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Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

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

#131

Post by wil421 »

jayvanguard wrote: post #130
wil421 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Americans are forcing you to use our services. If you have a problem then don't use them it's that simple. You're able to boycott anything on the Internet. I'm tired of Anti-American sentiment when your governments are in bed with ours. American companies weren't the only ones sharing data. German and Belgium telecoms were in bed with spy agencies and not just with the Five Eyes. In public Merkle was outraged but…

The majority of the problem is about the US and the NSA.

What about Chinese spying? Or the internet propaganda firms in Russia? The UK arguably has the worst domestic spying in the Western world. Rules need to be made on a global scale similar to the ICBM restrictions during the Cold War.

These are not NSA issues its a global issue. What are the ROE for cyber attacks? There are much deeper issues beside the NSA reading my gmail, which I dont mind.

What I do mind is undermining technologies that are supposed to protect us from 3rd parties (criminals and governments alike).

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

#133

Post by scott_s »

MarcusVorenus wrote: post #90
biokoda wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Protectionism is how every nation on the planet developed You must be joking. Countries with open markets develop way faster than protectionist countries. If mercantilism is so good then why are the Asian Tigers doing so well and communist countries doing so bad?

Protectionism is not synonymous with communism. Most capitalistic countries - including the US - practices protectionism in a variety of ways.

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

#134

Post by wil421 »

stannol wrote: post #76
adventured wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Nowadays no first-world country is capable of being fully self-sustaining without suffering immensely - especially the US, which relies heavily on cheap energy with large amounts being imported.

The US may import crude oil but one of the main exports is refined fuels. We are exporting ~half of what we are importing in July.

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_wkly_dc_nus-z00_mbblpd_...

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

#135

Post by scott_s »

hueving wrote: post #32
biokoda wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Why are Americans driving South Korean/Japanese cars and not the other way around? They care about consumer freedom, that's why. What you are implying is that competition can never work and that people with a head start should be regulated away. It screws the consumer and there is no proof it works best in the long run. France is super protectionist but they aren't doing so well. In many cases, it just has knock on…

American trade laws do not hold consumer freedom sacred. America has lots of protectionist policies - including a related one on trucks: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/06/12/414029929/episo...

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

#136

Post by __Joker »

rjaco31 wrote: post #50
kennethh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were many search companies in the start and for a long time all of them did the same, google came and delivered a better product and kept innovation. People came and saw the google homesite with a logo, textfield and a button. This is simple we can make this also without knowing all the stuff behind it. Search is now a mature industry, it is always better to go for the new places where there are no dominant pla…

> it is always better to go for the new places where there are no dominant players It's funny, I've heard several times the total opposite from startup founders ("It's easier to go for a big market and to chunk some % in order to get viable, rather than going on a totally new market in which you'll have to both be better than the competition and convince the clients that's it's actually a promising market") > If some…

Also, people forget the automobile industry of Japan was beneficiary of protectionism for decades.

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

#137

Post by simonh »

9872 wrote: post #112
simonh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If search results that hit Yelp data linked to Yelp there'd be no problem. However if it links to Google Places because Google scraped the Yelp data and loaded it into the Places database - that's a problem. Suppose someone launched an 'Encyclopedia Search' service that searched Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britanica, etc and linked to their sites. The the service then started loading the Wikipedia and Britanica content i…

Poor analogy. Yelp contains facts and user reviews. Encyclopedias contain facts conveyed through written articles. The writing and reviews may be copyright protected. Facts are not.

Curated collections of facts are absolutely protected by copyright, provided they meet certain criteria. For example you can use that data to create a new curated data set for a different purpose, but you can't just copy all the data and use it in the way it was orriginaly compiled for because that's copying the curation. I can't say authoritatively if Yelp's data is likely to meet these criteria, but we're not talking about copyright violation anyway, we're talking about anti-competitive practices.

Using a dominance in search to scrape data from competitors for use in other services and then link to them from search in preference over the data's source may well be anti-competitive, even if the scraping itself isn't illegal.

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

#138

Post by weddpros »

pgeorgi wrote: post #111
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…

In my experience, the clashes of European companies with EU regulators just don't create as much press. The most recent anti-trust/cartel activity is listed by the European Commission for Competition: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/index.cfm?fusea... http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/cases/cases.html Currently that covers: something about pay-TV in UK/Ireland, Qualcomm, a bunch of European cargo t…

They're trying hard to make me believe you too.

But please note that it's not just anti-trust cases, but also privacy cases / right to be forgotten / partnerships with newspapers / etc...

When the NSA scandal was everywhere in the press, Orange (french telecom operator, former public company) said there was no need for the french administration to spy on them because they were already cooperating outside the judiciary system everyday. Yet the headlines were not about the French administration spying on its citizens, but about the NSA and the risks you take by using Facebook.

That's so pathetic. Now the French government has passed a law to make it easier to spy on its own citizens. And the UK is following not far behind.

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

#139

Post by weddpros »

parasubvert wrote: post #124
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…

Free trade unfortunately also leads to what is called a "branch plant economy" where policy decisions are made by foreigners with much less interest in your national or regional success. Trade makes everyone better off, in general, but is risky, because policies can change. Free trade in particular gets even riskier as it means the populace has fewer levers of influence against the corporations. Canada is experiencin…

How many Europeans use Google? 90%. That's democracy: the people of Europe gets what it wants.

When Europe says "we'll fix what's wrong with Google", do they want to convert the last 10%?

If not, then it has nothing to do with the people.

You think democracy is what protects people against companies? How strange. If there's no demand for a lousy french dropbox-like service, and people use Dropbox instead, it's because the market will give people what they want: they chose Dropbox.

Now pass a "democratic" law to ban Dropbox because it's not hosted in France, and all we're left with is the opposite of democracy. No choice anymore, and the best product is gone. Who's winning? The french dropbox-like with its new state-guaranteed monopoly. The people has lost.

A french comic once said "So you're telling me the rich are bad, and the poor are good, and all these good people want to become the bad ones?"... I mean the french "dropbox-like" would love to be Dropbox. The french Uber like would love to be Uber. Exalead would love to be Google. But it's not the good vs. the evil.

It's just a matter of performance... until the law comes into play, in less than democratic ways, to cut competition.

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

#140

Post by eevilspock »

adventured wrote: post #15
hansibansi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What Yelp wants, is to have their cake and eat it too.

That would be true if Google didn't have an effective monopoly in search. Because it is an effective monopoly, saying that about Yelp is like saying a citizen that is against any form of socialism but cashes social security checks wants to have his cake and eat too. False. That citizen would prefer that social security doesn't exist, but given that it does, and given that he is forced to pay the costs, isn't going to be stupid and refuse the checks. And I say that as a free-market socialist.

There are two ways to deal with a monopoly:

- break it up

- allow it to continue, but force it to provide equal access, at non-monopolistic rates and terms

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