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Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

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

#101

Post by pgeorgi »

harryf wrote: post #52
hueving wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Basic rules of fairness" is meaningless crap that roughly translates to, "we aren't as good so we will keep passing regulations in favor of locals until it's insane for anyone else to try." Frankly, it wouldn't be that surprising if net neutrality started getting violated in Europe by protectionism laws.

I have family in Germany who get their internet through Deutsche Telekom. When visiting I've found its faster to watch YouTube via a VPN through Switzerland than directly through Deutsche Telekom. While this doesn't prove anything it sure does feel like they already violate net neutrality when it comes to YouTube

DTAG benefits from inertia, being the offspring of the public post/telecom monopoly they started with a 100% customer base.

As for the issue at hand (YT being slow), like a sibling post states, that's because they refuse to peer at DECIX where everybody else is. They even tried to frame the NSA scandals as "IT companies, be responsible, keep user data in German networks and peer with us directly (on our terms, which will be expensive for you - they 'forgot' to mention that in the press releases)".

The best way to make DTAG more customer friendly (both upstream and downstream) is to move somewhere else.

Luckily in cities you have 5+ ISPs to choose from (some of them DTAG resellers, but still an improvement), and even on the country side it's typically at least 3.

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

#102

Post by rnnr »

weddpros wrote: post #65

For a long time, countries agreed that free-trade was the best way to avoid another war. Europe was created as an economic region first, to avoid another war. But today I'm afraid Europe suffers memory loss. They're using coercion against another country (always the same one, the USA) for ideological reasons... which is the very definition of war. The fact they're citing money as the reason only makes it more frighte…

Totally agree. And although there is indeed an anti-american mindset, American politicians speak pretty often about the loss of 'american' jobs too... It's just the common economic illiteracy. Trade protections don't benefit any party involved, they don't make economic sense and they never did.

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

#103

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mrweasel wrote: post #67
Vespasian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity why do you need to register a company in every country (assuming you are US based since there is no sales tax in the EU anywhere ;) ). I haven't done it but isn't the thing with the new VAT regulations that you can pay your taxes to one revenue service (and just register with one) and they will divide it according to your sales data (e.g. the customers country)? Or do you mean that you have to p…

>I haven't done it but isn't the thing with the new VAT regulations that you can pay your taxes to one revenue service (and just register with one) and they will divide it according to your sales data I think that only works if you have limited business, but I'm not sure. I believe the problem is that we're in a country with 25% VAT, but if we want to charge our German customer only 19%, we need to do that via a Germ…

>I think that only works if you have limited business //

If you mean VATMOSS then you don't have to be running a Limited Company - individual sellers as of January 2015 have to now account for the tax due in the country of the buyer. This apparently applies to sellers from outside the EU too, if you're selling certain classes of goods (non-personalised intangibles) over the internet to the EU then you're supposed to retain [3 pieces of!] evidence of the locality of the purchaser and deal with that country's tax office to pay the required tax.

The "MOSS" [Mini One-Stop Shop] bit is a system that individual countries in the EU use to send the payments to the countries where the tax is due.

The method you mention works for tangibles or personalised goods. With VATMOSS there is no exemption for SMEs or low-revenue situations or anything.

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

#104

Post by 4impdag »

kuschku wrote: post #87
_xzu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More probably this is routing issue. Connection between Deutsche Telekom and Youtube servers is more busy than connections between DT -> Swiss server -> Youtube.

DTAG (Deutsche Telekom AG) essentially does the exact same with YouTube that Verizon did with Netflix: They refuse to peer with them at all. ALL traffic from DTAG users first runs to a Level3 datacenter in New York, and from there goes to other users. While all other German ISPs have a peering node at DECIX

Do you have a source for this assertion?

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

#105

Post by ojbyrne »

bootload wrote: post #26
dylanjermiah wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Why not let companies compete?" foreign company tax avoidance? "Technology giant Google last year paid $11.7 million in corp­orate tax to Australian government coffers, on revenue of $438.7m and profits of $58m." ~ http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/google-admits...

20% corporate tax rate. What's the problem?

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

#106

Post by iopq »

rogeryu wrote: post #86
flexie wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In very few ways Europe is a homogenous market, and certainly not in the search business or e-commerce. French search in French, Germans in German, Danes in Danish, Spaniards in Spanish, Italians in Italian, Dutch in Dutch etc. Then, if your local language doesn't give you good results, you default to English. Online shopping is mostly a local thing with Amazon as the prominent exception. Even in the market for plane…

> French search in French, Germans in German, Danes in Danish, Spaniards in Spanish, Italians in Italian, Dutch in Dutch etc. Then, if your local language doesn't give you good results, you default to English. So how is this different from the current situation with Google dominating the market? Google works in French, German, Dutch, Spanish etc! You only need one company in based one country and they can work in all…

But it doesn't work with Russian or Ukrainian that well. A few reasons:

1. Slavic languages have heavy inflection. If Google doesn't understand all the possible forms of a word, it will give you poor results until you search again by changing your query slightly. 2. Google doesn't understand common synonyms, so it doesn't give results that contain synonyms. 3. Russian websites may not care about google rank as much as Yandex, so they might not even be indexed.

I don't know how, but there are thousands of websites I can find by searching Yandex for a certain thing that will not be on Google. It may be those three things combined, or other factors I didn't think of.

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

#107

Post by scholia »

choppaface wrote: post #43

Much of this debate centers on the premonition that Google highlights their own content and services in order to fight competition and maximize their own profits. They are acting intentionally and rationally. But their monopoly is hurting others, so we (er, the EU) convict(s) Google of malice. However, another plausible position is that Google is merely behaving negligently . There are some studies (paid by competito…

> Google is merely behaving negligently

For one example, Google started showing results linked to G+ while not showing superior results from Twitter. That looked like an open-and-shut case of Google using its search monopoly to promote one of its own properties to the disadvantage of a rival. I really don't think it counts as negligence...

> IE was initially a good product but then fell behind the competition. Pushing it on consumers not only hurt consumer choice, but (over time) locked users into a poor experience.

I'm not sure there is a useful analogy with the Google case.

However, IE6 was initially a good product and fell behind out of neglect. That was partly because Microsoft didn't do a new browser until it did a new OS, and the new OS -- Vista -- was (a) delayed and then (b) unsuccessful. Mistakes were made, as they say.

The point is that Microsoft wasn't "pushing [IE6] on consumers". Microsoft was desperate to get consumers off IE6 and XP, but consumers (and businesses) didn't want to move.

Either way, Microsoft's mistakes left the door open for Firefox and, later, Chrome. The anti-trust action didn't solve the problem -- and it didn't help Netscape, which started it. The market solved the problem by creating better browsers.

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

#108

Post by hessenwolf »

richmarr wrote: post #44
donkeyd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe is always fretting about how they need to create their own Silicon Valley but it's easy to do, kick out the Americans! You'll have your own Baidu, Tencent and Alibabas in no time. People seem to forget that Europe is not a country. Europe does not have a single uniting language. What happens, is that every country starts their own smaller versions and they stay mostly within that country. If they want to mov…

I think this view is one-sided Despite having many different languages, in some ways Europe is a more homogenous market than the US. For example, an insurance business can operate freely across Europe with only one small piece of additional paperwork. I think it's actually an A4 piece of paper. In the US they'd have to be regulated separately by nearly every state.

Ha ha. Good one. In theory, yes. In practice, they don't for many reasons. Cross border business is still hella complex for insurance in Europe.

Source: People pay me to do that stuff.

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

#109

Post by kuschku »

4impdag wrote: post #104
kuschku wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DTAG (Deutsche Telekom AG) essentially does the exact same with YouTube that Verizon did with Netflix: They refuse to peer with them at all. ALL traffic from DTAG users first runs to a Level3 datacenter in New York, and from there goes to other users. While all other German ISPs have a peering node at DECIX

Do you have a source for this assertion?

Take https://netzpolitik.org/2015/telekom-am-internetknoten-de-ci... for example.

It’s common knowledge in the industry by now that the DTAG uses their 40 million users as leverage to force companies to directly peer with them (and pay for peering).

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

#110

Post by kuschku »

pgeorgi wrote: post #94
kuschku wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DTAG (Deutsche Telekom AG) essentially does the exact same with YouTube that Verizon did with Netflix: They refuse to peer with them at all. ALL traffic from DTAG users first runs to a Level3 datacenter in New York, and from there goes to other users. While all other German ISPs have a peering node at DECIX

To add, when you're asking DTAG to peer, they determine the location where they set up the peering point with you. That's typically somewhere out of nowhere, so you also have to rent the pipe that brings your data there - from them, obviously.

Additionally, they overcharge a lot for the last mile infrastructure for other ISPs, so in my region some other ISPs started building their own last mile infrastructure and peering with Telia to get access to TAT-14 (and thereby allowing them to peer better with US providers).

(TAT-14 is a transatlantic cable owned by DTAG and Telia)

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