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Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

bbc.com

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

#311

Post by NicoJuicy »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #52
NicoJuicy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird, since there is already a milk quota in place in Europe. I don't think it's related to the EU as institution

I just read the quoted headline, but it's not about quotas but EU based multinationals extending their business / exporting milk powder to Africa, tripling exports in 10 years (2006 - 2016) and competing with local farmers to the point they are put out of business. Not sure how the EU fits in there, other than that they provide an economic and legislative climate that allows milk prices to go low enough to make such…

Then the comment isn't related to the headline

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

#312

Post by Veelox »

gamblor956 wrote: post #282
Veelox wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It might be that I don't see how what you classify as Product A and Product B are different products. I see Product B as the monetization feature of Product A. If I "squint" I can see how they are different products but I am not convinced.

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

#313

Post by j16sdiz »

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…

Except the search engine business is not profit making without ADs.

Google is like yellow page, not Walmart.

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

#314

Post by AnthonyMouse »

hellllllllooo wrote: post #296
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> 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?

At which point you can be happy that the rich person is voluntarily paying the 3 cent fine instead of the 1 cent parking fee.

If you made it a $1000 fine vs. a 1 cent parking fee then they would pay the parking fee, but how is that actually better? You convinced them to spend more of their time keeping track of how long they had before having to put money in the meter and as a result you ended up with less money. Net loss to everyone.

Meanwhile now you're creating a bunch of perverse incentives for rich people to register their cars in someone else's name or waste thousands of man hours on both sides to contest an ordinary parking fine, and creating a bunch of perverse incentives for governments to pass vague, misleading, counterintuitive or impossible to comply with laws so they can jump out of the bushes and impose massive fines on anyone who walks by with money in their pocket.

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

#315

Post by EpicEng »

freeflight wrote: post #211
sosodev wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite right. While you can get ads that are 15 minutes long they can always be skipped within 5 seconds. That's not even comparable to television.

That might be true, but one of my use-cases for YouTube is listening to music, over a tablet, while I shower So these 15-minute "ads" pretty much lead to the situation that halfway through my shower I won't be listening to music anymore, but rather some tutorial on how to best light a photoshoot or a "documentary" how Hezbollah is destroying Europe. Don't get me wrong here: They can have their ads, but throwing 15-mi…

If your use case is using a video streaming service to listen to music then perhaps you should consider using something else instead of fighting against the tide. Don't get me wrong, I do the same from time to time, but typically when I listen to music I'm not loading up YouTube...

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

#316

Post by j16sdiz »

gamblor956 wrote: post #282
Veelox wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Product A is not profit making, but it bring public goods.

Do we want to subsidize it? Or just let it die as the free market works?

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

#317

Post by ChuckMcM »

zavi wrote: post #307
ChuckMcM wrote: post #306

This will be a boon to sites who have lost a lot of their revenue from their "custom search" function on their own website. As described in the article, Google has been squeezing these sites in order to keep more of the advertising revenue for themselves. (You can see it in their results by looking at how the ratio of money made on Google sites versus third party sites has been consistently shifting into the Google s…

Nothing will happen to those other sites because for this particular case Google has already changed its practice after the EU filed an objection in 2016. This fine is retroactive to cover the damages made during the 10 years of investigation. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-latest-eu-fine-on-alph...

Understand that there are two "kinds" of custom search. One, which is discussed in the BBC article is "AdSense for Search" which is and advertising program you could engage when you put a Google search box on your web site.

The other kind, which is not discussed here, is where you have a web front end like startpage.com or duckduckgo.com which is making an API call to a search index in response to your query. In the US, the two english language indexes with decent precision and recall are provided by Google and Bing[1]. One of Google's big partners there is Infospace which uses Google results in many of their properties. That said, when you use Google results in your search "engine" web page, you are bound by a different contract than the AdSense contract. And, like the AdSense contract, it is (or at least was) pretty restrictive on what sort of advertising you could do around Google's results.

[1] Bing either directly or through Yahoo!'s BOSS API if that is still a thing.

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

#318

Post by black_puppydog »

zaarn wrote: post #230
black_puppydog wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a lot for any one of Google's competitors to fight over. That is, if the money were e.g. supposed to go directly to the competitors that were harmed here, there would be a huge allocation fight within minutes of this decision...

But it doesn't, it goes into the EU budget.

exactly. so it sounds reasonable to me. what are debating again? :P

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

#319

Post by squaresmile »

Veelox wrote: post #308
squaresmile wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From the press release >Google has abused this market dominance by preventing rivals from competing in the online search advertising intermediation market. >Based on a broad range of evidence, the Commission found that Google's conduct harmed competition and consumers, and stifled innovation. Google's rivals were unable to grow and offer alternative online search advertising intermediation services to those of Google…

I think a thing to keep in mind is this is about antitrust and "Google is dominant in the market for online search advertising intermediation in the EEA". Exclusivity deal was nothing strange but abusing "this market dominance by preventing rivals from competing in the online search advertising intermediation market." wasn't ok.

The exclusivity deal might have been fine were it not for Google's dominant position.

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

#320

Post by nilsocket »

icebraining wrote: post #110
nilsocket wrote: post #103

One makes the law and then punish if somebody doesn't follow it. It seems EU is digging laws to earn money from American companies. It's very weird when EU punishes someone by digging up their past and without looking into oneself of the horrible atrocities one have done. While in this case, it seems to make sense to say we aren't responsible for what's done in past.

> It's very weird when EU punishes someone by digging up their past and without looking into oneself of the horrible atrocities one have done. What does this mean? Who is "one" here?

What I mean to say is, EU is looking at tech giants past and fining billions.

But if one looks at the European countries history, they have mostly looted from various other countries.

It's seems completely fine for them to look up all the bad practices done by google.(where no human life is lost)

One should also look at what their countries have done in past and pay the affected countries for their wrong doing.

But in these case they seem to say we aren't responsible for what our ancestors have done.

What I mean is, It's fine if google have done something wrong in the past.

Layout the rules now, if they cross it, then fine them.

Now, I think this is exploiting power, just because they can.

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