Does Google harm local search rivals? EU antitrust regulators ask
reuters.com
reuters.com
So we just end up with arbitrary enforcement of the rules based on which companies the EU is angriest at.
You want the best answer and Google was not the best one for local for example. But they stuffed it there because the could. When competition is bankrupt or no one enter the space because Google will not rank you fairly then the problem is bigger.
Like hotel bookings, do we know if they are best for shoppers or best for Google's bottom line?
with 95% market share come responsibilities.
Sounds like a business opportunity. If the market isn’t being well served, it would seem that someone might try to serve it. You know, like maybe TripAdvisor or Booking.com or Expedia or the numerous similar companies.
We are basically saying that nobody will enter the search business because Google is too good? That doesn’t make any sense. Nobody is compelled to use Google. Every browser lets users choose alternatives. That people don’t is probably because they think Google does a pretty good job for their needs. If that isn’t true, then it should be realistic for a competitor to make it better. IBM owned computing until they didn’t — nobody thought competing with IBM was a high percentage play, but people did.
If the Europeans want to make some big tech, then perhaps making the investment, M&A, and taxation environment more favorable is a good place to start. Capital gains taxes are so high that there isn’t a huge amount of incentive for moon-shot investments in Europe. Employment law (in France at least,) is so Byzantine that there is a real fear of hiring fast and scaling quickly because the consequences of a misstep are hugely expensive. Investors in Europe look for high percentage 2x companies to fund rather than making big, bold bets on 100x companies. One of the reasons is that you have a tax structure that punishes success so the risk-reward ratio favors safer investments. There is money in Europe, but much of it is through government programs that require government friendly business plans and friends in high places to even be considered. And the money that those programs do provide, it certainly isn’t US-level. It’s extremely rare to raise €50 million in Europe, but it happens all the time in the US.
It’s the indefinite pessimism of Europe that’s the root of it. See the book Zero to One for a great explanation of that concept. Google isn’t the problem. It’s a symptom. Look at DailyMotion as a case study. The French government blocked the sale to Yahoo — which would have been a huge payday for the founders and investors — a payday they would have, in the tradition of Silicon Valley, could have been used to start angel or VC investing. (Although the original founders sold to France Telecom for a relative pittance, and France Telecom has the innovation level of a can of peas. So it’s possible to say that the sell to Yahoo wouldn’t have made any ripples in terms of creating new angel investors.) Instead DailyMotion, rather than becoming Yahoo’s YouTube, languished into near obscurity compared to YouTube.
https://m.france24.com/en/20130501-france-minister-montebour...
Vivendi finally bought DailyMotion in 2015 at a valuation far below its 2013 levels.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2015/04/07/dailymo...
The point of the story is the socialist government of France cared more about some misguided nationalism rather than actually creating an environment for innovation, business and growth. Even in France, YouTube is far bigger than DailyMotion and it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with Google being anti-competitive, but everything to do with this petty provincial bullshit common with European government ministers.
Are most people still going to search for price comparison sites when it's right there on a Google tab? Are most people aware that tab may be ad only, when Google have constantly done their utmost to disguise ads, "highlighting" them in almost invisible colours?
Not a very compelling business opportunity to enter a market where 90% of the clicks never get outside Google. Half of those who were doing fine in those niches are forgotten, or closed. Just because some search monopoly decided it wanted to grab all those other pies too.
Europeans love their royal families. They could easily depose the if they didn't.
If the EU does not strike that down, it will provide a template for resolving many of these commercial result complaints in a similar fashion.
That what happens when the unofficale mandate is to counter the success of US tech companies in the eurozone: first endow the commission with broad enforcement powers, then pursue every frivolous complaint.
Come to think about it I've built an image search engine recently, maybe I should lodge a complaint about Google for their images "vertical" search function. This whole thing is ridiculous.
There would be unrest, rioting, insurrection, and finally, civil war. Europe would be torn apart, the economy reduced to primitive agriculture. The European people will offer their prettiest daughters to Page and Brin, draped in blue, red, yellow and green veils to win back the favour of their distant and angry masters.
The difference is that US antitrust laws require the consumer to be harmed. I think it's pretty easy to make the argument that everyone uses Google, not because they are compelled to, but because they want to because Google is better than the competition. Consumers are better off with the superior product that Google provides.
On the other hand, EU antitrust laws let them attack companies just for being big. This seems ridiculous to me because, often times, a company is big because consumers prefer it. Having a 'hobble the leader' economy necessarily hurts the consumers that want the better product from the bigger company.
A "consumer protection" organization, huh? I do wonder how these lobbying organizations are even legal.
It's not the fine that's crippling, it's the changes that must be made. Google might make 20100-like profits in EU
Just like China can be upset with Wikipedia. Wikipedia can tell them to pound sand.
They could certainly rationally abandon the EU market if the fines continue to outpace what the entire EU search market is worth in profit. If you're Google and you can stay somewhere close to break-even on the fines, it's worth staying in the market just to suppress potential competition.
The ideal solution however is the for the US to respond by targeting EU companies, for example Volkswagen and Deutsche Bank (soon to be nationalized as it's collapsing) as two they've already very clearly gone after.
The fines for VW were at the country level, and besides the usual protectionism going on (one of the German states holds a blocking minority in VW by law, go figure) Germany also has a different approach to fines than the US, with much less emphasis on punitive damages.
It made consumers lives better, as well as business' lives. The only one losing in there were other shopping comparison sites, but no regulations were broken, yet they still had to pay billions, and the EU /didn't even/ bother telling them what they could change to fix the issue, just that they should do something about it.
The whole "follow regulations" excuse is complete bullshit.
They can respect the EU regulation, stop the crap in the search and Android and continue making money from the products they sell to enterprises. They will lose some profits but the products that are respecting the laws will continue making money.
That shows you that it's not about "respecting" regulation. It's about shoving it in their face and forcing them to comply.
I think the idea is simple, do web search, don't promote your video,maps, lanugages,services , don't add special code for Google products/services , and stop prompting people to install Chrome if they search with other browsers.
Why? They can leave the EU without IP blocks.
The antitrust cases were lost for a reason.
The ironic thing is that eventually, the EU will push out US tech but it will not be replaced with Euro tech. It will be replaced with Chinese tech and good luck to Vestager on squeezing one single penny out of Xi.
This is a fantasy, or more likely a projection of your own newly awakened jingoistic tendencies.