Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you think that if the EU disbanded, there would be more wars (and/or arms-races) in Europe? Between which nations?
1. Yes. 2. Don't know - we're good at surprising people!
How enlightening.
Google should be broken up, say European MPs
101–110 of 153 posts
Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs
#102The European Union should be broken up.
When debating pro-against EU, we should never forget how pre-EU Europe looked like. We've been incredibly good at killing each other. I'd pick a huge beauracracy over arms races any day of the week.
> "We've been incredibly good at killing each other."
No, what you mean is that Germans and Austrians (and only Germans and Austrians) have recently been rather fond of invading neighbouring countries and also genociding their own populations.
The other European countries, Balkans excepted, have actually got along rather well for the past 150 years.
So why should Holland, Belgium, France, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark and the others be erased as nation states? This is the way things are going.
Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs
#103I 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 believe the fourth point was something that has already been changed in the AdWords API Ts & Cs almost two years ago, as a result of the FTC settlement. http://googleadsdeveloper.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/updates-to-...
Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs
#104> Google has around 90% market share for search in Europe It's a complete monopoly and the barrier to entry is huge. Might be a good thing to break them up.
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?
Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say that the technological barrier exists for google just like with IE and MSFT: Google is the default browser in Firefox + Chrome. The IE solution was to offer an explicit browser choice in EU versions of windows. A similar one could be imagined here. The "solution" would be to disallow Google from making an exclusivity agreement with FF and to have a choice screen in Chrome. Unfortunately this would cause i…
Firefox has just switched its default search engine to Yahoo: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2850152/yahoo-dethrones-googl... So maybe not so much harm to Mozilla.
Only in the US. In the EU it sounds like the default is still Google.
Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs
#106Google's grip on search is absolutely enormous, especially in Europe. They literally decide lives of thousands of people when they change their algorithms. With one update, they kill thousands of websites someone lives off and then they replace them with big brands or their own services. This isn't healthy for anyone and I wish there was more competition. It would do a lot of good to everyone.
But there is competition. Bing, DuckDuckGo, even Yahoo's still hanging in there. There are no technological or commercial barriers to switching search engines: no-one is making people use Google search (except I guess maybe on Android devices or Chromebooks -- I don't have and have never used either, so I don't know). People use it because either (a) it returns better results or (b) inertia. If it's (a), using it is…
It is broadly true that people have a choice with search, and clearly Google's position is down to the quality of service rather than the sort of trap-in you see with physical monopolies like ISPs. But I don't think the point or aim of all of this is to do anything about search, it's to prevent Google from using that position to favour its other commercial services. The monopoly issue is by proxy, it's not search itself.
Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs
#107Google's grip on search is absolutely enormous, especially in Europe. They literally decide lives of thousands of people when they change their algorithms. With one update, they kill thousands of websites someone lives off and then they replace them with big brands or their own services. This isn't healthy for anyone and I wish there was more competition. It would do a lot of good to everyone.
But there is competition. Bing, DuckDuckGo, even Yahoo's still hanging in there. There are no technological or commercial barriers to switching search engines: no-one is making people use Google search (except I guess maybe on Android devices or Chromebooks -- I don't have and have never used either, so I don't know). People use it because either (a) it returns better results or (b) inertia. If it's (a), using it is…
> But there is competition. Bing, DuckDuckGo, even Yahoo's still hanging in there.
Only if you are English speaker and are looking for English sites (which is the case only for minority of Europeans). Apart form Google other search engines are localized either poorly or not at all.
Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
When debating pro-against EU, we should never forget how pre-EU Europe looked like. We've been incredibly good at killing each other. I'd pick a huge beauracracy over arms races any day of the week.
Yes, this often put forward as a case for why the EU is a good thing but the reality is we probably stopped killing each other because we finally had a war that was large enough to put many people off war for life. Those who repeat the line that the EU prevented wars in Europe seem to forget what happened in the Balkans
Those who repeat the line that the EU prevented wars in Europe seem to forget what happened in the Balkans
They were not part of the EU. The reasoning is that if you form a union where there is a large amount of economical interdependence, you think twice about starting a conflict with other members of your union. The collapse of their economy means the collapse of your economy.
Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
When debating pro-against EU, we should never forget how pre-EU Europe looked like. We've been incredibly good at killing each other. I'd pick a huge beauracracy over arms races any day of the week.
> "We've been incredibly good at killing each other." No, what you mean is that Germans and Austrians (and only Germans and Austrians) have recently been rather fond of invading neighbouring countries and also genociding their own populations. The other European countries, Balkans excepted, have actually got along rather well for the past 150 years. So why should Holland, Belgium, France, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark an…
You are only looking at recent history. And even that's not true. Italians invading Albania and Greece? Italians invading France? Soviets invading Finland, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania? Hungarians invading Romania and Czechoslovakia? Romanians invading the USSR? Soviets invading Hungary and Czechoslovakia?
And out of the list your have there, many of those "nation states" were too busy "genociding" their colonies in the last 150 years, to care about "genociding" their neighbors. And all of those were "genociding" their neighbors as well, before they got colonies.
Plus all those nation-states are too small on today's geopolitical arena. Only the "state" bit will be going away, the nations will be there, sitting nice and pretty as they do right now :)
Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs
#110Why is this already on the second page?
Google should be broken up, say European MPs (bbc.com)
55 points by alexbash 1 hour ago | flag | 107 comments
Inside the Dynomak: A Fusion Technology Cheaper Than Coal (ieee.org)
39 points by ohaal 2 hours ago | flag | 16 comments