European parliament may propose search services split in threat to Google | Hacker News Reader

European parliament may propose search services split in threat to Google

reuters.com

51 pointsmaverick246 comments

Before people start suggesting this is some anti-American agenda from the EU, keep in mind there are many American companies that have been complaining to the EU such as Yelp and Expedia. They want to stop Google's tying practices such as using their monopoly in search (another thing to keep in mind is that their market share in the EU is something absurd like over 90%) to benefit other products and services. It's not really calling for breaking up the company. Also this is specifically about raising the temperature on the European Commission. Parliament itself doesn't do this.

This is a signal from politicians to the European Commission that they can go hard.

Ben Edelman, somewhat notorious for being paid by Microsoft, has done a really good excellent job at documenting problems with Google for many years. Irregardless of who paid for the time invested, these problems have been well researched and aren't simply American companies playing cry baby. I'm not a regulator, and am not suggesting a regulatory answer, but I think Peter Thiel has given a fairly honest explanation that Google's rationalizations are largely PR-fud.

There are very profound and far reaching issues here. Imagine if instead of Wikipedia we had some encyclopedia where half of page 1 was sponsored editorial and the rest of what made it on page 1 was done in a totally opaque environment by a company who had commercial interests on what was showing up. If your company operates in a fairly narrow market, has limited retention, and needs to use search traffic vs demographic traffic to build your audience, you are effectively operating day to day with a giant guillotine over your neck.

(Very happy to see DuckDuckGo get some meaningful traction, and for Google's sake with the regulators the better DuckDuckGo does the more room there is to let off some pressure.)

Thanks for reminding me to avoid ever using Yelp and Expedia, to object their taking advantage of Europe's anti-American industrial policy instincts.

Google search competitors are not even close with the quality of Google search results. This year I started trying Bing, Yahoo and right now DuckDuckGo as an experiment and none of them has the same quality. Bing is the only one that came closer. That's why Google owns search. They may be using shady tactics, but the competitors still need to get better.

Not only that but

"the resolution calls on the European Commission “to consider proposals with the aim of unbundling search engines from other commercial services” to introduce more competition into online search in Europe."

How would unbundling 'other commercial services' make other search options any better? I imagine with Google only focusing on search they'd get closer to 100% in the EU rather than causing more competition. Something's off in their reasoning.

The last time someone told me this, I asked them when the last time they ran with adblocking was -- answer, years.

I do. I also use privacy badger and private/incognito browsing. Interpreting keywords is way ahead of the rest. One thing that's getting worst is geo targeting though. They are trying way to hard to show you local results for everything you search.

Rivals should maybe ask themselves why Google has such an enormous market share in search.

Maybe a 90% market share originates simply from better quality?

Google is the only search engine that got their L10n right.

When I search non-local stuff in English I have the choice between at least Google, Yahoo!, Bing and DDG, which all give decent, comparable results. When I search for German content or local stuff there is really only Google.

German Google search results are terrible compared to what English speaking people are used to. For German queries it is the only option.

I guess for other languages spoken in Europe it's similar.

Fascinating. Is this likely to be because of a smaller corpus (seems unlikely - there must be millions if not billions of pages in most European languages)

Or is it that search algorithms don't cross languages easily - or that the core developers and testers use English as a lingua Franca anyway?

Still a fascinating point - can you put some kind of example or test up?

Reliable, reproducible testings are hard because every engine customizes results for every user, based on history...

Looking in access logs, I hardly get any visits from Bing or Yandex or Baidu but Google is there all the time over IPv4 and IPv6. It's not like Bing doesn't have the resources to index websites more often.

As someone who has legitimately tried to use Bing let me just say, Bing's issue isn't its lack of indexing. Every time you search on Google you're "teaching" Google's system what results you'll most likely want.

So for example if I search for "that movie with dinosaurs" on Bing and Google, Bing's no.1 result is an IMDB link to a movie called "Dinosaur (2000)." That's not a "stupid" suggestion, but it is still not how people use search engines. Google shows me "jurassic park" and "the land before time" neither of which contain the word "dinosaur" in the title.

That's because millions of people have likely searched "that movie with a dinosaur" and clicked on the "Jurassic Park"/"Land Before Time" links. This information cannot be gained by simply just indexing no matter how amazing your indexer is.

So let's say, theoretically, that someone stole Google's code. They then reproduced Google's infrastructure, search algorithms, and so on but WITHOUT Google's massive database of historic queries. I legitimately do not think that this company, even with all of Google's stuff could catch up with Google, because 1. Those historic queries now ARE the core of Google's results, and 2. Google will always out-pace the competition in generating new intelligent results (due to more usage).

It is a circular problem. Bing could be twice as good as Google under the covers, but it will never catch up for the reasons I said above... Ditto with DDG or anyone else.

PS - As an aside, Google's search query parsing is significantly better than Bing's when it comes to programming/technical queries. Every time a quote appears in a bing query it treats it as a literal query string, Google seems to understand the context of the double quote (i.e. that it was from the source material) and give you non-literal query string results.

So what is the "right" bit to calve off? Which part of Google is a public good and which private innovation ?

My gut feeling is the basic crawled results are a public good, I also am concerned we don't deal with metadata well enough - information about me should belong to me and make me beneficiary.

But then I am a bit taken by the UKIP victory and that makes the EU seem warm and fuzzy.

Following this premise, I guess it's time to assess massive trade tariffs on all vehicles manufactured by German companies, either domestically, or imported. Their dominance in the luxury category is really just too much, it needs to be significantly regulated or reduced.

For Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Porsche the US is their largest market. Between 20% and 25% of all sales typically come from the US for those automakers.

Jobs will be lost? Nah, auto supply will shift to domestics and or Asian manufacturers. The Germans will simply lose a big fat market, and it's unlikely all of Europe will agree to strike back against US automakers.

Economic war is the only thing that is likely to come out of the EU trying to split Google.

Scale has its advantage, products like Google Now or a Home Robot/Assistant is not possible unless there are a ton of data points available to be processed. I thinking breaking up is not a solution, but rather content(headlines included) and data about customer should be traded between companies using APIs. Like a data exchange, just like exchanges for electricity and other utilities. Imagine a time in future when you want a fancy Apple robot, but that robot is dumb unless it has access to all of your current and past data.

I think you are making two opposite statements: "should be traded between companies using APIs" gives me he impression you want to give the companies control over your^W their data. At the moment there are laws prohibiting the former, IMO rightfully so.

"when you want a fancy Apple robot, but that robot is dumb unless it has access to all of your current and past data." makes it look as if you want humans to have control over who has access to their data. I think that should be the norm, and if laws are retired to get there, I think we should get them.

ok, yep let me clear that. What I mean is

-Companies should be able to own and trade their users data with other companies. This should be like a stock or ad exchange. More pull requests for certain data, higher the data connection price.

-Also blogs should be able to charge $0 or some amount for search bots to crawl them. Its demand and supply if. NYT might be able to ask for some price while Buzzfeed can say .. eh we'll set that to free.

-Now for user, Example If I pay $200 for a robot - The company can say, hey it is $10 to use it monthly(because the robot company figures that is avg cost to fetch data, lets say from Goog FB AMZN etc). But some companies can say, the data of their users is owned by them and their user so if the user want to use his/her data then its free. But if the company wants to use to for some other means without user consent then its up for sale.

Its kind of like twitter's firehose, just more universal. Will encourage companies to develop APIs since now they can charge its use. I'd love a google now/robot to suggest me what netflix flick I should see based on my Bing search history.

I am thinking of a tutorial on search result pages as a settlement.

This is political posturing and grandstanding on steroids, whoever bought the EU parliament (evidently Germany publishers) did a good job.

They can’t “break up” Google, it’s an American company! it’s not based there.

Also the previous competition chief ridiculed such notions when he was recently asked about it by Parliament citing the utility companies (German ones) that would be first in line for a breakup debate if that was a tool they wanted to use:

The decision to reopen settlement talks followed vigorous criticism from a widening range of politicians, including the economy ministers of France and Germany. The latter, Sigmar Gabriel, argued in May that a forced breakup of Google should be seriously considered because of its vast market power. Werner Langen, a European lawmaker representing German Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party, echoed that suggestion, drawing parallels with U.S. efforts to break up monopolies in oil and other industries. "If we don't give them a bash we're not going to solve the problem," he said.

Mr. Almunia showed little sympathy for such demands. "I would tell you one thing, as a German friend," he said. "The day I [hear] that the railways will accept unbundling, electricity companies will accept unbundling, and we will discuss [unbundling] with telecom operators and others…let's discuss unbundling Google, but not before.

via http://online.wsj.com/articles/google-must-improve-search-se...

The fact that they are drafting a motion targeting one company is so shamelessly political it’s almost a public display of corruption.

Not to mention that the ludicrous levels of attention and weigh this issue is getting in the EU is unheard of and unwarranted:

One technology industry source with knowledge of the motion also called it a "politically-motivated campaign to do something that is a regulatory matter". He added: "These guys are calling for the break-up of Google. That is not in proportion to the degree of concern articulated by the commission during its investigation.

Google is not just an American company. As a big "fuck you" to Google: the majority of revenue runs through Ireland and the Netherlands. Nice tax plan, but it means they can't easily evade the European Commission.

I actually really applaud this step. Don't get me wrong, this should not be considered anti-American, but if you run a global company getting revenue from a lot of countries you should be prepared to follow their laws and pay taxes. It is that way for physical goods, and it's pure stupid arrogance to think that delivering online products exempts you from all of it.

Can you break out exactly how much revenue goes through Ireland and the Netherlands?

Everything that does not originate in the US is run through the tax construction they have setup going through a po-box firm in Amsterdam and Ireland. The same construction is used by many others, including Facebook, Apple and even U2.

Not sure whether they specify this number in their quarterly reports, but given that it's "the world" vs the US revenue it is definitely a majority.

Edit: 17 billion out of 40 billion (both in euros and 2013 figures) global revenue runs through Google Ireland Ltd alone and that's reported as ad sales from Europe only. I did not find a report for the Netherlands, but there is more revenue from outside Europe taking this route as well since it's the cheapest route for anything that is not coming from the US.

It looks like it's very unlikely that Europe is the majority of Google's revenue, and I doubt all revenue globally outside the US runs through Ireland & Co (can you back that up with data?).

For the latest quarter: "Our revenues from outside of the United States totaled $9.55 billion, representing 58% of total revenues in the third quarter of 2014, compared to 58% in the second quarter of 2014 and 56% in the third quarter of 2013."

Unless the rest of the world outside of Europe only has ~8%, and or all global revenue actually does go through Ireland & Co (again, I'm skeptical it's 100%). That's possible, but it's seems unlikely.

There is a simple reason all revenue outside the US goes through Ireland and the Netherlands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

From the Wikipedia page: "The offshore company continues to receive all of the profits from exploitation of the rights outside the US, but without paying US tax on the profits unless and until they are remitted to the US.[5]"

So yes: all of it goes through Europe.

That is a separate issue.

Google has plenty of offices (and, i'm sure, many more legal entities) in Europe:

http://www.google.ca/about/company/facts/locations/

Google being forced to close European offices and encouraged to repatriate European profits to non-European low-tax locations wouldn't stop Google Inc from continuing to run a business headquartered in California or dissuade 90% of European internet users from searching Google first.

Yeah, but if Google can't sell ads to EU companies then the letting EU citizens search on Google won't help much.

This has little bearing on the gravity of the ask, the jurisdictional authority of the EU is not unlimited.

Besides it's a disproponate legislative move targeting one company, it will in the very least raise questions.

If they go forward with it, it'll do more than raise questions. It'll ignite an international economic war, with mostly losers on all sides. Dumber economic mistakes have been made throughout history (eg the pre great depression trade / tariff wars).

It won't raise any questions. Europeans love their fake internet censorship "right to be forgotten".

They can’t “break up” Google, it’s an American company! it’s not based there.

That's never stopped the US government...

When did the US break up foreign companies via DOJ anti-trust?

IIRC, the US has forbidden the merger of foreign companies with significant US subsidiaries. (As has the EU for US companies with significant European presence.)

Sorry, I can't give you any examples off the top of my head...

china also can't do anything to google, and yet... the chinese option is most definitely worse than status quo, but it technically can be done.

Perhaps they should be forced to release keywords versus clicked links data to other companies like Duck Duck Go, just like Microsoft was forced to document things like SMB for Samba and the various Office formats.

Google != AT&T

Search is a public utility, just like the Internet itself.

How could search be considered a public utility? You can use any search engine you'd like. If you don't like Google, switch to Bing or something else. That's not the case with things like water or electricity (usually). Internet service as a utility? Maybe (in the US at least with limited options). But search?

Don't blame Google because they are really good at what they do. They aren't stopping you from using another service, nor are they stopping others from creating their own search engine.

for vast majority of people, what's the difference between 'the internet' and 'google homepage'? you can theoretically use something else than google, true, but if you bundle all search engines together and disable every single one of them, the internet for a great majority of the population that has access to it becomes completely useless.

For the vast majority of people Goolge doesn't control their web browser. For some, yes, but it's only a default for Android or Chromebooks.

Browsers can and do change their defaults whenever they'd like: see Firefox this past week. That's an issue for the browsers, not the search engine. I'm not aware of any browser (sans Chrome) where the default homepage is Google.com.

That's nonsense. There's not even a consensus on how to search, let alone enough to define a public service based around it. You can bet a government run search service would be absolutely terrible at this point in time.

"Public utility" does not imply "government run", just that the government considers a product or service so essential that it pays some/lots of extra attention to companies providing it through regulation.

[This is not a strict distinction. For example, one could argue that 'search' became a public utility when the EU introduced the "right to be forgotten"]

The "Right to be forgotten" thing is murky too. If I lost to you in a competition and I"m deeply offended/embarrassed by this, is it within my right to remove your victories from the internet? Why have the people indexing the information remove it instead of the people hosting it? What if you mention the event again in an interview years after said removal? Are you in breach of some covenant for mentioning something-which-shall-not-be-remembered or is it the fault of the search engine for not maintaining some infinite list of embarrassments of humanity? Would said list of embarrassments be a breach of said right even though it would be the only way to enforce it?

Swap "run" with "regulated" and you'd have the same problem. A heavily regulated search engine would be a subpar experience. In some regard, it is already regulated in terms of what speech they can show. But that's not "search engine specific" regulation. Any specific regulations regarding search on the Internet has a high probability to degrade the utility of the service.

The "right to be forgotten" might just be a good example of this. Time will tell.

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