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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>If Google was merely a Yellow Pages style service as it was previously then I'd be more sympathetic to the idea of distorted rankings favouring Google services but that's becoming less and less the typical user experience.

Well, I'm primarily agains the idea of giving a single, non democratically controlled non-international entity, so much power.

To the point where I don't care if Google is forced to stop innovating in being a "one stop shop" for the internet if that means more distributed sources and more distributed (even if lower quality and with fewer resources) innovation.

Sometimes, when it comes to society, it's best to have less technology more uniformly distributed than a single source of highly advanced technology.

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Do you think an organization like EU can effectively fine or regulate their way to a more uniform market though?

Google could partner with other companies to do integration in their search engine for those smart results but then they'd just be giving another company an unfair advantage.

I don't see how you could stop this without crippling the type of answers Google provides. Besides maybe offering open tools they could automously integrate with.

Google pushed for adding metadata so any web developer can add things like star ratings and pricing directly to SERPs. But the adoption has been limited and limited compared to a full custom integration with a web service they control.

But regardless Google is a monopoly that we can't really do much about. Plenty of people have tried to compete and failed so there will be some consequences of that.

Considering how important the tool is to the world I'm quite the opposite. I'd rather let Google have a few specialized subsites which they can dominate a few markets with ease, in exchange for not severely limiting the potential of their technology - a technology we are all stuck using for the foreseeable future.

>Do you think an organisation like EU can effectively fine or regulate their way to a more uniform market though?

Maybe or maybe not, but fining seems like a step in the right direction.

>I don't see how you could stop this without crippling the type of answers Google provides.

As I wrote above, I'm all for crippling them if that's what it takes. But turning them into some kind of public infrastructure is another way.

> But regardless Google is a monopoly that we can't really do much about. Plenty of people have tried to compete and failed so there will be some consequences of that.

The fine is focused on Google Shopping. I'd say the biggest competitors are Amazon and eBay.

While I'm unsure if the EU can effectively do something about Google as a search engine monopoly, I'm pretty sure Google can be beaten in the e-commerce sector.

Step by step, down the giants. Claiming the resolution of the matter in a single step is unrealistic.

> Step by step, down the giants. Claiming the resolution of the matter in a single step is unrealistic.

My concern is that even one step like the fine here will significantly chill their innovation with their search service in every category. As they will see adding any special advanced listings in search results as a big risk of being fined.

We're stuck with this giant so I'm not sure why you want to down it when there won't be comparable alternatives popping up in it's place.

This isn't just Google shopping being pushed further down the results ranking but how the shopping subsite is deeply integrated into the search results.

Which is why I said the proposed solution is regressing search engines back to simple directories which harms customers for some neglible gain for other small companies.

I guess we have very different concepts about innovation. First and foremost the term “service” as posed here seems too broad: in the years Google decided to change and extend what the given service is.

Exploiting your existing user base, in order to get traction for your next service, that in your opinion gives an added value, is not what I’d call innovation. If your new product or service is really innovative, then you don’t need this kind of tricks to get traction, users will come to you (because of the added value your new service gives to them).

The early Google was innovative, and won over the other search engines because of that.

If you are not able to get traction without this, then what you call innovation is not innovative, and you’re overestimating your product. For me (and apparently for the eu commission too), the rest is simple propaganda. Some find comfortable to believe it, probably because it’s profitable for them.

I don’t know what is the climate inside Google, but if this is able to significantly chill their “innovation”, then I think that they’re simply waiting for the next big thing in tech.

I actually found Google way better before it had all these integrated advanced features. It was technically never a "directory" though (like Yahoo ... Categories, or something?), it was a web search engine.

And it really sucks at web search today, compared to before (~10-15 years ago).

This is personal opinion of course but your argument depends on all this innovation always being an improvement to society. But Google innovates to improve its profits, which sometimes aligns with public interest, and sometimes not.

If it doesn't necessarily improve things for society, why would a company have a right to innovate despite everything else? Especially if you have to weigh it against the abuse of market dominance power to stifle competition (also deterring innovation, btw).

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