Google's response to the European Commission fine
blog.google
blog.google
"A number of US companies - including Oracle - published a joint letter addressed to Vestager this week in support of penalties against Google for “anticompetitive conduct.” It said: "As you near final decisions in the Shopping and Android cases, Google and its allies will no doubt continue to press through its lobbying and public relations machine the fiction that any adverse decision amounts to European 'protectionism'. "As U.S. based companies, we wish to go on record that enforcement action against Google is necessary and appropriate, not provincial. We have watched Google undermine competition in the United States and abroad. Google operates on a global scale and across the entire online ecosystem, destroying jobs and stifling innovation."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/27/google_hit_with_reco...
One wonders what NewsCorp or Oracle concerns are in ecommerce search, but then you remember that they had well publicized scuffles with Google.
The last record fine was against a US company, as were recent tax related fines, patterns are harder to refute.
The letter from Oracle is just one of them.
Ireland has a selfish interest in attracting tech companies, and the rest of the EU can't bring enough political leverage against them to change the legal structures that make Ireland preferable for headquartering.
Can you process that I am both: happy that Google is fined.
And also: it's a bit rich of Oracle to say that. Larry: "It's not enough that we win. Everyone else must lose!"
But losers are always gonna hate and pile on the winner. They wouldn't be making up their own fictions of Google's "evil" if they hadn't lost.
Are they gonna take responsibility for their failed business practices? Or keep blaming the Giant? By golly, if they were successful they'd have a mighty different view.
Corporations literally exist only to protect and grow their bottom line, and are engineered to reflexively throw everything else under the bus--employees, the environment, the general public, reason itself--to defend that goal.
Their statements will never come out and admit this, however, because it compromises that goal. Thus literally, literally everything corporations say in an official capacity is a lie, almost without exception. The subtext is always "we are doing this primarily because we believe it will help us make more money".
The best we can do in a capitalist society is create smart regulations that channel that inevitably self-serving motive to align as closely with what's good for society at large as possible.
http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/
"Staff concludes that Google's conduct has resulted - and will result - in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets. Google has strengthened its monopolies over search and search advertising through anticompetitive means..."
Their bosses, though, voted 5-0 to not take action as recommended.
If you would link them correctly, there wouldn't need to search again, but would be on the search results of that other site with their (usually better) results.
Also, considering that product search results are sponsored, usually the top results at product search are crap. There are three things that people usually prefer links to when they search for a product: 1. High quality product information - that's usually the website of the manufacturer. Amazon is not too bad in some cases but smaller retailers usually lack a lot of useful information. 2. Best offer - when you pay for being a top result on Google product search, then it's hard to claim you will be able to provide the best price. 3. Buyers feedback - sites that are larger usually have more prior buyers and thus more feedback. Google's very own ratings (which the scrape from other sites that allow them I guess) is usually crap compared to what you find on Amazon.
So basically, if Google would want to provide actual useful search results, this would just be a link to the manufacturers marketing site, a link to the best offer and/or the result page of a price-comparison site, and a link to Amazon and/or comparably large local retailers. Results based on who payed most is not what people usually want, don't try to argue that this is true.
If I wanted to search Amazon, I would have searched Amazon, not Google. The last thing I want is to search for some product on Google and get a list of search results pages from other companies as a response instead of a listing of the products I'm actually searching for. It'd be like if I searched for some random bit of information on Google and the top result was a link to the same search results page on Yahoo.
> usually the top results at product search are crap
According to the line from Google you quoted above, most of their users disagree with you on that. I'm one such user. I don't typically use Google's shopping results as the _only_ source of product information for me, but I do occasionally use them as one source.
You also seem to be misunderstanding what the links they show actually link to. Buyer feedback and product information for individual products are available on the landing page (from a third party site, I might add) you get to when you click on a link to a product. The main difference is that you get to the product page directly rather than having to go through _another_ search results page from a third party to find what you're looking for.
The OP isn't talking about Google linking to 'search results pages', but link to the actual product itself. You're already in agreement with them, so stop arguing :)
The only problem here is that Google seems to think that its mission is to setup a tollbooth on the internet rather than indexing information and just responding to search queries.
>According to the line from Google you quoted above, most of their users disagree with you on that. I'm one such user.
An advertising company says "Our users think our ads are awesome" - You'll have to excuse the people who don't take that seriously.
Really? It certainly sounds like that's what he was talking about:
> wouldn't need to search again, but would be on the search results of that other site
In any case, linking directly to the actual product is _already_ what Google does. So if that's the goal, then what's the issue?
> An advertising company says "Our users think our ads are awesome"
That's another thing about this ruling that I don't get. Google's "Product Search" results are essentially paid ads, and they're explicitly marked as such. (Example: https://imgur.com/m5rGqLa)
With this ruling, isn't the EU pretty much saying that Google isn't allowed to display ads on their search results pages, because those ads are displayed at the top of the page, thus "giving prominent placement to Google's own service"? That's ridiculous, right?
If such integrations are illegal under EU law, then in my opinion the law is harmful to consumers and needs to be changed. I'm not an EU citizen though, so I don't really have a say in the matter. I can only sit back and hope this ruling only results in the quality of Google's search results being gimped in the EU, and not in non-EU countries.
A lot of that is not a service provided by Google. They simply scrap data others have created and insert their ads. Its a sophisticated form of rent seeking. If you tried to do that with THEIR services they'd shut you down ASAP - e.g. If you ran a meta search engine which collected search results from all other search engines, google will immediately block your access once you got popular.
I'm totally for this fine, and hope that Google mends their ways. They do have a good search product that I enjoy using but promoting their unsuccessful services by integrating it with a successful search product is wrong and harms competition. I want the web to stay open, and Google's promotion of their closed platforms is troublesome. Unfortunately, Google spends a lot on lobbying and cozying up with the government, so I doubt we will see such enforcement in the US.
You are aware that the opposite applies too, right? That whoever doesn't want Google scrapping results can block their crawlers?
No, you don't, you have mistaken Google for something other than a private company. Only you've made that mistake arbitrarily, as evidenced...
> I'm totally for this fine, and hope that Google mends their ways. They do have a good search product that I enjoy using but promoting their unsuccessful services by integrating it with a successful search product is wrong and harms competition. I want the web to stay open, and Google's promotion of their closed platforms is troublesome. Unfortunately, Google spends a lot on lobbying and cozying up with the government, so I doubt we will see such enforcement in the US.
... Here. You are aware that Google search itself is closed, right? You either aren't or your grandstanding regarding the "open web" is completely empty words.
Of all the arguments in favor of this ruling I've read, this one is by far the weirdest.
The point was, 'whoever has the power, makes the rules'. Google skews search results whenever it wants to promote its services. Given Google's dominant position, this harms competition. The EU is addressing this.
>... Here. You are aware that Google search itself is closed, right? You either aren't or your grandstanding regarding the "open web" is completely empty words.
An open platform has absolutely nothing to do with the source code. For e.g. Linux would be an open platform even if you had no access to the source code. This is because you can run any software you want, poke at any and all bits in memory, call any API you want, extend the OS using documented APIs in any way you want, etc. OSX and Windows are open too, with some caveats relating to their app stores. iOS and Android are not open platforms.
Google is creating tightly integrated closed platforms where they control absolutely everything, and doing anything that is not "blessed" by them is automatically illegal and violates their TOS For e.g. If you came up with a better commenting system, you can't create an app that lets you watch youtube videos and comment using your own system. If you came up with a better stock ticker, you can't compete with google because typing 'apple stock quote' popups up their own service and there is no way to get that top spot. Such integrations combined with their dominant market position harms competition. Anyway, i've spent way too much time on this story so this will be my last comment. Need to get back to work ! :)
Your definition of open and closed is hilariously misguided, I see absolutely no reason or point in accepting it. And, as your entire argument hangs on that faulty definition...
"The commission said it did not object to the design of Google's generic search algorithms or to demotions as such, nor to the way that Google displays or organises its search results pages: "It objects to the fact that Google has leveraged its market dominance in general internet search into a separate market, comparison shopping."
I think it would be better if Google made it clearer that the shopping search was all adverts, but otherwise this seems idiotic. Every large tech company leverages its dominance in one area to compete in a different market.
> this seems idiotic. Every large tech company leverages its dominance in one area to compete in a different market.
Then they will continue to be fined for anti-competitive behaviour. Which is also illegal in the US, the US just doesn't enforce their existing laws.
It is "idiotic" that the US fails to enforce existing US law. It isn't "idiotic" that the EU does.
Why? making fines to large and forcing companies to pay them up to the point that it hurts them will result in a severe economic impact, which will destabilize te economy.
For real gross conduct people should be held responsible in the company, even to the point that they might be personally responsible. People need a vested intrest to not do this kind of behaviour.
Yeah, that's kind of the point. If it's not large enough to cause an economic impact then what good is it? If speeding fines were $10 and didn't subtract points from your license, I'd sure be speeding a lot more.
Your "speeding tickets" example demonstrates this beautifully. We all know people who need an externally imposed speed limit, a scalar number that is so OBVIOUSLY SILLY it doesn't even take into account primary safety factors such as the weather, surrounding traffic situation, vehicle condition etc (as drivers do instinctively). People who worship that number as the source of "safeness"... because some bureaucrat somewhere said so. These are sad, broken people; actually dangerous to be around when driving.
Put differently: a person who cares about the fines and "points deducted from their license" more than their own safety and self-preservation, is a great adept for the Darwin Awards. Applies to businesses equally.
Where speed limits are often arbitrary and I think rather useless to maintain safety, to say that also applies to anti-trust and monopoly regulations is a stretch. People tend to forget that the first of these sorts of laws grew up next to companies like Standard Oil and US Steel, companies so large they literally held a stranglehold not just on the people who did business with them, but even to a great extent on their competition. Who's to say Google isn't a monopoly? Not so very long ago with a few keystrokes Google changed the fortunes of hundreds if not thousands of media companies by cracking down on linking and changing how their algorithm worked. Whether or not you agree with their decision (I do, but that's besides the point) is irrelevant; the fact is that Google has the power to greatly influence the flow of traffic on the web, and this power is completely, 100% unchecked and rife with opportunities for abuse.
And as for your co-opting my speeding metaphor, it's also worth noting that while speeding itself isn't so awfully unsafe, plenty of other things that will cost you "points on a license" are also things like drunk driving, reckless driving, driving without insurance, driving vehicles that have damaged components, etc. in other words: things that not only affect your safety, but the safety of those around you.
EDIT: per the OneDrive argument on Windows, I think you might have a point - though Windows is pretty open to deep integration with competitive services like Dropbox or Google Drive, so my guess is that MSFT would just have to offer an easy way to uninstall OneDrive, maybe? (or at least disable it.)
It also doesn't know about most of the sites that actual Dutch price comparison sites (tweakers.net/pricewatch) know about, which always give me a better deal.
I'm not a fan of the shopping ads but I don't think anyone is mistaking these for anything other than what they - which is paid ads. Comparison sites, oth, in general don't do a good job of disclosure or even comparing prices.
"Tweakers.net brengt 24 uur per dag, 365 dagen per jaar informatie over technologie, consumentenelectronica en daaraan gerelateerde onderwerpen. De bezoekers van Tweakers.net hebben een bovengemiddeld groot budget voor de aankoop van hardware, software en consumentenelectronica. Om deze mensen te informeren over de laagste prijzen en beste aanbiedingen worden deze bijgehouden in de Pricewatch. In 2014 werd de Pricewatch door het Nederlandse publiek uitgeroepen tot Beste Vergelijkingssite. Op dit moment bestaat de database uit ruim 800.000 producten met 2.5 miljoen prijzen bij ruim 350 winkels. Heeft u een webshop en wilt u deze graag aansluiten bij de Pricewatch? Neem dan contact op met onze verkoopafdeling via pricewatch@tweakers.net of telefoonnummer 020-204 2133"
"Om de Pricewatch actueel te houden vervallen handmatig toegevoegde prijzen na automatisch na drie dagen. Bedrijven met een Pricewatch Manager abonnement kunnen een onbeperkt aantal prijzen toevoegen."
The problem is the EU 'protecting' these commercial enterprises by fining Google 2.24b euro. A bit high and bit unfair because google at least discloses the links as sponsored unlike the sites being protected.
One example are reviews (as in "{some product} review") - I often find that my search results are biased towards german reviews while I'd really prefer to see international reviews from the people most qualified to do so.
[1] I've been doing this since forever. The earliest reference I could find for the feature is from 2004. Incredible: http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/769/google_goto_generic_engli...
If I am to do a proper search while at home, on my desk-lap-top I use DuckDuckGo or go straight to Amazon, Argos, Maplin, etc websites depending on the item category.
What they really want is for the retailers to pay for the privilege of having their products at the top of the page.
-Microsoft 20 years ago
Java applets distributed via the web (executed by Netscape Navigator) had the potential to displace Win32 as a preferred API, thus making Linux and other OS's able to compete with Windows in terms of application offering.
Some OEMs wanted to sell Windows computers with Netscape Navigator preinstalled, because it was way better. Microsoft told them they wouldn't sell them any Windows license at all if they did it, forcing their hand.
Microsoft further preinstalled their own incompatible version of Java, to try and make Java apps non cross-platform. They did the same with Internet Explorer's own incompatible version of web standards, when web apps started to gain popularity.
Windows' monopoly was maintained in part by Microsoft purposefully spending resources in actions that only harmed Windows users (and consumers in general).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xECUrlnXCqk
The comment you are replying to is showing by way of parallel to Microsoft that this polemic from Google is an absurd defense: your entire comment is something I would imagine the person you are replying to agrees with, which is precisely why they made the comment they did, as it demonstrates in a visceral way how absurd it is to be trying to give Google a free pass just because their product is useful.
You seem to be going around this thread making the same mistake in multiple contexts, such as when you replied to me in this other linked thread, which makes me wonder if you are paying much attention before commenting :/.
Let that person reply then? I'm refuting the parallel between the two cases, even if you don't see it.
Microsoft prevented other companies from selling computers with Netscape Navigator preinstalled.
Whether it comes through the Google PR machine or not, people are still getting the key message: Google has been fined for playing unfairly. Most people don't read past the headline, and defending against these allegations still just makes the allegations stickier in the minds of public; it strengthens the association between "Google" and "unfair" in the public's psyche.
This article has <200 comments, while the other one has >400; this is likely a significant factor in the falling ranking, in addition to the age.
I also believe that upvote velocity is weighted more heavily than upvote quantity, but I could be wrong there.
[1] http://blog.datadive.net/which-topics-get-the-upvote-on-hack...
We truly live in the age of spinning, of euphemisms, where words lose all their meaning. All-pervasive advertising, the most insidious technique of consumer capitalism, is now an idealistic connecting of people (why, rather than fining us indeed they should be thanking thanking us for that, they seem to say). Complete invasion of privacy and control over content and information reaching the person is "enhancing the user experience", etc etc.
You'll see people baffled by this decision and generally happy with the service and products google offers.
It's just a reminder to remember that what doesn't work for you may be pure bliss for other people.
It's still a bad thing.
I've read through the other thread, I couldn't find a comment that agrees with "connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both."
The thing is, personally I prefer getting integrated results from Google's
other search services when I do a Google search. I like getting Google Maps
results when I search for a location, I like getting Google Flights results
etc. When I do a Google search I am not just using it as a simple website
search. I want it to use it to search the whole Google suite of services.
If they are forced to stop doing this it will make my search experience
worse for me.
Random, maybe silly idea. Maybe they could start providing two search
streams. One would just be a simpler website search while the other would
be a more involved google services search as well as a general website
search. This way search users could explicitly say that they want to see
direct integrated results from the whole Google ecosystem.>I prefer getting integrated results from Google's other search services when I do a Google search.
One example of "other search services" is Google Shopping. It's the retail advertisers that sponsor their ecommerce buying links to Google Shopping. Hence, the "advertisers connection to users".
Btw, there are also other posters making similar comments about the convenience of Google "connecting users to advertisers". Like the previous example, you won't see it if you're looking for that exact phrasing.
E.g. another comment by cyxxon: "Currently Google's services just so damned conveniently integrated": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14644100
That example "connects me, the user, to the advertisers".
Seriously, without playing the game of "words are anything I want them to mean just to win an argument"... what would _you_ call the mechanism of those Google Shopping results? <Genuinely confused here.>
But did you want to be connected to the advertisers, i.e. those who paid Google to give their product a better placement, or did you want to be connected to the sellers, ranked by how desirable their product is to you?
I'm using the Google Shopping as it's deliberately designed: connect me to the advertisers.
I think the confusion is that regular search results (e.g. search for "how to concatenate a string in PHP?") is a "pull" mechanism in which Google spiders webcrawls and scrapes from pages like StackOverflow. You expect some sort of pagerank curation without requiring StackOverflow paying money to Google. Nevertheless, Stackoverflow answers often show up at the top.
On the other hand, the Google Shopping is a "push" mechanism where the advertisers pay to place their links there. The advertiser/sponsor model is basically how all the major comparison shopping sites work.
I don't know of any reputable/reliable price comparison site that uses a "pull" mechanism to scrape prices across multiple retailers that covers most products. If it does "pull" price data, it tries to derive income via techniques like affiliate url links for commissions. Camelcamelcamel uses a pull mechanism but it only scrapes Amazon and not the other retailers like Best Buy, Newegg, etc.
To turn this around, let me ask you... what price comparison website connects me to sellers instead of advertisers? (A site like Ebay connects me to "sellers" but doesn't include results from multiple major retailers such as Amazon.)
"Not to be confused with Double-talk.
Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words."
Anyhow, I like google shopping (when I click the google shopping tab, not when im actually on the search tab), I can trust it more than other comparing sites. Also just like other comparing sites, it doesn't have all sources.
The EU has long used 'anti trust fines' as a way of levying tariffs against US companies.
And that while the reality is that there is a list of European companies/kartels receiving high anti trust fines as well for their behaviour.
The "problem" is that this never receives any interest in the states which only contributes to this blurred image that only US companies are getting fined. That is frankly untrue.
FWIW, companies in the US have long used 'anti trust complaints' as a means of harming companies they can't compete with (e.g. Microsoft, back in the day).
Doesn't alter the fact that Netscape was incapable of competing with Microsoft (in fact I think you sort of made my point, there) once the latter got their arses into gear.
Edited: Wow! The "Viewable With Any Browser" campaign site is still up, in 2017. I wonder if they're keeping it handy for the forthcoming Webkit monopoly ...
No-one will ever know.
Perhaps we're meaning different things by the word 'compete'?
"We can't compete, let's make an anti-trust complaint"
"I can't run as fast as Bolt, so I'll shoot him"
So, yeah in the sense that a five year old Rocky vs Ivan Drago in a boxing match is a competition technically. But no one can honestly say it's really a competition, as in there's any spirit of competition.
U.S. v Microsoft makes it pretty clear. MS'es strategy was break the law and do anything to win. Then it was weather the lawsuit and win or lose, they had years to position IE as the dominant product. So losing hardly mattered they still got what they wanted.
What could Netscape actually do to counter all that? They were practically bystanders in this nearly as much as my grandmother was. Such was MS'es power in the 90's.
Netscape could compete with IE. Netscape couldn't compete with the entire MS empire being dedicated to destroying them.
MS played hardball and were willing to do anything to gain nearly complete dominance in the market. A lot of their strategy was clearly anti-competitive and anti-consumer. It's not even a debate. See U.S. v Microsoft. Netscape couldn't compete with that sort of scorched earth strategy. And it took Google and Mozilla years to make a dent in that and MS had to help by letting their market dominance stagnate for over half a decade and causing endless irritation for a generation of developers who are always going to treat an MS browser as a second class citizen.
So yeah, great for MS, they beat Netscape. But they couldn't beat Google or Mozilla and that's the most recent battle, so the one that actually matters.
I fully expect a future superpower to have strict rules in some new area, say China will only take English-language/law services from legal firms in any country if they are zero carbon.
So why the heck would you not support an action that stops a giant corporation from stiffling the most important mechanism of capitalism?
I think at some point in the discussion, some people have tried to redefine "monopoly" as "state-sanctioned monopoly" and declare everything else fair game as long as the evil government is not involved... Apparently you can get surprisingly far before the logic breaks down.
Because it's not the government's job to unclog the market. It's the entrepreneur's opportunity to disrupt the market and kick Google's ass.
Capitalism is inherently anti-competitive. Larger established companies have more power than the idealized "entrepreneur" that libertarians like to posit. If a competitor appears they can simply force them to shutdown, via dumping, via legal harassment, or simply by virtue of being much larger and being able to do everything more efficiently and with larger margins. Government regulation is needed to prevent monopolies. This is self-evident.
There are multiple search engines providing the same service that Google does and the cost of switching is so negligible as to be almost non-existent.
While I generally appreciate the EU's approach towards protecting the consumer's best interests, this just reeks of making up excuses to extort money from a highly successful company just because they can get away with it.
Do you have anything at all to back up that claim? It seems to me the EU applies these fines fairly equitably between US and EU companies.
What's pure bliss for some people might also be dangerous and cancerous for society. Segregation was "pure bliss" for lots of folks.
You'll also see people (me) baffled by this decision and generally disgusted by the services Google offers.
Saying "yes, but in this particular edge-case, my actions will be beneficial to society" is a pretty old way to do spins.
Also, as I've said in a different thread, the main problem is not with google's users but the amount of control Google has over 3rd parties (in the case price comparison sites). Of course it's convenient for the users, but's that not the point.
People were very happy indeed with Microsoft products. Back when Netscape Navigator was better than Internet Explorer in all respects, people were very happy with NN too, and would have been happier if they could have bought Windows computers in which the software preinstalled by the OEM included Netscape. Do you know why they couldn't? MS told the OEMs "you put NN on your computers, you don't get any more Windows licenses at all".
People were also happy with the Java applets NN could execute, but MS made its own incompatible version of Java so that they wouldn't be cross-platform. Same with their version of web standards in IE.
All this is publicly documented by the courts, including the internal communications in Microsoft about it being a deliberate strategy to preserve Windows' monopoly. So, please, don't go up in arms to defend that cause, or imply that history made them justice.
> I'd encourage you (and everyone) to read the comments in the other thread happening today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643712
> You'll see people baffled by this decision and generally happy with the service and products google offers.
> It's just a reminder to remember that what doesn't work for you may be pure bliss for other people.
Read that, then read my comment, and then read your comment... it makes no sense at all. The person I replied to was defending Google using what I consider to a bullshit argument: using the apparent benefits of the monopoly to defend its existence; this (bad) argument also applies to Microsoft.
In my post, I demonstrated that if that posted truly believed that, then they had better be prepared to defend Microsoft as well. Then you come out of nowhere and try to attack me, as if I was the one making the argument, rather than replying to it? WTF... I absolutely think that both Microsoft and Google are clearly abusive.
This is particularly interesting and annoying as you seem to be going around this thread making the exact same mistake in multiple contexts. As an example, in reply to this other comment from someone else trying to compare the PR spin from Google to that of Microsoft.
It doesn't apply is what I'm saying.
> In my post, I demonstrated that if that posted truly believed that, then they had better be prepared to defend Microsoft as well.
You didn't, because your argument was based on the false premise that MS got in trouble "for having the gall to believe that web browsers should be free" or, as you detail now, that monopolies shouldn't exist and that their benefits aren't enough of a reason for them to exist. Being a monopoly isn't what got MS in trouble, harming consumers to protect that monopoly from competing OS's is what did. There's no need to "defend the existence of a monopoly", because monopolies aren't illegal.
I don't care about your personal attacks. This is a website for discussion, not pissing contests.
Next horror story to come to your monitors over the next 5 years is monetising on the below:
I search for "Item A". One week later I purchase "Item A". 2 days later Google reaches out to the retailer claiming $ for sending me to that specific retailer.
They will not reconsider unless it hurts them more than when they don't act this ruthless. Therefore: needs a heavier fine still :D Crime and exploiting monopolies must not pay.
Still it's not nearly as nonsensical as this case in which a website operator is being fined billions for not featuring other website some more.
And I'm thankful that the all-pervasive Google behemoth is subject to some regulations, thank you very much.
You seem to confuse having never read PR releases with still being outraged by their BS.
Something being familiar doesn't make it right -- or means that only people that have never seen it would ever be enraged by it.
For pointing out "nonsensical" stuff this was a very nonsensical argument. Not even wrong.
You seem to confuse having valid concerns vs. making assumptions.
Calling a PR release BS without any fact is illogical at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.
Google wants to give the best search results possible, and it obviously has hooks into it's own shopping database that allow it to show targeted results.
A logical conclusion would be to force Google to open up its API, so that internal customers and external customers would be competing on the same playing field, rather than just complaining about search result orders.
Citation needed. Why would Google want to give "the best search results possible" over other concerns (e.g. manipulating tests results to boost paid advertisers or its own properties) as it has been known to do?
Because that is what they claim, and to call somebody a liar requires evidence, not unfounded accusations.
I suggest you read your own post again. Project much? Google's PR statement is somewhat based in fact. I'm saying that I generally believe public statements made that are decently substantiated.
When you're the one saying that I'm naive or just gaping in disbelief, the burden of proof is on YOU to give reasons why the statements are at fault and why their reasoning is wrong. This is truly projecting at its finest.
First, you've got it backwards: the burden on proof is to them for putting up such a claim (generally, to those putting up any claim), not to those who dispute it.
Besides, we have a long history of documented foul behavior by Google in search results. In fact this very story is based on a fine ordered because of this kind of behavior.
In social media (e.g. against FB, maybe), but what competition does Google have for search?
Neither Bing nor anything like DDG matter.
They have less market share, true, because Google has a better product. Your argument seems to be that Google doesn't bother to have a better product (in search), because Google has all the market share, because Google has a better product.
(a) Google has a better product (in search) to which they had no real competitor for 17+ years.
(b) it remains better than those non-competitors even though Google has decreased its quality over time (worse results and more ads and BS)
(c) whether it copies/embeds third party stuff or not plays little into it. Nobody would switch to Bing just for those , after comparing the respective search quality, which is still better for Google.
So my argument is:
Google doesn't bother improving its search results -- on the contrary it lets them somewhat decline over time too -- because it has all the market share and better results than the competition.
If you are 80 points (fictional unit for illustrative purposes) better than the competition, you can let it slip to 70 or even 40 points better, and people will still use you.
There is an interesting parallel to make here with the Soviet Union: they used to set up puppet states which were nominally sovereign, independent, "people's republic", etc, while in practice were obviously just colonies.
I guess extremely powerful institutions founded on abusive practices end up having to cover up their abuse, and an effective way is to confuse the common person into thinking that maybe they're not that bad after all.
Another tactic is to dress your institutions with good causes as much as possible. You could see this in Google I/O, they often used examples such as curing cancer as applications of their AI infrastructure.
If your institution is 10% good and 90% bad, you can downplay your bad acts and loudly campaign about your good doing and you may be able to shift the public perception of your monopolistic institution to look more like 70% good, 30% bad and win the support of majority of the people, which usually have a neutral stance.
So just like "wars to spread democracy" when it's just oil/control of land/etc?
You have provided exactly zero (0) examples of this happening - just accusations. You accuse "tech giants" (whatever that means) of being abusive and deliberately confusing the common person, then you bring up Google's AI infrastructure as an "institution" dressed up in good causes.
When you have examples or really anything besides a huge bias and wild accusations, please contribute to the conversation. Your comment adds exactly nothing except for letting all of us know you don't like large tech companies.
Examples of rhetoric from those companies where they do the opposite of what they say: they often claim "you [the user] are in control". For instance
1. https://privacy.google.com/# ("put you in control") 2. https://www.facebook.com/facebook/info ("make the world more open and connected")
While it's debatable what "in control" is and what "open and connected" means, they make a bold claim without revealing the subtlety of the topic.
Not being honest about user data collection in NSA PRISMA is not exactly putting the user in control.
Google has a track record of deprecating services that were used by a sizable user base, such as Google Reader or Picasa. Shutting these down without even giving them out as open source or providing some migration path is not really letting the users be in control.
Google's core strategy is shifting towards suggestions, away from search. Page and Brin said this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpjOZGxKhRM&feature=youtu.be While it could be argued that suggestions just create assistance like a personal secretary does, Google doesn't just assist on demand, it proactively suggests (and will do more of this, according to Page and Brin), and also shapes users' perception of reality (through Google Search results, which is the topic of the fine). So an entity has pervasive information about a person, does proactive suggestions and shapes their perception of reality is not exactly what I would call a mere assistant. I would compare that role to parenthood, which is consistent with Google's strategies: to know more about you than you know yourself, and to take care of you (which is aligned with their "Don't be evil" / "Do the right thing" motto. It seems they genuinely believe they are benevolent). That is, arguably, Google in control.
Now onto example 2, Facebook has long said it makes the world more open and connected. The mere fact that Facebook holds massive amounts of relevant content locked up behind a login wall means content is not accessible to search engines. This is the exact opposite of an "open" scenario. It's also debatable what they mean by "connected". It sounds like "people connected to each other", but in practice it is "people connected to Facebook", and incidentally also connected to each other. If their goal was to connect people to each other, they would pursue P2P, mesh networks (e.g. https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ is one implementation), etc that allow local communities to connect with each other and with the external world despite the lack of internet infrastructure. In practice, their internet.org program is widely known to have dropped net neutrality when it was implemented in India and other countries, favoring Facebook's walled garden. This is the opposite of open and connected (e.g. it eliminates interaction with other people on different social networks like forums, Reddit, etc). They have plans to provide internet to regions that lack internet infrastructure through drones and satellites (http://www.computerworld.com/article/2855979/why-google-and-...) but the priority here seems to be getting those people connected to Facebook first, and then connected to other people. Cheaper and quicker solutions could be implemented simply with phones and P2P, allowing people to connect to each other first, and share data in a gossip style which is also scalable.
So there you go, two examples at least. It should be enough to confirm that I am contributing to the conversation, and I'd appreciate if no ad hominen comments are made, they just distract.
You're begging the question. Define tech company and giant. You're defining the term by itself, which is a great usage of circular logic.
> 1. https://privacy.google.com/# ("put you in control") 2. https://www.facebook.com/facebook/info ("make the world more open and connected")
Google allows you to control any information you decide to share with it, and gives you a dashboard where you can see what information it uses. It shutting down systems that it no longer deems profitable is not putting you out of control - you cannot control Google, and it's not required to give you alternatives to its systems. It does allow you to export all data you have uploaded into it.
> That is, arguably, Google in control.
That is arguably, not. You're debating semantics here and saying that you're the sole valid arbiter and true interpreter of Google's statements. I assert that you're not. Our arguments are equally valid.
> Cheaper and quicker solutions could be implemented simply with phones and P2P...
In your opinion. Facebook has a set of constraints - just because they're prioritizing certain other priorities or technical solutions to lack of connectivity and openness doesn't mean that they're lying about their priorities.
> I'd appreciate if no ad "hominen" comments are made, they just distract.
First, it's spelled hominem. Misspelling a logical fallacy is on the same order as misspelling idiotic - it makes it very difficult to take either your arguments or your point seriously.
Point out exactly one instance where I disparaged somebody's character or background as a reason for the invalidity of their argument, rather than a lack of logic in their discussion. Your introducing of an supposed ad hominem attack is baseless and a red herring, designed to distract from the basic weakness and invalidity of your argument.
> When you shop online, you want to find the products you’re looking for quickly and easily. And advertisers want to promote those same products.
No, Google: advertisers don't want to promote the products I am looking for. Advertisers want to promote the products they want to sell. They may happen to be the ones I'm looking for, but probably they are not; probably I don't even want to buy anything and you still want to show me ads.
I for one don't want that. I like startups. Let them do the shopping comparison. Let them do all kinds of stuff. Don't let the giants swallow everything.
Really Google? I personally remember the advent of adsense and their initial ultra simple text-only ads being a huge revolution in advertising as a whole and a huge improvement in user friendliness. Now it's suddenly better to have images and extra stuff thrown in there.
Pretty soon, it will be even better to have some animated and interactive simians in them.
"not favoring any particular seller"? If it pays, it's on the front page. Are you seriously telling me that somebody who has paid nothing still can get on the front page competing with others who paid?
I don't trust you, Google.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-14/google-ge...
Note that this is far from the end on this story. But it just shows the sheer scale out of which EU countries are being "optimized" out of tax revenue. Add the monopoly abuse to the mix, and they have every right to make sure the law is respected.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp_v_Commission
(On a side note, I was employed by MS for a couple of years during that time, and remember clearly how every new feature was being inspected to ensure whether it followed EU requirements, on top of compliance requirements imposed earlier by FTC in the U.S.)
Google's press release seems to avoid addressing the latter point. The closest they come is pointing out that Amazon also has a monopoly advantage, which doesn't seem like a strong argument.
Seems to be a thin line between "convenient integrations" and big players reducing choice/competition. I realize I'm not the average consumer but I'll clamor for choice/competition every single time.
I'm asking this seriously. When they pulled out of China, China blocked them, so they effectively lost. But Europe's countries do not block websites. Google could just pull out of those countries, continue to localize content for those countries' languages, and the users, page views, ad revenue wouldn't go anywhere. And those countries wouldn't be able to lay a finger on Google in terms of fines.
Why would investors be happy of Google catering to a market that has only expenses but no profit or hope for future profit due to regulatory reasons.
I guess EU locals would enjoy the ad-free experience...
Sure they do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Denmark
But when they are abusing their power for greed reasons and the government punishes them, then they whine. Hypocrites.
Google claims that the success of Ebay and Amazon prove that they haven't been anti-competitive, right?
But I think Google just couldn't help itself.
How could you not?
You have the consensus, world dominating search engine, and you just have to slightly tweak it to every so slightly support your shopping platform.
It just seems way too easy to do.
One small adjustment means $4 billion more next year, I mean, how could you not do it?
As an anecdote, I have never trusted Google's product results in the top bar. It just all seemed to easy to fudge the results to me.
So each search result could have had this carousel.
BNP, a french bank, was fined 8.9 B$ for operations run outside the US but with countries on which the US had an embargo.
This is seen as a bad thing, because beyond the consumers are left with an unbeatable giant. Unlike normal market leaders, however, this giant doesn't need a superior product, but only apply leverage (given by their other positions).
This is the very essence of anti-trust / monopoly laws. Competition is a good thing.
Things change when you are a monopoly - ie. you have more than 50% of market share (maybe it's more than 50%, I don't know EU threshold) - then special rules apply - in general you can't use your monopoly position to control other markets.
Prompting to download Chrome may be against EU law. They could give a list of modern browsers if detected an old one for example. I actually don't understand why are they not forced to change it just like Microsoft was few years back?
This law is in power to avoid single company gaining total control.
We won't miss you
"How to Be Silicon Valley": http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html
"Why Startups Condense In America": http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html
Any examples please?
Most companies that are on those lists have also strong EU presence.
http://www.impact-north-america.com/french-search-api-startu...
It's natural for companies to be drawn towards places that have less restrictions on businesses. It's to be expected, but that doesn't mean less restrictions is good for the society.
Does the U.S., with its Electoral College, really want to go there? This strikes me as throwing stones from a glass McMansion.
</presumption alert>
More to the point: unhindered, direct-democracy is rarely a good system as it tends to devolve into "majority rule". The case for appointed officials is neither new nor in and of itself undemocratic.
Reminder: the EU's unemployment rate is twice as high as the US'.
The point is that you're playing with words.
Moreover, you have to factor in things like healthcare, life expectancy, literacy rates, access to education, danger involved in unemployment, crime rates, unemployment pensions, etc if you want to make a useful decision as to which of the two systems is more dysfunctional than the other.
-=EDIT=- : viz "cherry-picked metrics", the quality of a job market is more than just the proportion of people employed. Let's not forget other relevant factors:
- job stability
- employee protection
- workplace hazards & injury compensation
- vacation & sick leave
- retirement pensions
- mandated employee benefits (transportation, remote-work assistance, etc.)
- maternity / paternity leave
- etc
And have the possibility of seeing their life savings evaporate and facing financial ruin when paying for this health care.
Old articles, but I don't imagine it has changed all that much;
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/30/costs-of-delivering-babies-va...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31052665
That does not seem reasonable to me.
What seems reasonable for maternity stay is it being totally free.
This is so funny. IIRC what Republicans in the USA are arguing is that the new health care plan that they want to pass gives "access" to healthcare to everyone, as long as they are "willing" to pay for it.
I have access to a space flight sure, the only thing stopping me is money.
But yes, they certainly did.
Appart from Standard Oil AT&T and - in theory - Microsoft come to mind.
Now US antitrust efforts seem to be pretty much non-existent, even though they may be needed more than ever. I don't see that happening anytime soon in the current climate.
So, the EU hiting companies, which behave badly regardless where such companies are located is a very good thing in my book.