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France convicts Google Maps for unfair competition

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Re: France convicts Google Maps for unfair competition

#121

Post by nknight »

vlasta2 wrote: post #40
Tichy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK so lets shut down Wikipedia next.

There is a difference. Wikipedia and many open source projects cannot forcibly switch to paid model, because they are currently giving their content away under CC-BY or GPL and you can keep a copy of it. If they started charging, you can fork the project and continue charge-free. Google maps API is a service controlled by Google. You cannot replicate it and keep using it if Google changes its mind about the licensing…

What makes you think a irrationally protectionist French court isn't going to issue an order changing the licensing terms of Wikipedia's content?

Re: France convicts Google Maps for unfair competition

#122

Post by oh_sigh »

msluyter wrote: post #110
oh_sigh wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market doesn't fail in this case. Consumers fail. Just like when there is traffic on a highway, it isn't networking theory that fails, it is drivers. Consumers choose to shop at Carrefour, and fill their coffers with money to smash smaller chains. Maybe if consumers were smarter, or cared a little bit more, they wouldn't shop there? I can only blame ignorant consumers and not carrefour or the free market in…

I suspect you're getting downvoted because your suggestion suffers from the free-rider problem: everyone who chooses to continue shopping at Carrefour free rides off those who don't, yet they still obtain any supposed social benefits.

How? How is someone who buys at Carrefour free riding off of those who don't? Carrefour has very efficient supply chains set up, and can therefore provide cheap goods. I don't pay more for a tomato from my neighborhood farm because Carrefour imports tomatoes from Algeria

Re: France convicts Google Maps for unfair competition

#123

Post by eldude »

rickmb wrote: post #89
eldude wrote: post #82

The people this is going to hurt the most are the citizens and businesses in France. No company or entrepreneur is going to want to setup shop in a country where success is punished. No creator, achiever or pursuer of excellence will desire to go to France if they risk being sued the moment they become successful enough to be worth it. Argue all you want that this is about "monopolies" and "anti-competitive" behavior…

> Competition dies when rewards are removed If a monopolist offers a product for free just because they have plenty of cash to do so, all rewards to compete in that market are removed. That kills competition stone dead, and that's why we have laws against it all over the world, including Silicon Valley. Guarding the free market against monopolist abuse is standard operating procedure in all capitalist countries. Bott…

A monopoly does not kill competition, it disuades it. Nobody competes with the monopoly because the incentives are not great enough to do so. The same incentives for success do not disappear because a monopoly emerges. The monopoly must still sell their item to a free market that's free to refuse their goods on moral or pragmatic grounds. A monopoly means solely that they are not challenged by a competitor and can therefore sell their product beholden only to demand, and not supply. Again, this is a _good_ thing.

The demand of the consumers that products be offered at the price they want, as opposed to the company's, is again plain and simple _greed_.

Let's not be coy about it. Consumers want more for less and they seek to use the government and the tyranny of the masses to force corporations, the private property of others, to give it to them. Again, this conduct is reprehensible and any government that encourages it will only be hurting itself and its citizens.

Let me repeat that, a monopoly is not some magical power to force one's will upon the people. In a free market, a monopoly remains subject to the demand of the market and cannot and will not succeed by offering a product nobody wants. Success is not anti-competitive, far from it! Success is the greatest incentive for competition that has ever existed.

You're forcing your desires onto a free market that is clearly making its own choice. You're proclaiming to know more about what's best for people than they do. Leave the free market alone, empower and grant the people their free will, educate, and if you want to change the world, do so by competing and earning it, not by undermining others' rights to satisfy your own ideology.

Re: France convicts Google Maps for unfair competition

#124

Post by mattmanser »

paulhauggis wrote: post #119
mattmanser wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realise you're actually arguing against your own point 2 up? You said the reason the small traders went out of business is price, but now they suddenly shouldn't differentiate on price? You don't really seem to understand monopolies or free markets or how they operate. 1. Monopoly emerges 2. Competitor opens 3. Monopoly slashes prices in local store, while maintaing prices in all others 4. Competitor runs out…

"That's how it works. You can also replace 3 with 'Monopoly slashes prices everywhere and relies on its cash reserves'." So are we going to have laws now where big companies can't lower and raise their prices? If you want to blame anyone, blame the consumers that only shop for the lowest price. Walmart is a good example of this in the US. The other problem is that as a small business, you just don't have the resource…

I didn't say that, I was just pointing out that when you get to the point of a monopoly it's very hard to get back. Worse still the big company then starts lobbying to make sure it stays a monopoly, America's phone networks are a good example of that.

Also the other big problem with monopolies is that they squeeze their supplier dry as they're the only game in town. So here in the UK the supermarkets are squeezing the farmers' margins to the extreme as if they take their business elsewhere that farmer's out of business. Who else can he sell the millions of tonnes he has in the ground to?

Further problems are caused by the big guys doing stuff like pumping water into chicken breast to make it look plump and increase the weight, increased revenues, customers think they're getting more for their money based solely on price/weight.

I also lament the death of bakeries, for example bread from supermarkets is horrible. Donuts suck. We used to have Chelsea Buns where I grew up, the dross they sell in supermarkets is roughly a tenth of the 'tastiness', it's just crap. But all the bakers are out of business because who wants to visit ten stores and pay more when you can visit one?

Over here in the UK they used to restrict how close a supermarket could be built to a town centre in order to curb their growth. I think they've relaxed that now as they've definitely got closer than they used to be. That's one example of how they used laws to try and give the smaller guys an advantage.

Another example is they have restricted the opening hours, but the supermarkets are now opening convenience stores, in my city centre alone there are 6 Tescos within 5 minutes walking distance of each other.

How to stop it? Should we stop it? I don't have any answers unfortunately. If I did I'd probably have a Nobel prize.

EDIT: The part of me that wants it to stop is that it's all so homogenous, all the stores are laid out exactly the same, they've all got the same 6 ready meals, the same 6 meat items, the same 6 larger brands, the same 6 cakes, the same 12 brands of crisps, the same 15 chocolate bars. Where's the local produce? Where's the seasonal produce? What if I don't want a pepporoni pizza, I want a chicken one? Is life really supposed to be that fucking boring? I rarely swear here, but I feel it, really feel worried for our collective soul.

Re: France convicts Google Maps for unfair competition

#125

Post by jamesaguilar »

onemoreact wrote: post #117
cjy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand the economic meaning of "rival good": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)

True, but API's use hardware that has actual costs so it is a "rival good". For example, GPL code is a non "rival good" in that someone running it on their own hardware costs nothing, a download service that provides GPL code is a "rival good" in that a finite number of people can use it at one time. Now if Google hosted their map's as a torrent and said, use this for whatever you want. That would be close enough tha…

Yeah, rival-ness is not a binary value though. In a case where marginal costs of providing a service are very low, it's reasonable to describe it as being mostly non-rival.

> if Google hosted their map's as a torrent . . .

Then it would be non-excludable, which is a different concept from non-rival. It would be rival to the same degree as before, in that it would require marginal computing resources to use. Just the resources required would be coming from the user rather than the provider of the service.

Re: France convicts Google Maps for unfair competition

#126

Post by potatolicious »

Tichy wrote: post #74
freehunter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't matter. There is no law nor any court ruling even in France against providing free services. Here is the entire key to the issue: >Bottin Cartographes argued that Google was only planning to give away the service for free until all the competitors had been driven out of business and then they would start charging. It's not about free services, it's about willfully plotting to gain marketshare via free se…

How did they prove that Google was plotting that scheme?

I don't know the specifics of this case, but Google did start charging for Maps last year for commercial users, at least in the US. That may be enough to prove intent?

Re: France convicts Google Maps for unfair competition

#127

Post by potatolicious »

oh_sigh wrote: post #75
dlikhten wrote: post #5

Reporter totally misses the point. The point is that google provided google maps for free. That is great. except when all other competition dies (because who can compete with a better, freer version of your product?) google starts charging pretty rediculous rates. That move in itself is what contributed to the ruling. OSM is free for everyone. It is a wiki. If OSM destroys google, bing, etc, and then decides to go on…

Why couldn't competition spring up once google starts charging ridiculous rates? It's not as if competition dies forever. It dies until someone else figures out how to do it better.

Certain markets have high barriers to entry.

If the local sandwich shops start charging ridiculous rates, it's not very difficult for someone to move in and do it for cheaper.

When Google owns all the cartographic data, how exactly do you intend to compete as a newcomer? Where are you going to get the 8-figure investment to even begin to make the smallest dent against the massive dataset you need to collect?

This is the problem with the perfectly laissez-faire view: it discounts the fact that there is, in many cases, a huge barrier to entry for all new entrants once someone has the market locked down.

Re: France convicts Google Maps for unfair competition

#128

Post by arg01 »

eldude wrote: post #123
rickmb wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Competition dies when rewards are removed If a monopolist offers a product for free just because they have plenty of cash to do so, all rewards to compete in that market are removed. That kills competition stone dead, and that's why we have laws against it all over the world, including Silicon Valley. Guarding the free market against monopolist abuse is standard operating procedure in all capitalist countries. Bott…

A monopoly does not kill competition, it disuades it. Nobody competes with the monopoly because the incentives are not great enough to do so. The same incentives for success do not disappear because a monopoly emerges. The monopoly must still sell their item to a free market that's free to refuse their goods on moral or pragmatic grounds. A monopoly means solely that they are not challenged by a competitor and can th…

The governments are (local) monopolies that supply a product(customers) to businesses on the governemnts terms. So, using your logic businesses can choose on moral or pragmatic grounds not to buy from these monopolies (i.e. set up in another country). Please continue to argue how a single incumbent asserting its market dominance is a good thing while arguing a single incumbent asserting its market dominance is a bad thing.

Re: France convicts Google Maps for unfair competition

#129

Post by zmmmmm »

icebraining wrote: post #49
Tichy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Google is only made to pay because they have a paid version of Maps? If Maps were completely free, they would be good? Who guarantees that Wikipedia never starts charging, as soon as all other information services have been pushed out of the market? Sorry but yes maybe I missed some tidbit in the article?

Who guarantees that Wikipedia never starts charging, as soon as all other information services have been pushed out of the market? The fact that anyone can make an exact Wikipedia clone thanks to the free licensing of their software and content?

> The fact that anyone can make an exact Wikipedia clone thanks to the free licensing of their software and content?

Wikipedia could change that at any time. Old versions of Wikipedia could be distributed but they wouldn't be up to date any more.

Re: France convicts Google Maps for unfair competition

#130

Post by zmmmmm »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #111

Even if Google doesn't start to charge high fees once the others are driven out of business, it would still be bad for the industry. Since no one can compete with Google's deep pockets, they have a monopoly on any improvements, changes. The barriers to entry are high; raw mapping of large land areas is hugely expensive and complicated. So the industry would shrivel as a result.

I think in most places Google licenses mapping data (usually you can see the credit in a watermark somewhere on the map).

So I'm not sure that argument works - Google is paying for the data like everyone else. The problem is they were giving the service (curated data) away.

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