I hope Trump fines EU for all these non-sense fines they impose on American companies. Feels like EU is trying to compensate for their high debt.
Much like the US fines EU banks?
Are the fines comparable? Why do they get fined?
Google's response to the European Commission fine
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Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine
#52I 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…
Common origin does not disprove animosity or self interest. One wonders what NewsCorp or Oracle concerns are in ecommerce search, but then you remember that they had well publicized scuffles with Google. The last record fine was against a US company, as were recent tax related fines, patterns are harder to refute.
I'm sure EU court have based its decision on a number of different factors.
The letter from Oracle is just one of them.
Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
the only "healthy" in the EU is the EU-Socialism
And the fact that laws are proposed and made by unelected officials in private. Is that the future?
Does the U.S., with its Electoral College, really want to go there? This strikes me as throwing stones from a glass McMansion.
More to the point: unhindered, direct-democracy is rarely a good system as it tends to devolve into "majority rule". The case for appointed officials is neither new nor in and of itself undemocratic.
Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine
#54Their statement is a lie. Google are trying to blur 'shopping ad' and 'search result'. The consumer is worse off because those items are not listed first on their search merit. The consumer is deceived. It is only useful to those who pay for the promotions and Google.
Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> have healthy job market Reminder: the EU's unemployment rate is twice as high as the US'.
The US might have a better job market (by some cherry-picked metrics), but the EU doesn't have a bad one (I'll grant that there are notable exceptions, but then you'll have to grant me the same for certain US states). The point is that you're playing with words. Moreover, you have to factor in things like healthcare, life expectancy, literacy rates, access to education, danger involved in unemployment, crime rates, u…
...and the negative externalities: per-capita imprisonment rates, people killed in other countries through war and other means, people killed in the same country, energy usage, waste output, pollution and carbon footprint...
Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine
#56Earlier 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?
Probably not - they should however complain about how things are run elsewhere, because it's hurting them and everyone else.
It's natural for companies to be drawn towards places that have less restrictions on businesses. It's to be expected, but that doesn't mean less restrictions is good for the society.
Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine
#57> (...) 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…
Although Google has done plenty for Technology and Humanity, when it comes to ads-marketing-tracking they are simply ruthless. Perhaps that penalty will make Google reconsider their stance on respecting everyone (and not just the ones who give them billions).
Next horror story to come to your monitors over the next 5 years is monetising on the below:
I search for "Item A". One week later I purchase "Item A". 2 days later Google reaches out to the retailer claiming $ for sending me to that specific retailer.
Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine
#58I 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…
Disclaimer Oh I contain multitudes how can you process this comment? Sorry it's not reduced to one non-dissenting ideological line, but contains ideas you may have trouble reconciling. Abort now if ambiguity crashes your harddrive. Can you process that I am both: happy that Google is fined. And also: it's a bit rich of Oracle to say that. Larry: "It's not enough that we win. Everyone else must lose!" But losers are a…
That's fair. Any official statement by a corporation is total horseshit 100% of the time.
Corporations literally exist only to protect and grow their bottom line, and are engineered to reflexively throw everything else under the bus--employees, the environment, the general public, reason itself--to defend that goal.
Their statements will never come out and admit this, however, because it compromises that goal. Thus literally, literally everything corporations say in an official capacity is a lie, almost without exception. The subtext is always "we are doing this primarily because we believe it will help us make more money".
The best we can do in a capitalist society is create smart regulations that channel that inevitably self-serving motive to align as closely with what's good for society at large as possible.
Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine
#59Their 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.
That's not my impression - Google rarely shows me non-german shopping links. However their regular results results often tend to be a little too german / national for my taste.
One example are reviews (as in "{some product} review") - I often find that my search results are biased towards german reviews while I'd really prefer to see international reviews from the people most qualified to do so.
Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine
#60I hope Trump fines EU for all these non-sense fines they impose on American companies. Feels like EU is trying to compensate for their high debt.
This is not a valid complaint. Fining companies for breaking competition law is totally legitimate.
Sometimes when you go to google search, it will prompt you to download the their app, download chrome, use their native weather, news, etc. It is part of how they iterate on their core search product. If they decide to show Google shopping, isn't that their product decision?