Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google's response to the European Commission fine

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 237 posts

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#11

Post by ko27 »

I think it would be worth adding these opinions of other US-based companies:

"A number of US companies - including Oracle - published a joint letter addressed to Vestager this week in support of penalties against Google for “anticompetitive conduct.” It said: "As you near final decisions in the Shopping and Android cases, Google and its allies will no doubt continue to press through its lobbying and public relations machine the fiction that any adverse decision amounts to European 'protectionism'. "As U.S. based companies, we wish to go on record that enforcement action against Google is necessary and appropriate, not provincial. We have watched Google undermine competition in the United States and abroad. Google operates on a global scale and across the entire online ecosystem, destroying jobs and stifling innovation."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/27/google_hit_with_reco...

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#12

Post by rndmio »

The response from google fails to really address the point from the EU Commission, that they used their monopoly position in search to drive business through their product price comparison service. The utility of the service and the "value of those kinds of fast and easy connections" are immaterial to the reasoning behind the fine.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#13

Post by Radle »

VMG wrote: post #7
ko27 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you consider that maybe EU really doesn't want to have a "Silicon Valley" if the cost is infringement of consumer rights and exploitation of the free market?

Can the EU legitimately complain that tech companies prefer to operate outside then?

http://tech.eu/features/186/ignorance-is-remiss/

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#14

Post by andrepd »

> (...) connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both.

We truly live in the age of spinning, of euphemisms, where words lose all their meaning. All-pervasive advertising, the most insidious technique of consumer capitalism, is now an idealistic connecting of people (why, rather than fining us indeed they should be thanking thanking us for that, they seem to say). Complete invasion of privacy and control over content and information reaching the person is "enhancing the user experience", etc etc.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#15

Post by ErikHuisman »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #5

Their links are shit outside of the US as far as I can tell. At least they are in the Netherlands. It constantly links to US/UK stores (amazon) which are useless for me, since I'm not paying thrice the product price for shipping. It also doesn't know about most of the sites that actual Dutch price comparison sites (tweakers.net/pricewatch) know about, which always give me a better deal.

I agree the products in the shop results are pretty bad. But i don't need the EU to protect the few dozen commercial comparison sites in the netherlands. At least google is honest about the links being sponsored. Tweakers is not.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#16

Post by sebnap »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #5

Their links are shit outside of the US as far as I can tell. At least they are in the Netherlands. It constantly links to US/UK stores (amazon) which are useless for me, since I'm not paying thrice the product price for shipping. It also doesn't know about most of the sites that actual Dutch price comparison sites (tweakers.net/pricewatch) know about, which always give me a better deal.

Yep, Germany too.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#17

Post by pgtan »

8draco8 wrote: post #8
pdog wrote: post #3

European commissioners should read a couple of Paul Graham's essays. No wonder the EU doesn't have the equivalent of a Silicon Valley. "How to Be Silicon Valley": http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html "Why Startups Condense In America": http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html

In return EU have healthy job market with ~40hr work week and proper healthcare. Most of EU companies are not trying to keep me as developer in a golden cage, offering me everything so I wouldn't have to go home anymore. There are many healthy business hubs here in Europe (London, Cardiff-Bristol-Bath, Berlin and many others), maybe they do not have that superstar status as SV but they are still good places to be. So…

the only "healthy" in the EU is the EU-Socialism

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#18

Post by HenryBemis »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #5

Their links are shit outside of the US as far as I can tell. At least they are in the Netherlands. It constantly links to US/UK stores (amazon) which are useless for me, since I'm not paying thrice the product price for shipping. It also doesn't know about most of the sites that actual Dutch price comparison sites (tweakers.net/pricewatch) know about, which always give me a better deal.

tip: I never use "google search". I get far better results when I search on google maps instead, as I usually want to find something "here and now" and google maps helps on that, and as a bonus, it doesn't display any ads ;)

If I am to do a proper search while at home, on my desk-lap-top I use DuckDuckGo or go straight to Amazon, Argos, Maplin, etc websites depending on the item category.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#19

Post by ko27 »

rndmio wrote: post #12

The response from google fails to really address the point from the EU Commission, that they used their monopoly position in search to drive business through their product price comparison service. The utility of the service and the "value of those kinds of fast and easy connections" are immaterial to the reasoning behind the fine.

They are really twisting the commissions ruling to enact sympathy.

"The commission said it did not object to the design of Google's generic search algorithms or to demotions as such, nor to the way that Google displays or organises its search results pages: "It objects to the fact that Google has leveraged its market dominance in general internet search into a separate market, comparison shopping."

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#20

Post by teekert »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #5

Their links are shit outside of the US as far as I can tell. At least they are in the Netherlands. It constantly links to US/UK stores (amazon) which are useless for me, since I'm not paying thrice the product price for shipping. It also doesn't know about most of the sites that actual Dutch price comparison sites (tweakers.net/pricewatch) know about, which always give me a better deal.

I also never ever use it, I always opt for local price-comparison sites (like tweakers.net's pricewatch in the Netherlands).
Post reply on HN