Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#281

Post by dalbasal » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #161

This is not for AdSense on Google.com, this is for third-party sites with a search feature showing search ads to their own customers. A third-party site who wants to show ads in their own search results could partner with Google to include AdSense ads in their own results. The Google contract originally required exclusivity, and then was changed to require Google ads to be more prominent. In the context of the market…

I can’t imagine keyword search on third-party sites is responsible for a significant share of overall AdSense revenue, I wonder if it’s even a single digit percentage of their overall ad inventory?

Single digit percent of Google's overall ad inventory would be $1bn-$10bn per annum, at current scale. Google's ad business is big. Over 10 years...

One of the first "tricks" you learn on adowrds is to turn off (it's hard to find) "search partners," or at least split it off and quarter your bids. It's on by default and'll take up a surprising amount of your budget, using default settings.

I wouldn't be surprised if it ads up to a meaningful share of the "search ads" market.

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#282

Post by gamblor956 » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

Veelox wrote: post #254

Sahhaese wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not leveraging dominance in one area to push a different area is the basis of our anti-monopoly laws.

While I agreed the shopping issue was an issue of leveraging dominance, this seems more reasonable, if you want to monitize our free service, you have to use us to do it. At the moment I cannot come up with an example of that situation that would be an antitrust violation.

You literally just provided the example.

Product A: dominant search product

Product B: non-dominant advertising product.

If you want to use product A, you need to also use product B. That alone is sufficient to create an antitrust violation. It's almost literally the textbook example of an antitrust violation.

But Google didn't stop there--they required exclusivity for product B for several years, and even after that ended they still required premium placement. Either way, they just compounded the severity of the antitrust violation.

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#283

Post by Angostura » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

Veelox wrote: post #249

Angostura wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, as I understand it, Google was saying that if you used it search service, you were prohibited from showing non-Google ads anywhere else on the site. You couldn't just use Google Search and accept ads in those search results a cost of use. This sounds rather like abuse of a dominant position in one area to squash competitors in another.

>you were prohibited from showing non-Google ads anywhere else on the site. Can I get a link or a quote to support that? If that is the case then yes, it crosses a line but I didn't see any in the linked article to support that view. Edit: I reread the article and I think you are wrong. It specifically says on search pages. From the article >In 2006, Google started to include "exclusivity clauses" in contracts which…

I think I'm wrong too. Here's the EC press release explaining the rationale:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-1770_en.htm

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#284

Post by jquery » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

mfoy_ wrote: post #240

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't we all get off easy (or easier)?

Imagine if the punishment for stealing was to be fined for 10% of the amount you stole. Like, you get to keep 90% of it. You'd rob a bank and then drop by the police station to drop off their cut just to avoid the hassle of "getting investigated" later. So obviously the punishment has to be worse than the value of doing it. But not 1:1 either, if you know you'll only catch 50% of robbers, then the fine would have to…

At $1.5B, it's about collecting revenue to fund EU activities. It's far beyond the amount of revenue the infraction generated by order(s?) of magnitude, and was a gray area to boot.

Keeping the taxes as "fines" ensures they can give EU companies favorable treatment. It's the definition of corrupt: "a willingness to act dishonestly in return for money"

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#285

Post by stirfrykitty » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

freeflight wrote: post #178

mhsabbagh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of using Google.com, YouTube.com, Gmail.com and many many other services, for free.

And I thought I was "paying" for that by having 15 minutes long "ads" thrown at me every for every 5 minutes of content I watch. YouTube seems to be getting really bad in that regard, even worse than TV.

Block the ads. You have every right to do so. There is zero obligation to watch ads. If a company like Google can afford to operate a service like YouTube, then putting it up in the first place is the cost of doing business. I happily block ads on all devices I use and am in control over, even at work.

Pi-hole, uBlock Origin (even kills the adblock detectors), Privacy Badger, Decentraleyes, Tracking Token Stripper, Webmail Ad Blocker, etc.

Ads. What ads? You have a VPN set up on your home network, you can pass your mobile phone through it so as not to get ads even while away.

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#286

Post by gamblor956 » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

utopcell wrote: post #258

dmitriid wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in: didn't happen, and Google was fined correctly: "Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google’s search results, and others appear even further down. Google’s own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google’s generic search algorithms, including such demotions."

I can't wait to walk into a Walmart and see poster ads for Best Buy near its entrance. Why is Walmart abusing its dominance as a retailer ? (This line of reasoning actually makes sense to some people.)

For starters, Walmart and Google are very different things.

Walmart is a store, and sells things. Best Buy is also a store, and sells many of the same things Walmart sells. They are competitors in the market for selling electronics. Competition between them is good, and so they aren't required to advertise each others' stores.

Google is a search engine. Bing and Yahoo Search are also search engines. They crawl and search the same websites. Competition between them is good, and so they aren't required to advertise each other's search engines.

Google Mail is not a search engine. Google News is not a search engine. YouTube is not a search engine. Google Play is not a search engine. These are all different products from Google Search. Thus, Google giving preferential treatment to these products in its market-dominant search engine would be a textbook example of an antitrust violation: using a dominant market position in one market to interfere in the another market. (It depends on the jurisdiction's specific antitrust laws, but it may not matter where the competitors' products show up in the search results if Google is giving preferential treatment to its own competing products in searches for those products or the search terms that would list those products.)

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#287

Post by klmr » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

eggy wrote: post #241

klmr wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trotsky pushed for a communist, soviet united states of Europe in 1923. Right, but what does this have to do with anything? The only thing in common is that both have “Europe” in the name (and I’m not even sure that was part of Trotsky’s vision). If a union of states scares you, the USA must be your waking nightmare. If you’ve indeed read 1984 you’ll notice that there are literally no parallels between that scenari…

The zeitgeist of 1923 during Trotsky's statement, and the idea of unifying Europe, since 1923 was also the year that Paneuropa was published by Coudenhove-Kalergi. I don't read 1984 as a roadmap, or with literal parallels to the EU, but only as a cautionary tales against large super states. It is not too clear how the world arrives at this scenario in the book. Warring is a distraction to keep the public in line. I h…

You either didn’t understand the point I was making, or you are intentionally ignoring it. So let me be direct: How is the EU structurally more similar to a Trotskyist superstate than to the USA? How do you justify comparing the EU, but not the USA, to the totalitarian, quasi-fascist nightmare from 1984?

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#288

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

mfoy_ wrote: post #277

jessriedel wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top-level commentator isn't arguing that fines should be capped at the damages, he's arguing that they should be indexed to the damages (say, proportional to them). If I steal $50, the punishment is larger than $50, but it's determined relative to that magnitude, and in particular does is not just picked to be a fraction of my income. A $100,000 fine would be excessive punishment for stealing $50 dollars, and the…

It is indexed, just not to the damages, but to the revenue of the guilty party. Other countries in the EU do this as well, even in personal matters. For instance, a speeding ticket is based off a percentage of your annual income. Why? Because if you make $200k a year, a $50 fine isn't a big deal, at all, but if you barely scrape by, $50 could break your budget for the month.

> Why? Because if you make $200k a year, a $50 fine isn't a big deal, at all, but if you barely scrape by, $50 could break your budget for the month.

That makes no sense. If you're stealing $50 then a $150 fine is a deterrent even if you're a billionaire, because the expected value if you're caught is -$100, which has nothing at all to do with how much money you have.

And if that caused the billionaire to not care, that's great. If I got $150 every time someone stole $50 from me and that didn't deter them, I'd start researching how to get them to steal more money from me because it's so profitable to me. If they're willing to pay that much more than something costs, at that point you're just selling it to them and deterrence is not desired because the transaction is apparently net positive to both parties.

Moreover, it seems that you're suggesting that someone with $0 income and $0 assets then should have a That's the thing that really wouldn't serve as a deterrent, in a problematic, net negative consequences sort of way.

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#289

Post by opinion-10006 » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

Veelox wrote: post #264

kabsekabtak wrote: post #9

Google needs to be broken up. If Microsoft could be broken up, Google deserves it 100x. They control way too much.

How do you propose that Google should be split?

People on HN ask this question every time that the subject comes up, and I'm a bit confused as to whether it's genuine curiosity, or whether it's meant to show that breaking up Google would be impractical.

I don't know much about the internal structure of Google, but my naïve intuition is that it could be broken up into several profitable companies relatively easily a whole a bunch of different ways, given how many different products there are.

It seems like the first thing would be to split off Youtube, which is apparently already independent enough that it has its own CEO. Actually, I'd be comfortable arguing that Youtube is big enough by itself that breaking it up somehow would benefit consumers, but at least in that case it does seem hard to imagine how it would be done.

Then, I would guess the next step would be to split Google Search from everything else. As far as I can tell, it's mostly stand-alone, and most integration with other products seemes more harmful to consumers than beneficial.

After that, it gets harder, but I feel like you could do something like this:

1. Adsense 2. Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs 3. Android, Pixel / whatever other hardware Google makes. 4. Everything else

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#290

Post by utopcell » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

faceplanted wrote: post #275

utopcell wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait to walk into a Walmart and see poster ads for Best Buy near its entrance. Why is Walmart abusing its dominance as a retailer ? (This line of reasoning actually makes sense to some people.)

I'm not sure if you're saying that the fine makes sense or you're being sarcastic and saying it doesn't.

I'm saying it doesn't. Google doesn't prioritize its own products on its organic search results.