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European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

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Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#101

Post by charlesdm »

kuschku wrote: post #53
ruiramos wrote: post #18

Not sure I get the logic here. Will they be fined next for showing the Google Maps embed (and street view) when you search for places nearby? What's the difference?

That's another case that's being worked on. The preferred solution of the EU would be that there would be a standardized API between search engines and map providers, shopping providers, etc, and you could simply choose which map provider you'd want, and that'd be shown in every search engine. This is still being discussed, of course, as no solution has been found yet, but in general the idea is based on Android's In…

That sounds horrible though. Another abomination in the making. The effort to align all those map providers is probably quite significant. Such a massive waste of efforts and engineering time.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#102

Post by matthewmacleod »

vegancap wrote: post #36

The EU are verging on gangsterism, extorting businesses for increasingly specious violations and terms. Of course Google favour their affiliates on THEIR web services, their property.

I have absolutely no framework for understanding this attitude.

I've got to assume you're aware of things like unfair competition, antitrust laws, market distortions and so on. The idea is that a disproportionately influential market participant can cause the market to become less free by virtue of inhibiting competition – competition being a vital part of a free market.

Rules against abusing a dominant market position are there specifically to try and prevent abuse from happening.

I could understand the reasonableness of arguing about the specifics of Google's market dominance or the degree to which this activity was a problem. But "increasingly specious violations and terms" and "absolutely sickening" seem to suggest you haven't really considered the validity of such rules.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#103

Post by patrickaljord »

I wonder if that's payback for the US gov fining VW so hard:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2017/04/21/volkswa...

It's almost the same amount, US$2.8B. It's like the EU telling the US "F with our corporations and we'll F with yours".

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#104

Post by Pyxl101 »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #79
jlebrech wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so EU can keep knocking on their door because google has no choice but to pay up?

Well, they could consider not engaging in uncompetitive practices. The thing is, if they want to do business in the EU they have to abide by the rules of the EU. It's not that complex!

You're acting like the outcome of this decision was in any way predictable based on the "rules of the EU". If I owned a website that had a search engine and comparison shopping and email, I would not expect that it's somehow wrong if my search engine shows results from my service's comparison shopping and email. I would not expect that it's somehow my obligation to seek out comparison shopping services operated by my competitors and show them on the search engine in the same way as my company's product. There isn't even a general way to do that - am I obligated to design a custom protocol? This is borderline ridiculous, but is apparently the ruling.

What precedent is there for imposing rules this this on other businesses? "You have to design new technology and build custom services that show business information for your competitors on your advertising/websites/properties"?

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#105

Post by rayiner »

theBobBob wrote: post #72

The thing is, personally I prefer getting integrated results from Google's other search services when I do a Google search. I like getting Google Maps results when I search for a location, I like getting Google Flights results etc. When I do a Google search I am not just using it as a simple website search. I want it to use it to search the whole Google suite of services. If they are forced to stop doing this it will…

I like getting results when I search, not necessarily Google ones. Google Flights/Hotels sucks, for example, I'd rather get Orbitz or Hotwire. Like how Google does it for Uber/Lyft when you pull up a Maps location.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#106

Post by patrickaljord »

cyxxon wrote: post #92
theBobBob wrote: post #72

The thing is, personally I prefer getting integrated results from Google's other search services when I do a Google search. I like getting Google Maps results when I search for a location, I like getting Google Flights results etc. When I do a Google search I am not just using it as a simple website search. I want it to use it to search the whole Google suite of services. If they are forced to stop doing this it will…

> If they are forced to stop doing this it will make my search experience worse for me. This seems to be the whole point of the fine. Currently Google's services just so damned conveniently integrated that no one uses competitors' services, even if they are better. The thing is, though, I am totally with you here. I don't want to use one of the other services for maps, or flights, or these snippets for information. T…

This is basically the EU protecting other corporations even if most of the populations benefit from Google's current practices. Corporatism at its worse.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#107

Post by mehwoot »

s_kilk wrote: post #62
vegancap wrote: post #36

The EU are verging on gangsterism, extorting businesses for increasingly specious violations and terms. Of course Google favour their affiliates on THEIR web services, their property.

I find the manic defense of corporate interests over the interests of the public more sickening.

Welcome to America

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#108

Post by IanCal »

theBobBob wrote: post #72

The thing is, personally I prefer getting integrated results from Google's other search services when I do a Google search. I like getting Google Maps results when I search for a location, I like getting Google Flights results etc. When I do a Google search I am not just using it as a simple website search. I want it to use it to search the whole Google suite of services. If they are forced to stop doing this it will…

As a counter, perhaps if it were more open & their shopping results had to compete with other providers in a fair way then your experience would be better. Right now they can be OK but simply more prominent and win.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#109

Post by 3pt14159 »

nkkollaw wrote: post #61
gressquel wrote: post #32

I wish they would add an additional 1 billion fine for AMP.

From what I read, AMP is a subset of HTML to make pages load faster and deliver ads more efficiently (which might appeal to content creators). I assume that Google is attempting to make devs start using a proprietary technology instead of the well-established HTML standard, or: - somehow lock everyone in with the format - force people to switch to Chrome since it would run those pages better - force other browsers to…

AMP isn't bad in the sense that it makes websites faster. AMP is bad because it (usually, in common practice) switches the domain, so you lose control of a huge number of things and you essentially cede control to a third party, so instead of this:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/us/politics/hillary-cl...

You get this:

https://amp.gstatic.com/v/mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/us/p...

Now ironically, this is actually safer for a number of websites because it has the side effect of making normal HTTP content HTTPS, but the idea of Google taking over control over the content, the advertising, what methods are used for analytics tracking, and what possible pieces of content can be embedded destroys the whole "the web should be free" concept.

It's not something dramatically new, Facebook started doing it years ago and even Google news was a (more limited) form of it, but just because some things are possible doesn't mean they should be done. For example I can make a website, example.com, where every link gets turned into

example.com/v/yourwebsite.com

And then proxy all the content through my server replacing links like yourwebsite.com/login to example.com/v/yourwebsite.com/login and the majority of users will not notice that the website hasn't changed. And really the only thing that stops people from doing this is copyright law and a shared societal understanding that corporations should be able to control their content, not technical countermeasures.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#110

Post by devoply »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #96
devoply wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point they are also apparently abusing their capcha. You use it from Firefox, solve like 3 different captcha, my most recent experience with Cloudflare. Use it from Chrome, instant check after failing a login. And it's from the same IP that has done it over and over again. If you were the least bit intelligent you would not do this... unless you were trying to make the user experience of other browsers worse…

They do a lot of profiling. Like if you're logged into a google account at the time, and other session checks. Perhaps your browsers had different cookies/localStorage, which could explain it.

Say that this is true. Google can only use its own data from its own browser to improve the web and penalizes everyone who is not using their browser. The result is the same. Google has a monopoly on your experience of the web... because it is optimized for users of its browser.
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