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Google should be broken up, say European MPs

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Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#131

Post by kaolinite »

xtrumanx wrote: post #114
kaolinite wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google isn't a monopoly for the users of the search engine - you're right, they can move to whichever search engine they like - many which are almost or as good as Google. The problem is for advertisers and website owners. If you are advertising on search engines and you don't have your adverts on Google, you're missing out on 90% of users. That's why they're a monopoly. Moving your adverts to Bing just isn't an alte…

True but those users aren't stuck on Google and can easily move on to Google. Also why have you restricted yourself to advertising on search engines? It's like complaining that if I'm advertising on basketball games and I don't have my adverts on NBA games then I'm missing out on 90% of people who watch basketball games. Should we break up the NBA? By the way, I don't mean to be argumentative. The closest reason I co…

This is nothing to do with the users. The entire reason this has come up is because Google is allegedly using their monopoly to place their products above the products of other companies. Users aren't locked in but website-owners/advertisers are. This is a problem they can't get away from, switching provider just isn't an option.

Your NBA example doesn't really work because it's missing the abuse of power (not really sure how you could alter the analogy to fit). Talking of the App Store, if Apple had 90% of the marketshare and then started altering search results so that when you search for, say, "Microsoft Word" the first result is "Pages" instead, I'm sure the EU would have something to say about that, too. (I actually think that Apple is probably overall quite pleased that it doesn't have majority marketshare as it gives it a lot more flexibility.)

By the way, I'm not saying I necessarily agree with breaking up Google but I can understand why the EU is considering this.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#132

Post by Tiksi »

tomp wrote: post #115
bryanlarsen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story has 2:1 comments:points. The other you link has 1:2 comments:points. A high comment:point ratio is considered an indicator of an unproductive flame war.

Hm... well that's weird, to say the least. I mainly go to HN for the comments. A lot of comments doesn't meant that there is a flame war, or that it's unproductive. In this case, the story , as written, isn't that remarkable, but the ideas behind it, and the comments, are.

I generally go to https://news.ycombinator.com/active when I'm in the mood for discussions over articles, and this is currently #1 there.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#133

Post by Shooti »

tomp wrote: post #104
xtrumanx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick (and perhaps stupid) question; how is Google a monopoly? There are other alternatives to search available. If people really wanted to, they could use Bing. It's not like Google is using some horrendous anti-competitive practices to prevent other search engines from gaining market share. Two characteristics of monopolies (as per wikipedia) are "High barriers" and "Single seller" both of which don't apply to Goog…

Nobody is complaining that Google is a monopoly/has a huge market share in search. The problem is that they're (ab)using their monopoly in search to boost the market share of their other services. Is Google Maps really that better than OpenStreetMap or Apple Maps or Bing Maps, or do people just use it because it's a default result in Google?

>Is Google Maps really that better than OpenStreetMap or Apple Maps or Bing Maps, or do people just use it because it's a default result in Google?

I think its more nuanced: In-line maps are a better search result to location queries than a plain blue link, but to some degree the only way to offer that UX is to control that functionality from the ground up. Explicit integration comes with reliability/speed/technical costs while implicit integration comes with fair use/scraping costs.

While search boosts the integrated properties (Maps, News, Finance etc) much of the value to Google may actually be the reverse: integrated verticals give people less reason to switch away from Google's generalized Search to more specialized, domain-specific search engine.

There's an argument to be made that there's utility in a Jack-of-all trades engine.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#134

Post by mike_hearn »

probably_wrong wrote: post #113
rtpg wrote: post #30

I know a lot of people kind of scoff at the idea of breaking up Google because they happen to offer the best product, but here are the 4 points mentioned >The manner in which Google displays its own vertical search services compared with other, competing products > How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - to include within its own services > The exclusivity Google has to sell adver…

> I don't see how Google gets away with the second point for non-CC'd material. This is how I've been told it went by in Germany: there was a law drafted[1] that said publishers should get compensation for snippets of their articles in search results. This was a law apparently drafted directly in response to Google's practices. So Google sent a letter to most publishers, asking for royalty-free access to their conten…

The law was passed, not only drafted! But it was pointless:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/23/kapitulation/

The German government made themselves look like fools. They were easily manipulated by a literal handful of newspaper magnates (primarily the boss of Axel Springer) whose positions were nonsensical - they were complaining about being in Google News without compensation, but didn't use robots.txt to take themselves out of it. Surely that would have been the start of any normal business negotiation? Why would any change to the law have been needed at all?

So after wasting vast amounts of time in changing the law, the German government learned a hopefully important lesson - they were being used as pawns in a game to try and extract free money from a foreign company and the actual complaints were meritless. A tiny amount of technical literacy would have gone a long way.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#135

Post by Oletros »

tomp wrote: post #96
rtpg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought that anti-trust laws kicked in when the power was abused, so to speak.

Power is abused here, though. Google is using it's monopoly/dominant market position in search to build up it's market share in maps/local/social/whatever .

> Power is abused here, though

Can you link to the EU ruling stating that?

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#136

Post by mike_hearn »

tomp wrote: post #96
rtpg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought that anti-trust laws kicked in when the power was abused, so to speak.

Power is abused here, though. Google is using it's monopoly/dominant market position in search to build up it's market share in maps/local/social/whatever .

That's a highly controversial and tricky argument to make, though.

Is Google Maps a separate product that's being illegal tied to web search? Or is it actually a search engine for physical places, an integrated part of the one unified Google Search Engine? It could be argued either way, but if you try and imagine what it'd take to make Google Maps "pluggable" in google.com search .... well, that would be a tremendous technical challenge. Competitors would have to be able to process every web search Google does, to decide if it contains a location. That's a lot of traffic. And they have to respond as fast as Google's own servers, despite not being in the same buildings. This sort of thing suggests they're really one unified product, but I doubt such technical details would have much impact on what is a fundamentally political process.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#137

Post by fafner »

probably_wrong wrote: post #113
rtpg wrote: post #30

I know a lot of people kind of scoff at the idea of breaking up Google because they happen to offer the best product, but here are the 4 points mentioned >The manner in which Google displays its own vertical search services compared with other, competing products > How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - to include within its own services > The exclusivity Google has to sell adver…

> I don't see how Google gets away with the second point for non-CC'd material. This is how I've been told it went by in Germany: there was a law drafted[1] that said publishers should get compensation for snippets of their articles in search results. This was a law apparently drafted directly in response to Google's practices. So Google sent a letter to most publishers, asking for royalty-free access to their conten…

This law makes me angry. How could have anybody been so stupid? Did the publishers really think Google would just hand them over money? Google announced even before it passed that they'd drop the content. They underestimated what power Google has and if they drop you from the index then you lose not them.

Now they are all handing over royalty-free access to Google. But all other companies and people still have to pay. I mean the publishers think they can make at least a bit of money that way. But they again don't seem to realise that this only strengthens Google because all (potential) competitors have to pay...

The Google folks must be really celebrating over this. A law specifically designed to target Google has only strengthened them.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#138

Post by kyrra »

Tiksi wrote: post #132
tomp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm... well that's weird, to say the least. I mainly go to HN for the comments. A lot of comments doesn't meant that there is a flame war, or that it's unproductive. In this case, the story , as written, isn't that remarkable, but the ideas behind it, and the comments, are.

I generally go to https://news.ycombinator.com/active when I'm in the mood for discussions over articles, and this is currently #1 there.

Thank you, I didn't know about this feature of HN. Bookmarked for future reading.

How did you find out about it, I'm not seeing it linked from the places I'd expect.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#139

Post by mike_hearn »

DannyBee wrote: post #129

Sigh, the number of people here who think they understand antitrust law because they followed the news of the Microsoft case is sad. It kind of makes having a serious discussion about it really hard, because people don't understand the legal requirements for being a monopoly, various forms of antitrust harms, etc, and so end up simply disagreeing because they have a "wrong" view of what the law says. I'd put together…

In fairness to the great unwashed (which I guess includes me), anti trust law manages to seem quite vague and more importantly enforcement of it appears to be highly political and selective.

It's impossible for people to learn all the laws they need to follow in depth these days, there are just far too many and they are all far too complicated and subjective, so people learn by example. When we look at anti-trust law there's really one big, comparable example in the tech sector, which is Microsoft. And there they were found guilty but then Bush got elected and nothing was done. And anyway the crux of the matter was bundling of a browser, but this is now standard for all operating systems. So it's very hard to figure out what people are meant to learn from all this.

I guess there is also the Intel/AMD case that I remember. That one seemed more clear cut and obvious.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#140

Post by lotsofmangos »

vixen99 wrote: post #69
matthewmacleod wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it is relevant, and the EU has serious issues that need to be fixed. But that doesn't affect the question of whether or not Google has a monopoly which is causing market harm.

Yes you are right (I got a bit carried away there!) but let's note "The ultimate decision will rest with EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager." - an unelected official. And while I'm on the irrelevancy track (apologies) - how about an unelected foreign minister with, as reported by observers, no demonstrable talents and certainly no mandate. What are we coming to?

I don't think she has ever been Foreign Minister, she's been an elected Danish MP for 13 years, serving as Minister of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Economic and Interior Affairs before being nominated to serve as Denmark's EU Commissioner by Denmark's elected government.

I'll note that the public in Denmark did not vote for her to be Deputy Prime minister, they voted for her to be an MP, being a Deputy Prime minister is a nominated position. There are lots of nominated positions in representative democracies. In this case, the position is nominated by the elected government of a host country, then the selected nominations get voted on by the elected EU parliament. It is a bit like the process of nomination to the US supreme court, only the whole set gets voted on.

There is an argument for the Commissioners to be initially selected by election in member states rather than through nomination and that was raised in 2010 by European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, though I don't know how it is progressing.

She couldn't be a foreign minister though, if you meant it in the other sense, as she is definitely from Europe and is in an EU post.

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