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Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

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Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#11

Post by hansibansi »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #2

> “Dominant companies can’t abuse their dominant position to create advantage in related markets,” she said bluntly, formally accusing Google of exploiting its supremacy in general search to dominate the market for online product searches It seems completely ridiculous to call those two different markets. Finding the most relevant X on the web is fundamentally part of the same market no matter what X is. Now, if they…

First of all, the reason why they differentiate product and general search is, because Google injects a carousel at the top of the page, regardless of its relevancy. Thus, the differentiation. Secondly, the big discussion of abusing its market dominance was ultimately triggered by Yelp and other vertical search engines. Google first ripped of Yelp by scraping their content and then added it to their own Google Places search. After that, they decided to give their own service more relevancy. This would not be a problem, IF they were competition in the European market, but Google has an average market share of 90 percent in Europe (note, that it has up to 99 percent in other markets like Germany) and thus Yelp is super dependent on Google. Overall, this is NOT a fair market and Google has such a dominance in that market that new players are not likely (or ever) to appear. A 99 percent market share is a monopoly, there are not many non-government markets that experience such a malfunction.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#12

Post by pavlov »

guelo wrote: post #3

If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…

I think language and writing system also plays a significant role in the emergence of Chinese native web giants. It's not just about Google getting kicked out; they probably would have had a very hard time adjusting their Western product for the local market. (Google tends to think of their products as "universal", and that doesn't quite work in China.)

Look at Russia. They don't have Chinese-style technical or political protections to keep Google out, yet the market is dominated by local players like Yandex and Mail.ru.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#13

Post by pavlov »

tellthetruth1 wrote: post #9
guelo wrote: post #3

If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…

This is exactly what any economy with self respect should do. China is so happy now. The last thing you need is an NSA arm operating a monopoly in your country.

China is so happy now.

That's an awesome troll factory slogan.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#14

Post by NeutronBoy »

icebraining wrote: post #10
guelo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no competition, it's just monopolies. It's been shown over and over that the first-mover advantage on the web is almost insurmountable because of the network effects.

Yeap. We're all still using Altavista, MySpace, Hotmail and Livejournal.

While I agree with the sentiment, I would argue that the network effects now are significantly stronger than they were 10-15 years ago. Back then, the internet was still a novelty for many (those who had the internet, anyway). This was before broadband was commonplace, before smartphones, before Facebook and the iPhone were a thing.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#15

Post by adventured »

hansibansi wrote: post #11
JoshTriplett wrote: post #2

> “Dominant companies can’t abuse their dominant position to create advantage in related markets,” she said bluntly, formally accusing Google of exploiting its supremacy in general search to dominate the market for online product searches It seems completely ridiculous to call those two different markets. Finding the most relevant X on the web is fundamentally part of the same market no matter what X is. Now, if they…

First of all, the reason why they differentiate product and general search is, because Google injects a carousel at the top of the page, regardless of its relevancy. Thus, the differentiation. Secondly, the big discussion of abusing its market dominance was ultimately triggered by Yelp and other vertical search engines. Google first ripped of Yelp by scraping their content and then added it to their own Google Places…

There was an easy solution for Yelp: opt out of Google search results.

What Yelp wants, is to have their cake and eat it too. They want to benefit from what Google offers, and they want Google to behave exactly as they would prefer, assuming control over Google's product through government power. Classic competitor hypocrisy, the same behavior displayed 15 years ago by Microsoft's extremely envious competition. They didn't want to beat Microsoft in consumer operating systems, they wanted to chain and control Microsoft's operating system to their benefit.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#16

Post by fraserharris »

guelo wrote: post #3

If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…

This would appear to be an argument in favor of trans-national trade deals that stop nationalist protectionism.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#17

Post by feider »

pavlov wrote: post #12
guelo wrote: post #3

If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…

I think language and writing system also plays a significant role in the emergence of Chinese native web giants. It's not just about Google getting kicked out; they probably would have had a very hard time adjusting their Western product for the local market. (Google tends to think of their products as "universal", and that doesn't quite work in China.) Look at Russia. They don't have Chinese-style technical or polit…

Russia does not have political protections? http://www.reuters.com/video/2015/08/06/russia-destroys-seve...

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#18

Post by adventured »

guelo wrote: post #3

If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…

You can't kick out the Americans without assuming dictatorship-like command powers over the entire EU economic zone. That only functions at all in China - to whatever mediocre extent it is functioning today - because that's a unified market, one country, under one leadership.

Any attempt by Europe to try that, would destroy the European economy. Germany is hyper dependent on exports. The US eats most of its own dog food when it comes to manufacturing, Germany does not. Nearly all of Europe, other than Russia and perhaps Norway, lacks the ability to be truly energy independent today. It's obvious who would win the import / export restriction war.

There's one country capable of being fully self-sustaining across science, innovation, manufacturing, natural resources, technology - that's the US. Europe has barely shown an ability to cooperate even in a poorly functioning manner when it comes to integration, much less of the extreme integration such a command economy system would require. Even the Eurozone experiment has been a disaster for the majority of countries involved. There's no possibility of the kind of extreme integration the kick-the-Americans-out plan would require, ever happening.

Kick the Americans out? Ok, well now BMW, Porsche, and Mercedes are banned in the US. Germany just lost a huge part of its economy (look up the two biggest markets for their vehicles: the US and China).

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#19

Post by biokoda »

dylanjermiah wrote: post #4
guelo wrote: post #3

If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…

At the expense of the citizens. Why not let companies compete?

Short term expense of the citizens. Nurturing local business is a long term benefit strategy.

Protectionism is how every nation on the planet developed. Why are Americans driving South Korean/Japanese cars and not the other way around? Because the south koreans and the japanese imposed large tariffs on car imports and the US did not. Their car companies had free range on their own turf. Which gave them time and money to develop.

Silicon valley is not giving the outside world any chance of competing.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#20

Post by _pmf_ »

viraptor wrote: post #8
guelo wrote: post #3

If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…

> kick out the Americans How? Great firewall of Europe? Or what exactly are you proposing?

> How? Great firewall of Europe? Or what exactly are you proposing?

Forcing them to follow basic rules of fairness is usually enough to keep them out.

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