Google loses EU court battle over €2.4B antitrust fine
politico.eu
politico.eu
>The Court of Justice said Google’s practice of favoring its own shopping search results over rival services “was discriminatory.” The ruling can't be appealed.
>Judges said that EU law forbids behavior that prevents “the maintenance or growth of competition in a market in which the degree of competition is already weakened, precisely because of the presence of one or more undertakings in a dominant position.”
(those rules only only apply to online shoppers inside EU)
In the settlement Amazon is put into a probation for 5 years.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_...
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With respect to the marketplace seller data, Amazon commits to refrain from using non-public data relating to, or derived from, the activities of independent sellers on its marketplace, for its retail business that competes with those sellers. This would apply to both Amazon's automated tools and employees that could cross-use the data from Amazon Marketplace, for the purposes of retail decisions. The relevant data would cover both individual and aggregate data, such as sales terms, revenues, shipments, inventory related information, consumer visit data or seller performance on the platform. Amazon commits not to use such data for the purposes of selling branded goods as well as its private label products.
In relation to the Buy Box Amazon commits:
- to apply equal treatment to all sellers when ranking their offers for the purposes of the selection of the winner of the Buy Box;
- and in addition, to display a second competing offer to the Buy Box winner if there is a second offer that is sufficiently differentiated from the first one on price and/or delivery. Both offers will display the same descriptive information and provide for the same purchasing experience. This will enhance consumer choice.
Lastly, regarding Prime Amazon commits:
- to set non-discriminatory conditions and criteria for the qualification of marketplace sellers and offers to Prime;
- to allow Prime sellers to freely choose any carrier for their logistics and delivery services and negotiate terms directly with the carrier of their choice;
- not to use any information obtained through Prime about the terms and performance of third-party carriers, for its own logistics services. This is to ensure that carriers' data is not flowing directly to Amazon's competing logistics services.
The commitments would remain in force for five years. Their implementation would be monitored by a monitoring trustee who would report regularly to the Commission.
Eh, I hope they re-investigate then because it still happens in September 2024, even inside EU.
Maybe a better example where the search is for "e-book color" and the listing for the Paperwhite doesn't match either "e-book" or "color", so it's not ranking high because it's matching the search terms well with the titles but seemingly because of something else: https://i.imgur.com/BoUjPPv.png
That doesn't seem at least a tiny bit odd to you?
And you searched what could be translated to "sleeve" or "cover". The hard drive sleeve has way more reviews and engagement than the rest, by a massive margin.
I hate Amazon search for many reasons, but this seems to be a reach of examples. Show me an example where the alternatives have equal review counts but are pushed way below the Amazon listings or way more specifically excluding terms. If you had searched for an iPhone case and it returned a hard drive sleeve I'd think there was something funny going on, but not with these examples.
The search is "e-book color", if a product doesn't mention "color" or similar in it's title, description or metadata, I don't expect it to show up. No other black and white e-readers seems to show up, only Paperwhite is the black&white reader that shows up.
> And you searched what could be translated to "sleeve" or "cover".
The search engine seems to think I'm searching for either a laptop cover or smartphone/tablet cover, as every single result on the first page are in those categories. Except, for the Amazon Basics one, which coincidentally also ranks highest.
I'm not putting these out there as "This is definitely proof Amazon is fucking with the search rankings" but more like "These results don't really seem to match what I expect or what I get at other similar websites".
> either "e-book" or "color"
A Paperwhite most definitely matches "e-book". Very strongly.
Most fuzzy searches have multiple weighting parameters in the algo. You're right, it doesn't match "color" very strongly, but the fact it has >7k reviews and "5+ million sold last month" compared to 31 reviews its match for "e-book" probably has a pretty massive weighting. It's probably 1,000x stronger in its natural weight in terms of overall sales and engagement to anything else related to "e-book". I mean, its 400, 50, 50, and an undisclosed amount sold last month compared to five million.
"color e-book" does not return a b&w Paperwhite in the first page, which disproves your assertion.
Do major EU retailers do the same?
https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/index/fines_en
Also, because there are always people in these discussions commenting things they haven't given a single thought to. No, these fines do not finance the EU.
The EU budget is around €160 billion to €180 billion each year. Roughly 1% of the EU GDP, contributed by member states.
Fines this large are the exception, not the rule. So fines do make up a very small portion of the overall budget.
Obviously it'd take a hit on search value but I don't really understand how rating their stuff higher is any different than having a product page in the technical sense except that they also list other people's products.
So I'm not sure if this is due to their size and adoption or if it's because they are a search company that lists everyone's products.
I really have no idea about this and no real opinion, I am just wondering if hiding other people's results would solve this.
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41499714
You are linking to tax evasion case. This is antitrust.
Edit: My bad, the above page is just Antitrust cases made by the EU against Google. All the litigation sorrounding Google has it's own Wikipedia category (!!) as it's so much at this point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Google_litigation
> The following 35 pages are in this category
If anything, this is a counterexample to your comment.
Companies collude to eliminate competition all the time. Or use tactics that make competition impossible.
And don't use violence? Give me a break. Even small scale companies like Wizards of the Coast sent the fucking Pinkertons after someone for possessing a magic card. You think Amazon is out here existing violence free? You think Nestle's suppliers are making chocolate without any violence.
Take off the rose colored glasses.
Or a modern day example: https://ccrjustice.org/bowoto-v-chevron-murder-and-torture-n...
How did that competition between private companies work out for US hath system? Are Americans getting better bang for the buck? Are they getting faster internet at home due to competition between ISPs? Are Americans getting more paid vacation days due to the private market competition between employers? Why didn't competition between auto makers result in more efficient and less polluting engines until the EPA and EU forced them in the 80's? Did competition between food manufactures got them to eliminate lead and arsenic from food or was it government regulation that did it?
Competition existing doesn't automagically prevent or fix monopolies, duopolies, price fixing and other anti-competitive behavior from private entities who have the power to shape the market in their favor. Do you know why all those things are illegal even in the US? Because they work. If it wouldn't work it wouldn't have been made illegal. Private entities can much more easily collide to screw over consumers than consumers can collectively unite to do anything about it themselves. That's why governments and regulations exist.
As aside, it's a common misconception that the EU acts to protect EU companies from outside competition. They don't. It's a side-effect of their mission to keep the EU a free market.
Define violence.
You may look at this and think "What are you, stupid?" But stick with me for a bit. Let's grab a few examples of free market atrocities. Asbestos; thalidomide; hexavalent chromium; fossil fuels (and hiding research since the 60's about climate change); the sugar industry (also famous for it's scientific gaslighting); Purdue pharmaceuticals, Oxycontin, and it's coincidental treatment for opiate addiction which was in the pipeline...
Now lets grab a few definitions of violence and see if we can bucket some of these into them without too much trouble.
https://www.wordnik.com/words/violence
Definitions numbered top of page to bottom. Are there any acts that fit the word violence that companies regularly do?
Take a look at # 7, quoted here:
7) Injury done to anything which is entitled to respect, reverence, or observance; profanation; infringement; violation.
And before you go saying "but that's not the legal definition..." I'm going to head that off with a single word, "Yet", and further seal off the wiggle room by referring you to the practical outcomes of all these allegedly non-violent exercises of corporate power; the scarring for life if not termination of of life by the thousands to million. You don't get kill counts that high through acts of human artifice, and still get to hide behind the bulwark of "but it wasn't violence" a kill via indirection is still a kill. a life ends or is irrepairably harmed. While their is a practical lenience extended based on the matter of human imperfections and inability to know everything, be everywhere at once; with technology, nowadays the old platitudes tend to ring a bit hollow. Where executives can literally sit on event streams created by their corporate systems; where reports that unequivocally say "bad shit'll happen", and it gets buried instead of escalated for the consideration of all; and to what end? To what benefit are these atrocities committed at the expense of the common good? The self enrichment of the few, and consolidation of wealth and power.
That my friend, is inarguably violence. That doesn't even require the 4th sense of violence either.
noun. Distortion of meaning or intent.
Edit: Corrected my error.
Do you ... not know what a parliament is?
And a parliament is not necessarily a democratically elected body, historically they weren't. The EU parliament is though.
https://the-president.europarl.europa.eu/en/the-presidency/f...
There is no "President" of the EU in the US sense of the word.
BTW parliaments were not democratically elected historically, that's true (eg women didn't get the vote until recently) but not relevant today.
The EU leaders makes things as confusing as they are able to, in order to be able to do what they please without the population understanding much, but she (von der Leyen) is very much promoted as being a "real president", acts like a "real president" in foreign affairs. It is only when pointed out that they are not democratically elected that people start making excuses that the EU president is not a "real president".
Which way is it? I think the rulers of Europe want to have it both ways, so that they can smoothly direct their subjects as they please.
IMHO that would be perfectly fine on its own (or do you think that any parliamentary state is not a "real democracy"?).
But the problem is that she was appointed by the Council/National governments and the parliament just rubber-stamped their pick. If the relationship between the Parliament and Commission were the same as between the parliaments and governments of other countries it would be perfectly fine.
> "real president"
You clearly don't speak French? What's a "real president" anyway?
Also if we go that route you do know that the e.g. German, Italian, Greek etc. "presidents" are also not elected directly?
Europe doesn't have the strong traditions of freedom and individualism. The tradition is collectivism and people accepting that they are to be ruled over, without that bothering them too much.
"There is no "President" of the EU in the US sense of the word." <- This statement by a previous commenter is what I'm referring to when writing "real president". No, I don't speak French, and this conversation hasn't been in French.
Not really. The commission president is certainly (not even remotely) the equivalent of the Speaker in the British parliament (maybe a slightly closer in the US).
Not even Prime Minister would be a real equivalent since the commission isn't appointed by the parliament and it has relative very little say in what the commission does. In certain ways it's not fundamentally that different from some of the pseudo-democratic European states in the 1800s where the job of parliament was only to rubber stamp the laws written by the appointed government (of course there is no equivalent of the King/Emperor).
It's pretty much a joke, it can't propose any legislation since it doesen't really control the "EU government". The could be a majority in the EU parliament that would support passing specific legislation and they couldn't do anything about that, not even have an actual vote.
It'd be perfectly fine for Google to allow choosing your own maps provider, or just using geo:// URIs so whichever maps app you've got installed handles location links.
Through laws and treaties we've given the EU the duty to enforce this.
There's no part of this that is good. Other than as a huge monopoly, they can afford to be huge on R&D, just like Bell. They still fail to make money on anything but ads, though, so it's not turning out as well as Bell.
Sure, other search engines can theoretically compete, but it is an enormous mountain to get enough data to be competitive... and just being "as good" is not enough to get people to switch. So without regulation, google is going to exploit a captive market.
I believe even if Apple had chosen Bing instead most people would have changed the search engine back to Google.
Just like with maps. Most people I know use Google maps on their iPhones even though it has been replaced as default map app a long time ago.
If that is true then I guess Google really has too much money.