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Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

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

#291

Post by lovetox »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #288
mfoy_ wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

You are missing the point.

Google does not just steal money which we get back with a fine and thats it.

It drives competitors out of the market and that causes damage to the economy and is against the interests of the population where they do business.

They should make the Managers personally liable.

If you think about it 1.5 Billions is laughable for a company like Google, its only money which they have plenty from. Nothing will change.

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

#292

Post by Consultant32452 »

robin_reala wrote: post #252
Consultant32452 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have another suggestion for how to get icky things done which must be done?

Your argument is predicated on the fact that ‘they must be done’. I disagree.

Almost every meaningful human endeavor will result in some human deaths from time to time. A position of zero harm closely resembles a position of zero progress.

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

#293

Post by AnthonyMouse »

squaresmile wrote: post #273
Veelox wrote: post #205

Just trying to get the facts straight. Google provided the ability to search your site. They also allowed you to show ads/make money from these searches. If you wanted to use this, you had to only show Google ads. I don't understand how that is illegal.

I think the press release [1] did a good job of detailing the specific activity that was over the line: > Starting in 2006, Google included exclusivity clauses in its contracts. This meant that publishers were prohibited from placing any search adverts from competitors on their search results pages. The decision concerns publishers whose agreements with Google required such exclusivity for all their websites. Even if…

> Even if the search result and some ads were provided by Google, requiring exclusivity for search adverts was too much.

Which completely ignores why ad networks have those restrictions.

At one point it was common for crummy web pages to sign up for every ad network. All of them. Because every one you signed up for was more money. Then the whole side of the page would be ads from different networks.

The obvious problem is that the advertiser is paying the website for eyeballs, but nobody is ever going to look at all of those ads. It's hard enough to get anyone to look at your ad box when it's the only one on the page. So you're paying for eyeballs and then not getting them. It was like buying a TV ad spot and discovering that the TV network had put it in the middle of an uninterrupted two hour block of just other ads. No surprise that the ad networks then required sites to stop doing that.

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

#294

Post by caprese »

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.

European Commission anti-trust rules are stricter and have more teeth than other large market's 100 year old laws. They don't borrow from their case law either.

Its current embodiment is only 10 years old so they are at the stage where they are required to make a point. If its too vague, which would fit your observation, challenge it and see what the venues for appeal or courts are in that supernational government.

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

#295

Post by utopcell »

gamblor956 wrote: post #286
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.)

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 s…

I understood the argument (it wasn't that complicated to make.) By this reasoning, Google Ads is a different product from Google Search and as such gets preferential treatment by being the only one presented in Google's search results.

It's not hard to see these line of fines against Google for what they are: Money-grabbing attacks. With no knowledge on the matter, as an external observer, I wish this doesn't lead Google to de-prioritize its offerings in Europe.

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

#296

Post by hellllllllooo »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #288
mfoy_ wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

> 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.

This is not true if you see $50 and $150 dollars as basically the same amount when compared to your overall wealth. Would you care about a 2 cent fine for overrunning you time on a 1 cent parking space?

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

#297

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#299

Post by andrewla »

olau wrote: post #255
andrewla wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Fines account for This is maybe not as comforting as you think it sounds. 1.5B is 1% of the budget that you describe below, which is non-trivial -- that's make or break money. I'm guessing it exceeds the total annual contribution of several member states (I tried to find the actual budget, but talk about incomprehensible documents [1] -- what's an "own resource"? What's with the obsession with sugar?). To that en…

I think I know where you are coming from, for a nation 1% is significant, but I don't think you realize what the EU budget is used for. 47% subsidies for farmers, 30% regional support subsidies (e.g. they might co-found an R&D project in an outermost region in a country): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_the_European_Union#P... So mostly subsidies. If there's a deficit, they can cut the regional subsidies whic…

That is a good point. I guess in theory the fact that the amounts are rebated from the next budget could provide an incentive for individual members to push for increased fines, but given the reduction would be proportional, and national budgets are so much larger than these amounts, it wouldn't really amount to a significant national budget windfall.

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

#300

Post by visarga »

dmitriid wrote: post #280
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.)

If you want to go down the slippery road of analogies, a better one would be: Google is Walmart, offering all kinds of products. Carrying Kellog’s cereals (and many others). Recently it started producing its own brand, Cerealify. Once it started producing its own brand, it’s the only brand you can now buy at Walmart. It’s also the only brand featured in marketing materials (catalogs, flyers, posters). Kelloggs, and o…

No, a better analogy would be if they conditioned Kelloggs to only sell on Walmart, if they want to sell on Walmart at all.
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