Google break-up plan emerges from Brussels | Hacker News Reader

Google break-up plan emerges from Brussels

cnbc.com

18 pointsIBM13 comments

Even if this "plan" were adopted by the EU, it could never be implemented. The U.S., with a more business-oriented Republican majority in Congress, would consider it an attack on free trade, retaliation against European exporters would be threatened, and Google itself would spend years fighting it in court.

Given that Google is not a monopoly and there exists alternatives to almost every service Google offers, most of which it offers for free, it hardly seems justifiable to break a company up simply for being "too good" or "preferred by too many people".

It's basically a non-issue, a desperate maneuver by the socialists and their allies to remain relevant. The European countries should focus on encouraging innovation rather than attacking innovative American companies for being too successful.

If greater Europe wants an alternative to Google, it should create one. It's that simple.

Russia did so with Yandex. China did so with Baidu.

Fascinating... Seems like 1982[1] all over again. It's an interesting observation that Europe seems to be the last bastion of what some would call market balanced regulation, as contrasted with the US's systemic winner take all corporate capitalism[2]. I miss FDR greatly.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_capitalism

Except that MaBell had a natural local monopoly thanks to the physical ownership of rights of way for their network. You can't make the same argument for internet services.

I wasn't aware of Europe having a dozen highly competitive and effective search engines, in a system superior to and contrary to the winner takes all outcome of Google.

Hmm. Wouldn't the EU separating the search engine from the rest of Google be a death sentence for the rest of Google?

Probably.

It's tough. I get where they really do stomp out European (and any other) companies that can't compete with a company that has tons of cash/data and offers all its services for "free," but also I think there are lots of futuristic interesting things Google is working on that might not be economically possible outside of Google.

I don't know the specifics, but I agree with the idea of separating Google's search from Android, etc. It's exactly what happened with Microsoft.

Google is still the best search engine, and I would still choose it for every device I own, but the choice should be there.

Google might still be the best search engine for a lot among us, but to my suprise, my search results were getting worse and worse in the last couple of weeks. My search style is stille the same, but the results are just not good enough, at least not in the 30 first pages.

Happy to learn that I'm not the only one there.

Why should Google's search be "separated" from Android? Can't you use any search engine you want? You can download Bing Search for Android, Bing Maps for Android, and from within the browser you can browse to any search engine you please. Or am I missing something?

You're not missing anything. This is paternalism. The notion that some entity or person knows better than you do, that consumers are too stupid to look out for their own well being, and that some authority should be able to force you to behave another way, or force you to use products you don't want to. Politically taken to its logical conclusion you end up in authoritarianism.

> and I would still choose it for every device I own, but the choice should be there.

What prevents you from using a different search app? Or am I missing your point?

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

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