Google finally responds to Europe's antitrust charges
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Google finally responds to Europe's antitrust charges
#2"Google argues that the commission's proposed remedies, which include obliging its website to display ads "sourced and ranked" by rival companies, would only have a legal basis if it were a monopoly provider of essential supplies such as gas or electricity."
Interesting. So, Google isn't a monopoly or web search that it provides isn't essential supply. That means, as I understand, there are plenty of comparable rivals in the search area - or the search itself isn't particularly important today.
Is it so? Haven't heard about Europe-based - or anything-based search engines, which were as successful as Google, or even by half as successful. Similarly, I don't know many working people who don't search on the Internet daily. May be they can avoid doing that, but they probably don't want to.
Sounds strange.
Re: Google finally responds to Europe's antitrust charges
#3"Google argues that the commission's proposed remedies, which include obliging its website to display ads "sourced and ranked" by rival companies, would only have a legal basis if it were a monopoly provider of essential supplies such as gas or electricity." Interesting. So, Google isn't a monopoly or web search that it provides isn't essential supply. That means, as I understand, there are plenty of comparable rival…
Google is like a convenient highway that everyone takes to work: just because there are other routes (DuckDuckGo) it doesn't mean people will take them, and regulatory framework has to, in absence of a legitimate competitor (Japan prefers Yahoo! for some reason), treat Google as a functional monopoly.
Standard Oil held down prices which was good in theory for customers, but it was devastating for competitors and their employees, who spent like any other consumer. Europe's attitude towards Google isn't very free-market minded, but they are asking what kind of society they want, rather than having the economy as the be all and end all of their values.
EDIT: If you're going to downvote without explaining why, then you haven't really helped the conversation, you just made yourself feel less insecure about your own opinion.
Re: Google finally responds to Europe's antitrust charges
#4The wheels of the legal system turn so much slower than the fierce competition and relentless change of technology markets. By the time this is resolved in the courts, Google probably won't even be dominant in search / ads anymore -- just like Microsoft lost its stranglehold on the browser market before the antitrust case was resolved.
Re: Google finally responds to Europe's antitrust charges
#5"Google argues that the commission's proposed remedies, which include obliging its website to display ads "sourced and ranked" by rival companies, would only have a legal basis if it were a monopoly provider of essential supplies such as gas or electricity." Interesting. So, Google isn't a monopoly or web search that it provides isn't essential supply. That means, as I understand, there are plenty of comparable rival…
If it's a shopping search, you can go directly to Amazon and many people do.
Re: Google finally responds to Europe's antitrust charges
#6The wheels of the legal system turn so much slower than the fierce competition and relentless change of technology markets. By the time this is resolved in the courts, Google probably won't even be dominant in search / ads anymore -- just like Microsoft lost its stranglehold on the browser market before the antitrust case was resolved.
You have your dates wrong. The US antitrust case was settled in 2001. Back then, there still was no real competitor to IE: Netscape had disbanded and Mozilla was still releasing only the full suite. Webkit did not exist (its predecessor KHTML was kinda crappy) and Chrome wouldn't be released before 2008. There is a line of thinking that says MS stopped working on the browser not just because they had killed Netscape, but because the antitrust case turned that market into a minefield. In any case, they had a full decade of dominance post-antitrust.
In any case, the whole process took about 3 years. Quite a lot in technology terms, but not really that long. 3 years from now, I don't see Google going anywhere nor any competitor taking over -- technology in search hasn't changed much in the last 5 years, if anybody could take a real shot at unseating google they would have done it by now.
Re: Google finally responds to Europe's antitrust charges
#7It should be clear to anyone paying attention that Google is using their dominance in search to support their businesses at the expense of their competitors.
Just do a search for "Chicago Hotel" on a desktop browser. Unless you have a gargantuan screen, you will not see a single organic result. You will be given a list of paid ads, and then links to Google's local results. Clicking one of those local results will take you to another screen where you will see more paid ads, a Google Map, and a few seemingly organic results. But if you click on one of these "organic" results, Google then shows you a page where you can book a hotel room - and pay Google a fee for that.
Re: Google finally responds to Europe's antitrust charges
#8"Google argues that the commission's proposed remedies, which include obliging its website to display ads "sourced and ranked" by rival companies, would only have a legal basis if it were a monopoly provider of essential supplies such as gas or electricity." Interesting. So, Google isn't a monopoly or web search that it provides isn't essential supply. That means, as I understand, there are plenty of comparable rival…
Google is like a convenient highway that everyone takes to work: just because there are other routes (DuckDuckGo) it doesn't mean people will take them, and regulatory framework has to, in absence of a legitimate competitor (Japan prefers Yahoo! for some reason), treat Google as a functional monopoly. Standard Oil held down prices which was good in theory for customers, but it was devastating for competitors and thei…
>Standard Oil held down prices which was good in theory for customers, but it was devastating for competitors and their employees
Uh, are you saying that Standard Oil should have made business decisions based on what was good for their competitors? This starts to get into collusion.
And I understand that the theory was that Standard Oil would hold prices down, running at a loss in order to kill off all competition, then raise prices as high as it wanted in a non-competitive market. But this doesn't seem to apply to Google's situation as customers can easily move to searching Amazon, eBay, etc. when shopping.
Re: Google finally responds to Europe's antitrust charges
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is like a convenient highway that everyone takes to work: just because there are other routes (DuckDuckGo) it doesn't mean people will take them, and regulatory framework has to, in absence of a legitimate competitor (Japan prefers Yahoo! for some reason), treat Google as a functional monopoly. Standard Oil held down prices which was good in theory for customers, but it was devastating for competitors and thei…
>Standard Oil held down prices which was good in theory for customers, but it was devastating for competitors and their employees Uh, are you saying that Standard Oil should have made business decisions based on what was good for their competitors? This starts to get into collusion. And I understand that the theory was that Standard Oil would hold prices down, running at a loss in order to kill off all competition, t…
>Uh, are you saying that Standard Oil should have made business decisions based on what was good for their competitors? This starts to get into collusion.
This is exactly what some critics of antitrust law say happens:
> Under the Antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful “intent to monopolize”; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade”; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “collusion” or “conspiracy.”
Re: Google finally responds to Europe's antitrust charges
#10"Google argues that the commission's proposed remedies, which include obliging its website to display ads "sourced and ranked" by rival companies, would only have a legal basis if it were a monopoly provider of essential supplies such as gas or electricity." Interesting. So, Google isn't a monopoly or web search that it provides isn't essential supply. That means, as I understand, there are plenty of comparable rival…
You're right but Google continues to maintain that they are operating in a vigorously competitive environment. The minute they drop this assertion they will be the focus of antitrust investigations around the world.