EU Lays Groundwork for Antitrust Charges Against Google
wsj.com
wsj.com
However, does anyone really believe that certain categories of competitor should be protected? Maps for example. If I search for something with a nearby physical location, I do not want Google to have to present their mapping product amongst a sea of others. I want a map displayed on my screen immediately.
It seems that the vast majority of 'rivals' in this context are actually rival search engines which isn't really that anticompetitive, just straight up competitive. I guess we'll have to see which companies have filed constructive points, I have yet to read any of them.
Google is in the information business and geographical information is firmly in their business area. If the EU autocrats can't understand this, then Google should use its stores of information offensively.
Historically Google was also a big group of people many of which are engineers who were quite free to direct their work. Lately it is mostly the first description that applies.
>The deal, which would allow Google to avoid fines of up to $6 billion, requires the company to tweak the way it presents search results to address concerns that it favors its own services over those of rivals. Under the agreement, when Google promotes its own services and products—such as hotels, restaurants or shopping—the services of three rivals would be displayed in a comparable manner. The rivals would have to bid for the space through an auction.
(wsj). They've dropped that idea - not sure what's next.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=hotels%20in%20cambri...
A sort of booking widget appears, taking up the space of the first 4 results. Instead of web pages we are presented with google place entries (another google project), and a dates widget at top, which when you fill it in leads to a nice list of google place results, so they are channelling users through other web properties they control.
This might seem superficially appealing to customers (personally I think it is great design, but used for evil ends), but it means that google controls that entire space, because people generally click on the first few results, and clicks after that diminish very very rapidly. So at some point when they start charging for google place entries or booking via google wallet or whatever, they can mint a huge amount of money purely because of the dominant search position they enjoy. They can also drive out of business anyone who wants to compete in that space, or force them to pay a toll to google - in fact I see they're already doing this as adverts for booking.com appear on google place bookings. Once we are used to them inserting non-organic results at the top of every search, they can start to charge for those results, and for everything associated with them. They will then have completed their transformation from a company organising the world's information to a company controlling and charging for the world's information.
As to maps, I think we need to clearly delineate between search results and mapping results. People would be fine I think if google offered a small option to go to google maps when you do an address search, but if they take over half the page with a google map on these results, it is legitimate to ask whether they are leveraging their dominant position in one domain to enforce dominance in another (classic monopolist behaviour).
This wouldn't be a problem if Google did not have 70-90% of the market share for search (depending on your country) - that is a near monopoly position. So Google are abusing their dominant position in search to promote their other properties, and to control which websites appear first in many domains (shopping, images, hotels, shops etc), and they are also in de facto control of the web due to their position in search, which is not good for anyone, least of all google.
> People would be fine I think if google offered a small option to go to google maps when you do an address search, but if they take over half the page with a google map on these results, it is legitimate to ask whether they are leveraging their dominant position
Wait so the outcome of a legal case depends on how many pixels the feature takes up? I don't see any rational basis in law for that. Why should a map not be large? If someone came along that did mapping much better than Google did, people could just go to that site directly, right?
I remember a time before "universal search" when maps did not appear in Google web search at all. Yet Google Maps was still a popular service. So was Google Earth which had to be downloaded.
If google uses their dominant search position to make sure that only google place links are ever seen and clicked, others might have trouble providing any service at all which does not go through google. There are obvious problems with that, and we even see problems today with companies who are penalised by google and cannot reach customers.
There is a tension here because some of Google's moves are actually good for consumers (say displaying maps), and not many people like using things like booking.com anyway (who are as you point out just more middlemen), but I think there is a legal case against monopolistic behaviour, and Google is getting very close to the kind of behaviour which has been punished in the past.
The bit I find interesting here is that countries no longer really have enough power to fully control corporations which are becoming truly supranational - this century we might find corporations become more powerful than even the most powerful countries. That puts us in an interesting position if say Google decides to take over a market or exclude certain users for monetary gain - who is going to stop them?
But Google isn't a gatekeeper. You can go to hotels.com or booking.com or kayak.com or any site you choose as easily as you go to Google search or Google Maps. In what way does Google stop consumers from using competitive services?
Is simply having a more popular brand inherently anti-competitive?
No, having a very popular brand (>80% of market say), and then using that brand to kill competitors in another market is anti-competitive.
Google are not a gate-keeper for consumers, but they are for many kinds of business who want to be found on the net - they have no option but to try to reach the top of google in their domain, or in the case of this sort of move, actually pay for a presence in google results (because probably 90% of users don't look below this widget taking up most of their page).
What really screwed them over and resulted in the big judgements was their contracts with OEMs that said they couldn't ship any competing browser without losing the big MS discount (i.e. getting fined). Credit card companies did the same thing. Being bundled or up front isn't really the problem, it seems, but cutting financial deals to make using a competitor too expensive is where the legal pain starts.
I've heard Google are doing such things as well, with Android. But I don't know the details of that. It'd be a different complaint than this one which resolves around search results.
and here is .ca for comparison https://imgur.com/IfsJhbR,uLDPIL4
canada west coast incognito vs regular chrome (with adblock and more)
The content you see must vary per region/user, but this is what I see in the UK.
If they start charging. Theres nothing that i know of that suggests they will?
That aside, google displaying non-organic results like that is one of the reasons i use google. Like if i google "sunset vancouver" the first result is a box displaying exactly what i'm searching for. What's next, the sunset websites taking google to court due it leveraging its search monopoly?
Note the ways to book on that link - via paid ads. They're already making money from obscuring organic search results and promoting their own content instead. They might choose to charge for adverts, for bookings, or for place entries, or for all three, but the end result is the same.
I doubt the EU will come up with a sensible solution, but there is definitely a problem here because Google is using its dominant position in one market to enter others (the above is just an example, there are lots of domains where they do this).
Is that irony? I don't know what irony means anymore. Hmm, might as well google it.
Any idea why going through search results succeeds and allows us access to the full content by the way?
2. PJ's analysis might have been useful in the SCO days, but really, her knowledge of other topics that I'm more conversant with (specifically, patents) was woefully lacking. Not sure if she'd have done any better with antitrust laws.
For instance, I enjoyed the essays by PoiR, which made a lot of germane references to case law and CS theories, but their premises had tenuous connection to legal reality at best. Or guest posts by mrisch, an actual legal scholar, whose posts were rewarded with comments no better than Slashdot, drowning out any thoughtful conversation. And even then, how many such essays were ever posted? If you thought most of the stuff posted there was good "signal", it probably just means you are not familiar with the legal aspects and enjoyed the content because it appealed to your biases.