaving the facility is very restricted.
D.) There are reports of being forced to work an extra 4-6 hours per week unpaid because of missed quotas.
E.) The 80 hour work week exceeds the legal weekly limit for overtime (36 hours)
F.) Management is generally nasty toward the workers, treating them like subhumans (this is a cultural issue - it happens everywhere in China)
So there are a lot of problems, but a lot of the things people are getting hung up on are cultural issues - like the sponge baths. That's how baths are done in China. Soaking in a tub is a luxury, and it is extremely rude if you do not clean yourself with a bucket and sponge before getting in a tub. These workers aren't provided a tub, that's all. The sleeping at their stations - that's also apparently extremely common in China, generally after lunch everyone takes a nap. If you have nowhere else set aside to nap, you do it at your desk. Thus the picture of a whole line of factory workers sleeping at their stations. It's common.
The Chinese laws are actually pretty reasonable, the only problem is they aren't being enforced. A lot of these same problems - overtime pay, working without pay, under-age workers, etc - are common in America too, and a lot of people don't realize they have rights regarding them. They should be fixed, certainly, but they are nothing to be outraged with Microsoft about.
Probably the worst thing, in my mind, is the living restriction. Even the underage worker problem isn't that bad to me, I mean, I was working at 14 and doing manual labor to boot. Not being permitted to live off company property, and being heavily restricted regarding when you can come or go is ridiculous. They even have to put in a request in order to quit, which is often denied. That's absurd. But it still isn't nearly as terrible as the report tries to make it out to be.
When you hear "sweatshop" you picture 12 year-olds falling over dead from exhaustion, you don't think 20-somethings making above-average pay (granted, with a crapload of overtime to get it). It sucks, but after you read it a bit and put it into the context of the rest of China, it doesn't sound nearly as much like a sweatshop - more like an average low-skill factory assembly line with a management that is on a permanent power trip.
They are not allowed to talk or listen to music, are forced to eat substandard meals from the factory cafeterias, have no bathroom breaks during their shifts and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.
And a/.er that has been to the KYE factory said they take regular bathroom breaks and about one in four listen to music, so while the official "rule" is that such things are prohibited, in reality they aren't.
The workers also sleep on site, in factory dormitories, with 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28in-wide plywood boards. They 'shower' with a sponge and a bucket.
Did you know that that it is common in China (and much of Asia) to sleep on hard wood mats with little more than a few blankets thrown over top? I know a Japanese professor at my local University who sleeps on a wooden crate with a thin, soft cushion on top. I could never get to sleep on something that hard. He's far from poor, it's just how he likes it. A lot of Asians believe sleeping on a hard mat keeps your spine nice and straight, so it is very common. While not providing any blankets is inconsiderate, it's a far cry from torture. Also, most Asians show with a sponge and bucket - sweatshop or no sweatshop. It's just how they bathe over there. They usually soak in a tub of hot water after, but that is only to relax after they are clean.
So really, the only valid complaints are that the staff is mean to the workers (and they are), that their restrictions on coming and going are ridiculous (and they are), and that the dormitories are overcrowded (sounds like they probably are). All the rest of it is bullshit. The "so tired they fall asleep at their station" is nonsense - they get an hour and a half lunch every day, 45 minutes of which they spend sleeping. This is very common practice in China.
If you read the report, it's an incredibly biased anti-Microsoft bash piece. They don't even mention the dozens of other US companies who have their equipment manufactured there (which account for more than two thirds of the work at the factory) until halfway through the report, and even then it's only briefly - everyone is a "Microsoft worker". It's total BS.
The real problem is Chinese culture which encourages this behavior. They want to be seen as the cheapest place to put to work, and they have a billion-man job pool to pull from to get it done. Until workers rise up against it things won't change one bit. In the mean time, it is unfair to hold Microsoft responsible for Chinese cultural issues.
86 degrees for sitting putting sticker feet on mice is excessive. Working in a foundry or around big machines that generate lots of heat or are melting and extruding plastic is another matter...
So obviously your point is that it really doesn't matter what the temperature is at all, right? I mean if working in 110 degrees is ok for one job, surely it's ok for another, is it not? What's so special about a foundry that they get to subject their employees to such torture?
Seriously, 86 is not very hot, at worst it's a little uncomfortable. A lot of people like working at those temperatures - my office is 76 degrees and my co-worker is always wearing a coat because she likes it much hotter.
and eat three meals a day for free in the staff canteen
Actually they are paid $0.65 an hour, the $0.52 is after deductions for food.
Their take home pay for working at the KYE plant is $2700 a year, or close to three times the national median.
No, it's not nearly as shocking a headline when you put things in perspective. Also, MS is auditing KYE as a direct result of this report. Since the report solely targeted Microsoft, instead of the half dozen other companies that have equipment made there, none of the other companies are bothering to do anything about it.
The report was extremely and obviously anti-Microsoft from the very beginning. There is not even the slightest hint of objectivity in the report - it's solely a "Look how Evil Microsoft is" without even bothering to take into account cultural and economic conditions in the area. One example: How many American companies give their employees an hour and a half for lunch? That's what they get at KYE. While conditions are by no means good, China is in the middle of an economic upswing, and the conditions at this particular factory are better than most, and it pays a lot better than most. If an employee can stand the shitty management, they can bank away three years worth of pay at another company in a single year at KYE.
In fact, if they changed their management culture they could probably keep regular employees for more than the six month average they get now, because that's the only real negative to this company. Unfortunately most companies in China have the exact same management culture, so going somewhere else doesn't help.
Having the freewill to choose that or not putting food on the table is hardly freewill.
That's the exact same free will we have in America, what's your friggin point?
Oh wait, sorry, we do have the option of leeching off our fellow man, effectively stealing from their hard work and giving nothing in return. Fortunately we've scaled that back a bit in most places.
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I think he's counting at least one orifice twice.
I'm saying, that it would be awesome to have 3 or 4 actually competing search engines and teams!
What exactly would that accomplish? Google is doing everything you are saying splitting them up would do, and I can't see how they could possible do it more efficiently as 4 companies.
You only split companies when it offers significant benefit to consumers - i.e. when the company is abusing its position to restrict competition. Google is doing the exact opposite, and using its position to benefit consumers as much as they possibly can. A single large company has a lot more potential to do big things for free than four small ones do. In fact, the monopoly that is a monopoly solely because it provides the best service/product/price/etc is the ideal in any system. The problem is there is great potential for harm, but we should not punish success just because they may some day decide to screw us. If they screw us over, then we split them up. Otherwise, let them keep providing us with great services for free.
Hehe, I used to use Dogpile.com.
Back before Google it was the only way you had a shot at getting relevant search results - it searches the top engines for you, and allowing you to conveniently dig for what you were looking for without having to go to other sites.
Google is so low because nobody links to Google.com, everybody knows where it is - most people have it built in to their browser.
If that isn't clear evidence that their page-rank system is legit, I don't know what is.
Google is the 5th non-google link on Dogpile.com. Dogpile looks like it is kinda shooting itself in the foot, the top links they return are the adwords links for the various sites, not the actual search results. If they could eliminate them, or just move them off to the side (they tell you exactly where each link comes from), it would be a fantastic tool for the off chance that you can't find what you're looking for on Google.
I don't believe that "too big to fail" exists.
It really is not the end of the world if the economy goes into the pisser and global trade shuts down for a couple years. I highly doubt that would have happened anyway. We'd survive, and the world economy would be better for it. Think of it like spring cleaning, except it happens once a century or so. Yeah it sucks, yeah you're throwing away a lot of expensive but useless stuff, but the result is more room to grow and a cleaner house. It's worth it.
Instead we quickly built a new storage shed so we could shove more junk into it, and now instead of throwing stuff out we're coming up with new ways to organize it "so hopefully it won't be a problem any more". All the while the junk just keeps piling up, and the next disaster is going to be ten times worse.
The best way to get Microsoft results is to search Bing though, because generally no matter what you search for you get a Microsoft result.
However, if you want to find something Microsoft doesn't want you to find, then Google is the way to go.
Hehe, what's funny is they claim they only use Grassroots.org for web services, but Grassroots doesn't provide web services!
Plus, any legitimate consumer watchdog group that took one look at Grassroots.org's mission statement wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole.
They really should change their name to astroturf.org, it is apparently for sale.
They have local monopolies, not national monopolies. Something close to 70% of Americans only have two options or less for phone service, and some 30% of those only have one.
What pisses me off is the fact that the people paid for the lines these companies own via taxes, yet there is almost no way for new competition to get into the market because they don't have access to the lines. It's bullshit.
None of the other services generate revenue.
Breaking up Google would simply increase the cost to the consumer and provide exactly zero benefit, which is the exact opposite of what antitrust laws exist to do.
Read up on what predatory pricing is. It's interesting to note that most economists don't believe there is any such thing. From wikipedia:
Critics of the concept argue that it is a conspiracy theory, that there are "virtually no... economists" who believe the theory behind the concept (although a few believe it is theoretically possible based on models, there are virtually none who believe it is an empirical phenomenon), and that there are no known examples of a company raising prices after vanquishing all possible competition.
In the US, you have to show legitimate damage to consumers caused by predatory pricing in order to be successful in an antitrust case. There is absolutely no way this is true for any of Google's services. They are certainly in a position to do such a thing, but it would be absolutely stupid for them to do so.
The key evidence of predatory pricing is raising the price after the competition is gone. Where has Google raised prices? As far as I know all of their services are free except their corporate services, which have never been free.
Regarding search engines, every search engine that I've ever used in 20 years of using computers has given away the service. There is no way for the search engine model to work without giving it away for free.
What nobody gives away is the advertisements. Old search engines were scumbags, through and through. You had to pay a mint to get your website a decent ranking on a decent keyword, so small players were forced out of the market. The only reason anti-trust lawsuits couldn't be brought on these guys is because there were three dozen search engines and they all did the exact same thing. It was a nightmare.
Then along came a couple college students who said "this sucks, we can do better". They eliminating buying keywords, and instead started ranking pages based on popularity. It only took a year or so for Google to dominate the market, and a couple years later they were the undisputed kings of search engines. They sell adwords instead of search rankings, and it's a beautiful thing.
Google never did any kind of price gouging related to searches, because they only way they could have done so would have been to pay people for searching.
They also don't charge for anything but Adwords, and the essentials of how the system works are well known. The gist of the matter is, Google adjusted their algorithm, made it more accurate, and these guys shitty websites suffered for it. They suffered because they were shitty, not because they were quality websites being unfairly driven out by Google.
The lawsuits are about Google using their dominant search position to direct traffic away from competing sites. Such a site could never compete when the vast majority of internet users use Google search exclusively.
That is a legitimate concern, Google is in a position to do such a thing. The problem with it is the fact that Google's business thrives on providing fast, accurate links that people want. Manipulating links actually hurts their business model significantly if they are ever found out, however there is plenty of evidence that Google regularly directs a lot of traffic toward their own competitors.
What is far more likely, is that these websites suck. People see the links, click on them once, and never come back. If your website sucks you aren't going to get people linking to you. If people don't link to you, you don't become popular and show up high on the search rankings.
That applies to Adwords too, by the way. The rankings for Adwords are a combination of how much you pay and how relevant your site is to the purchased link. So, it's not uncommon for lower paying Adwords customers to appear higher on the ad list than less relevant, higher paying Adwords customers.
That's the beef here, these guys claim Google is manipulating the search rankings. The truth of the matter is, their websites suck, and it kills both their search rankings and their adwords rankings.
The problem with Microsoft is that the average consumer doesn't (or didn't, before the famous iMac ads) know anything else exists, and Microsoft used its market share and financial assets to keep it that way.
The problem with Microsoft had nothing to do with how many people preferred their OS. There are a plethora of reasons Microsoft is top dog, and all of them are legitimate.
The problem with Microsoft was that they were illegally using their market dominance to force OEMs to refrain from loading competing products - namely Netscape - on the systems they sell. They were artificially restricting a scarce resource - OEM bundles.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with anybody having 99% of any market. If they provide the best service at the best price, and nobody is able to do it better, why would you want that to change? What is wrong, and illegal, is abusing that position to force competitors out of the market who would otherwise succeed. That is exactly what was going on during the browser wars, and that's why MS got their ass handed to them in court. In the US they simply had to stop their abusive tactics and pay massive fines, the EU was much harsher and eventually took away MS's right to bundle browsers with their OS.
Google isn't doing anything close to this, and that is why the dozens of anti-trust lawsuits brought against them are tossed out without much effort on Google's part. They have become the benevolent dictator of search engines, and that is good for us. If they ever turn malevolent, we have the means to destroy them.
May be something, may be nothing - TradeComet's lawyer (one of the two lawyers in TFA) is from the same firm that does all of Microsoft's anti-trust work. It's tough to imagine such a firm would take on Google in an anti-trust case without at the very least getting Microsoft's blessing. It's not impossible though, MS may have nothing at all to do with it. It could all be coincidence.
Oh and TradeComet's anti-trust lawsuit was dismissed on a technicality - the judge ruled that the Adwords contract venue stipulation applied.
Also Google has a collections lawsuit pending with myTrigger.com (the other lawyer in TFA) for unpaid bills. That's funny, because this is all about sites being redirected away from legitimate business, but the only time one pays for Adwords is if someone clicked through.
Sounds like these guys are full of shit to me. There is a reason Google faces dozens of antitrust lawsuits every year, and there is a reason none of them go anywhere, even when there are high-powered law firms behind them. It's because they have no merit.
Anti-trust is not about bundling goods, it's about restricting access to a limited resource. For example, the Microsoft case - they were not hit with an anti-trust suit because they held 95% of the computer market, they were hit with the anti-trust lawsuit because they were using their 95% share of the computer market to force alternative web browsers out of the browser market. The bundling was illegal because they were using their position in the computer market to keep OEMs from bundling third party browsers with the Windows computers they sold.
I simply cannot see how the same thing is true with Google - the only key resources regarding internet search that Google has access to are their database and mechanism for crawling web pages, and their search algorithm. Anybody can crawl web pages, I could do it right now if I wanted to, Google is in no way restricting that, and the key elements of Google's search algorithm are well known.
There is absolutely nothing stopping anybody from creating an alternative to Google using the exact same resources that Google uses, and in fact there are several. However, if your service is not better, don't expect anybody to use it. Breaking the company up won't help anything. You'll just have four Googles dominating the market instead of just one.
If they are trying to say that Google's search results are the limited resource, they are full of shit. Google is selling ad space on their web pages, which all web sites have been doing since the beginning of time. If that is their beef, they need to be looking at Google compared to the entire fucking internet when making their claims, because that is the internet ad market Google is competing with. They are also not forcing anybody to do anybody, they aren't doing anything unfair at all. They are just "winning". Unfortunately, to some losers "winning" is unfair.
What could happen is that competent scientists have to waste their time debunking incompetent analyses by axe-grinding cranks.
It's much more likely that incompetent scientists will be debunked by more competent analysis, because as soon as there is any controversy regarding a study the scientific community swarms to verify one way or the other.
Also, it's just as important to know what data was disregarded, and why (there are a plethora of valid reasons, but there are even more invalid reasons) as it is to know what was included. The GP's point about the tree ring data that was collected but never used, why wasn't it used? Was it simply because they weren't interested in doing a tree-ring study, and used the data for something else entirely? Or did it make their model not work quite right so they tossed it out? How is anybody to know if they can't look at the data they collected?
Furthermore, if the raw data is not provided, you cannot verify that the models and statistical conclusions are correct. What if there is a problem with the model the researchers were using? Well, if you plug the data into a better model, or even just a different model, you'll see a big difference if one of them is wrong. Climate science relies heavily on computer models, and often multiple researchers will use the exact same model in their study, so it's not hard to get a systemic error across multiple studies.
In other words, how can you verify anybody's science without the original data they observed to begin with? I'm never going to look at this data, I wouldn't have a clue what to do with it, but I know there are a lot of climate researchers who are chomping at the bit to verify these studies.
Sleeping after lunch is a cultural thing in China, like the Mexican Siesta - that's why they get 1 1/2 hour lunch breaks.
Seriously, the article is trash. They get caught up in cultural differences and ignore all the important stuff - which turns out to be 2-5 hours of unpaid overtime a week, nightly lockdowns, and a ridiculous live-in policy.
Frankly, I'm locked down for two weeks at a time where I work, working 14 days straight and 12 hour days. Some of the guys I work with have 14 hour shifts and a 16 hour shift is not uncommon. This is often in extreme cold conditions as well.
The only real difference between the two is we get two weeks off after every two weeks worked. It's rare but not unheard of for some contract workers up here to work 12-14 hours a day, 7 days a week for up to a year without any time off.
In fact, the only real difference between a person in that situation and one of these "sweatshop" workers is the amount of money they make.
The truth of it is, things suck in China, and for some people the option is to either work like a dog or not eat at all. Corruption is rampant, but then not nearly as bad as you might expect when you hear "sweatshop" being thrown around. Most of the report was clearly conditions taken completely out of context, and unfortunately that all but buries the real issues and abuses that you should be outraged about. And not one bit of it should you be blaming Microsoft for - though if MS hasn't done something after six months or so, I'd say they're fair game.
Even in this specific case Microsoft was simply the largest contract for the company, and even then Microsoft didn't even come close to counting for most of the work done there. There are at least a dozen other companies that have equipment made at KYE, and they hardly received mention.
It was nothing more than a disingenuous Microsoft bash piece.
It's worth noting that Microsoft is also the only company who has contracts with KYE that is auditing them, and considering moving their business to another facility. Not that it will change much, this is a Chinese cultural problem, not anything tied to one specific factory.
But, in China, the government tells you where you will work, and what you will be paid.
That's false. In fact, most people leave the KYE factory after 6 months, because the pay isn't worth the treatment they get from management.
You're thinking of the USSR, which was a lot closer to true Communism, and the conditions for the bottom tier workers were much, much worse. In China they are free to work wherever they can land a job, it's just that a lot of options aren't much better than these factories.
Without overtime it's about $1,000 a year, which is median. With over time it's $2700 a year, which is almost 3x the median. Most all the workers chose to work the overtime, because $1,000 a year is not a living wage (thought technically it would be at KYE, because they provide room and food).
The conditions there really do suck, but it's hardly a sweatshop. It's an assembly line, and they are treated the way most assembly line people are treated everywhere.
The pay is really not the issue, even though the article and the report focus on it heavily. The real issues the report doesn't even come close to spending enough time on. Things like working people past their shift without pay if they don't meet quota, or fining an entire line up to a days pay if they didn't meet the day's quota. Fining workers 5 days pay for losing their time cards, and the absurd nightly lock-downs at 10 o'clock.
There were real actual abuses going on, but they were hardly enough to call the place a sweatshop. It might be enough to move your business to another facility though, and apparently Microsoft is auditing KYE to determine if that is what they should do.
The original report was little more than a Microsoft bash piece. From the very first sentence there was an extremely heavy anti-Microsoft bias, and it continued in the language throughout the entire thing. You would think Microsoft management were dictating the conditions that these poor "slaves" were working under by the language in the report
.
Any time they left the compound they called it "fleeing", even though the workers clearly state that they are not required to work any over time, but they choose to because they need the money.
They highlight cultural differences - like sponge baths and sleeping on hard mats - as though these are unusual conditions cruelly thrust upon the workers at KYE. They aren't. That's how the Chinese prefer to do things - sponge baths instead of showers and hard mats (or wood planks and some blankets) to sleep on.
Even underage workers - they make a big deal about it, but the legal minimum age to work in China is actually significantly higher than in the US. Yeah putting 14 year olds to work is against Chinese law, but it's a far cry from a human rights violation.
The things that seemed like real issues to me - being required to live in dorms and being locked in at night, and occasionally working without pay if a quota was missed - were not the focus of the article. It was all about how poorly a "Microsoft Worker" was treated.
In other words, it sounds like there were some legitimate issues, but the report much preferred pulling cheap shots and taking things way out of context instead of highlighting the real issues.
They report fudges a lot. They call it a 15 hour shift, but they only spend 12 hours of it working (four hours of which are overtime and payed at 150% the normal rate, 200% on weekends). Included in that 15 hours is a 1 1/2 hour lunch break, a 50 minute dinner break, and two ten minute breaks. The breaks are unpaid and the overtime is optional.
This is the Chinese equivalent to working at McDonald's. It sucks a lot more because it's frickin China, but they are making minimum wage and, by China's standards anyway, being paid fairly.
The problems here are:
A.) There are reports of them hiring under-age workers - their child labor laws are actually stricter than the US, at least on paper - minimum age for an 8 hour day is 16 and 8+ hours is 18. There are reports that KYE employs workers as young as 13, and most everyone works 12 hours a day.
B.) Living at the dorm is not an option for single people, and married people can only live elsewhere after 6 months with a marriage certificate and a letter from their landlord.
C.) Entering and leaving the facility is very restricted.
D.) There are reports of being forced to work an extra 4-6 hours per week unpaid because of missed quotas.
E.) The 80 hour work week exceeds the legal weekly limit for overtime (36 hours)
F.) Management is generally nasty toward the workers, treating them like subhumans (this is a cultural issue - it happens everywhere in China)
So there are a lot of problems, but a lot of the things people are getting hung up on are cultural issues - like the sponge baths. That's how baths are done in China. Soaking in a tub is a luxury, and it is extremely rude if you do not clean yourself with a bucket and sponge before getting in a tub. These workers aren't provided a tub, that's all. The sleeping at their stations - that's also apparently extremely common in China, generally after lunch everyone takes a nap. If you have nowhere else set aside to nap, you do it at your desk. Thus the picture of a whole line of factory workers sleeping at their stations. It's common.
The Chinese laws are actually pretty reasonable, the only problem is they aren't being enforced. A lot of these same problems - overtime pay, working without pay, under-age workers, etc - are common in America too, and a lot of people don't realize they have rights regarding them. They should be fixed, certainly, but they are nothing to be outraged with Microsoft about.
Probably the worst thing, in my mind, is the living restriction. Even the underage worker problem isn't that bad to me, I mean, I was working at 14 and doing manual labor to boot. Not being permitted to live off company property, and being heavily restricted regarding when you can come or go is ridiculous. They even have to put in a request in order to quit, which is often denied. That's absurd. But it still isn't nearly as terrible as the report tries to make it out to be.
When you hear "sweatshop" you picture 12 year-olds falling over dead from exhaustion, you don't think 20-somethings making above-average pay (granted, with a crapload of overtime to get it). It sucks, but after you read it a bit and put it into the context of the rest of China, it doesn't sound nearly as much like a sweatshop - more like an average low-skill factory assembly line with a management that is on a permanent power trip.
They are not allowed to talk or listen to music, are forced to eat substandard meals from the factory cafeterias, have no bathroom breaks during their shifts and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.
And a /.er that has been to the KYE factory said they take regular bathroom breaks and about one in four listen to music, so while the official "rule" is that such things are prohibited, in reality they aren't.
The workers also sleep on site, in factory dormitories, with 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28in-wide plywood boards. They 'shower' with a sponge and a bucket.
Did you know that that it is common in China (and much of Asia) to sleep on hard wood mats with little more than a few blankets thrown over top? I know a Japanese professor at my local University who sleeps on a wooden crate with a thin, soft cushion on top. I could never get to sleep on something that hard. He's far from poor, it's just how he likes it. A lot of Asians believe sleeping on a hard mat keeps your spine nice and straight, so it is very common. While not providing any blankets is inconsiderate, it's a far cry from torture. Also, most Asians show with a sponge and bucket - sweatshop or no sweatshop. It's just how they bathe over there. They usually soak in a tub of hot water after, but that is only to relax after they are clean.
So really, the only valid complaints are that the staff is mean to the workers (and they are), that their restrictions on coming and going are ridiculous (and they are), and that the dormitories are overcrowded (sounds like they probably are). All the rest of it is bullshit. The "so tired they fall asleep at their station" is nonsense - they get an hour and a half lunch every day, 45 minutes of which they spend sleeping. This is very common practice in China.
If you read the report, it's an incredibly biased anti-Microsoft bash piece. They don't even mention the dozens of other US companies who have their equipment manufactured there (which account for more than two thirds of the work at the factory) until halfway through the report, and even then it's only briefly - everyone is a "Microsoft worker". It's total BS.
The real problem is Chinese culture which encourages this behavior. They want to be seen as the cheapest place to put to work, and they have a billion-man job pool to pull from to get it done. Until workers rise up against it things won't change one bit. In the mean time, it is unfair to hold Microsoft responsible for Chinese cultural issues.
So... it's not Chinese food, it's Chinese food?
WTF are you smoking man? I want some!
86 degrees for sitting putting sticker feet on mice is excessive.
Working in a foundry or around big machines that generate lots of heat or are melting and extruding plastic is another matter...
So obviously your point is that it really doesn't matter what the temperature is at all, right? I mean if working in 110 degrees is ok for one job, surely it's ok for another, is it not? What's so special about a foundry that they get to subject their employees to such torture?
Seriously, 86 is not very hot, at worst it's a little uncomfortable. A lot of people like working at those temperatures - my office is 76 degrees and my co-worker is always wearing a coat because she likes it much hotter.
and eat three meals a day for free in the staff canteen
Actually they are paid $0.65 an hour, the $0.52 is after deductions for food.
Their take home pay for working at the KYE plant is $2700 a year, or close to three times the national median.
No, it's not nearly as shocking a headline when you put things in perspective. Also, MS is auditing KYE as a direct result of this report. Since the report solely targeted Microsoft, instead of the half dozen other companies that have equipment made there, none of the other companies are bothering to do anything about it.
The report was extremely and obviously anti-Microsoft from the very beginning. There is not even the slightest hint of objectivity in the report - it's solely a "Look how Evil Microsoft is" without even bothering to take into account cultural and economic conditions in the area. One example: How many American companies give their employees an hour and a half for lunch? That's what they get at KYE. While conditions are by no means good, China is in the middle of an economic upswing, and the conditions at this particular factory are better than most, and it pays a lot better than most. If an employee can stand the shitty management, they can bank away three years worth of pay at another company in a single year at KYE.
In fact, if they changed their management culture they could probably keep regular employees for more than the six month average they get now, because that's the only real negative to this company. Unfortunately most companies in China have the exact same management culture, so going somewhere else doesn't help.
Having the freewill to choose that or not putting food on the table is hardly freewill.
That's the exact same free will we have in America, what's your friggin point?
Oh wait, sorry, we do have the option of leeching off our fellow man, effectively stealing from their hard work and giving nothing in return. Fortunately we've scaled that back a bit in most places.