We are talking about EU here, not US. In most of the European countries Google has market share of more than 95% (in my country too). It is often the only choice you have as far as pay per click advertising goes.
On a side note, 60%+ is considered a monopoly anyway.
There is no need to block Google. We can just keep fining them until they comply. If they refuse to pay the fines or comply, we will close their offices and order banks to stop money transfer to Google. As EU is huge revenue source to Google (unlike China where they were losing), Google will comply in seconds if that happens.
This is actually what most people commenting on Google's antitrust issues miss. The comments about how easy it is for people to change search engines is not relevant because it isn't even the issue. They cannot see forest from the trees.
Google's antitrust issues are not about the everyday user. Remember, you are not their customer. You are their product. The antitrust issues are about abuse towards other companies, ad networks and services. You may not care about this if you're selfish and just think about yourself, but the issue is very real.
Google is intentionally abusing their position to promote their own products and hide competitors. Yes, this thing matters. And not only are they promoting their own services over competitors, much of the data they use is scraped off those services. Great example is hotel, restaurant etc reviews on Google Maps. They are all taken from competitors services, and promoted way higher than those services in google search results. Google prohibits these things for other websites and penalizes them, but yet seem perfectly fine to do it themselves.
Another case in point is the exclusivity agreement in AdWords. If you want to use AdWords (and you often have to because it's the prominent player and they also own Doubleclick since long time ago), you cannot run your ads on competitors services. It is prohibited in the terms. That is just monopoly abuse.
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We are talking about EU here, not US. In most of the European countries Google has market share of more than 95% (in my country too). It is often the only choice you have as far as pay per click advertising goes.
On a side note, 60%+ is considered a monopoly anyway.
There is no need to block Google. We can just keep fining them until they comply. If they refuse to pay the fines or comply, we will close their offices and order banks to stop money transfer to Google. As EU is huge revenue source to Google (unlike China where they were losing), Google will comply in seconds if that happens.
This is actually what most people commenting on Google's antitrust issues miss. The comments about how easy it is for people to change search engines is not relevant because it isn't even the issue. They cannot see forest from the trees.
Google's antitrust issues are not about the everyday user. Remember, you are not their customer. You are their product. The antitrust issues are about abuse towards other companies, ad networks and services. You may not care about this if you're selfish and just think about yourself, but the issue is very real.
Google is intentionally abusing their position to promote their own products and hide competitors. Yes, this thing matters. And not only are they promoting their own services over competitors, much of the data they use is scraped off those services. Great example is hotel, restaurant etc reviews on Google Maps. They are all taken from competitors services, and promoted way higher than those services in google search results. Google prohibits these things for other websites and penalizes them, but yet seem perfectly fine to do it themselves.
Another case in point is the exclusivity agreement in AdWords. If you want to use AdWords (and you often have to because it's the prominent player and they also own Doubleclick since long time ago), you cannot run your ads on competitors services. It is prohibited in the terms. That is just monopoly abuse.