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Comment by mythz | Hacker News Reader

The anti-competitive practices you're talking about is not being able to decide what content gets displayed on your own website, what relevant information you're allowed to show Users in response to their search results and being forced to give your competitors more prominence. AFAIK this has never been written into law or ruled illegal before.

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The specifics are unimportant. What matters is that Google was using its dominance in one market to gain an advantage in a different market. That has been illegal for a long time.

When has this ever happened to a website before?

To my knowledge it hasn't. But that's irrelevant.

Of course it's relevant. There is no lock-in preventing you from visiting other Websites which are just a url or hyperlink away. When was Google Search ruled a website monopoly? What were the parameters? Who's defined the boundaries of what a search service can do and what relevant content they can provide? At what point should Google have known they've had to cede control of their own website and invest resources in giving their competitors more prominence?

What other websites need to be wary of the same ruling and at what point do they need to focus their efforts on giving their competitors virtual real-estate on their website at the expense of growing their company?

If you have more than 50% market share in a given market you're considered a monopoly. Although practically, these type of actions aren't usually taken until around 75% market share.

The EU doesn't do[0] Common Law (Case Law), like the US does, we have Civil Law here. It means precedence doesn't carry (as much) weight. It's a different legal system. It also means it has been written (codified) into law, unlike your previous comment states. You can read it in the article and links followed from there (it doesn't need to be written to specifically apply to websites).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Alternatives_to_com...

Be sure to also check out the coloured map at the top :)

[0] it's a bit more subtle, distinctions have blurred a little over time, either legal system adopted some parts of the other. see the wikipedia link for more details (especially the heading "Alternatives to Common Law systems")

In the US too.

The US just oddly decides not to enforce it, then the EU gets shit on for being anti-American when they correctly enforce things that are illegal in both the EU and US.

"The US just oddly decides not to enforce it"

They enforced it for Microsoft in 2001. Since then tech behemoth political donations have shot up.

> being forced to give your competitors more prominence

No, they are being forced to give their competitors equal prominence.

The press release literally says: "the Decision orders Google to comply with the simple principle of giving equal treatment to rival comparison shopping services and its own service"

Sounds a lot like deciding what programs are included in your operating system. Do you consider this materially different, and if so why?

You can easily go to another website if you want results from a different vendor. If you're searching on Google you'd expect results curated from Google, if you can get better, more relevant results else where, everyone can easily do so. I also wouldn't expect any of my Desktop Apps to be laced with content or functionality from competitive products.

Applying this line of reasoning, do you disagree with the EU ruling about browser choice that Microsoft had to comply with?

What line of reasoning? I don't think irremovable Desktop Apps and Websites are comparable or that they should be sanctioned the same way.

It didn't have to be a ballot box but I think users should be able to decide what default browser they want to use on first use. I'd prefer to only be install what browsers I want to use.

IMO Microsoft is just as hostile now, I can't uninstall Edge from Windows 10, I keep getting nagged to use Edge as my default browser, my preferences to never ask again are not honored. my defaults are lost on each upgrade, despite setting my default browser to Chrome the Windows Search box still opens up results in bing with Edge, I need to use my spam hotmail account to log into Windows 10, I tried using a local account but it broke everywhere that launched a Sign Up page which crashed after 1s of an empty screen, which I needed in order to get the latest version of WSL with the bug fix I needed. In the end I had to reinstall Windows 10 and adopt their stupid Internet account policy. Windows 10 has been the most user hostile OS I've used that I'm planning on switching to using a Windows 2016 Server OS on my next install.

I do consider this materially different.

From the Wikipedia summary of United States v. Microsoft Corporation[0], "Underlying these disputes were questions over whether Microsoft altered or manipulated its application programming interfaces (APIs) to favor Internet Explorer over third party web browsers, Microsoft's conduct in forming restrictive licensing agreements with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and Microsoft's intent in its course of conduct."

I feel like this detail is being lost in a lot of the comparisons I've seen made between Google now and Microsoft then. Google promotes their own services on their own website, sure. At the same time, they haven't changed Chrome to not load competing services. They have done nothing to prevent users from using competing search engines in Chrome. They don't prevent competing web browsers from loading Google sites. They don't force web sites that use Google ads to block competing browsers.

So the parallel doesn't work for me. The EU decided these were different markets, I disagree. I'm a user, I use Google to find things on the internet. I use other sites. I search Amazon directly from inside Chrome, I visit other sites without issue... I'm just not seeing the anticompetitive actions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

This has nothing to do with Chrome. It's entirely about the search engine and the results it gives.

(Though google does set up special APIs for Chrome first, like SPDY. But that's done in a responsible way.)

Twice wrong, doesn't make it right.

> AFAIK this has never been written into law or ruled illegal before.

Doesn't seem that different from the case against Microsoft over Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player?

US vs Microsoft was completely different.

I'm referring to Microsoft v Commission (EU) and related events.

Fair enough! I haven't read the details of that decision.

One was an operating that had a monopoly that was nearly impossible switch away from and was bundling software to destroy specific competitors.

The other is a web page with tons of competitors, many of which work well, deciding what their own computers after you specifically requested them to do so.

No, the point is that Google is using their dominance in search, which isn't easy to switch away from, to compete in price comparisons. Google just having a price comparison tool isn't the problem, it's when they include it as a part of search. Which is using their dominant position.

While whether you can switch might be important from a user standpoint it's not necessarily a factor from a market standpoint. It's more about how much power you have and how you use that power. It might be very easy to switch to Bing, but Google still have power over >90% of the search market.

How does starting a comments with blanket refutation help encourage open discussion? Why do people, including you start a comment with "No,"?

Type bing or duckduckgo in and you have switched, how is that hard?

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