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Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

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Re: Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

#121

Post by drgath »

npollock wrote: post #29
yanw wrote: post #18

These senators seemed ignorant about pretty much everything involved. And as for Mr. Schmidt he should have started by saying that Google is free, it's free for users and for those wanting to be indexed by them so they don't owe any self proclaim competitors anything.

They actually just did. They argued that Google is free, and there's nothing to prevent users from using a different search engine. The argument seems to be that a large market share does not constitute monopoly power. In order for monopoly power to exist, there have to be barriers preventing users from switching search providers.

> In order for monopoly power to exist, there have to be barriers preventing users from switching search providers.

That is incorrect. A "monopoly" is simply having a large enough control over the market that you dictate how others access that market. Monopolies are not illegal. Google does have a monopoly on search, Schmidt admitted that much today by saying they are "in the area" of having one.

Abusing your monopoly power is however illegal, and that's what Google is being investigated for.

Re: Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

#122

Post by TallTalesOrTrue »

zem wrote: post #114
rmrm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the fact that Google Maps appear at the top of any results page that might be location related the smoking gun evidence? It's an obvious truth. I understand the need for diplomacy, but acknowledging the obvious and then explaining A) Why you do it, and B) Why you're entitled to do it just seems like the right answer. Or at least more right than saying you don't do it, and acting kind of ashamed about it. Obviou…

no, the google maps thing isn't a ranked search result, it's a onebox result http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-onebox-resul...

To the end result it looks the same though. In fact many of my non-techie friends click on adverts thinking they are the search results. Either the ads are too good or thhat they are very well placed.

Re: Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

#123

Post by kenjackson »

kamaal wrote: post #117
kenjackson wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Microsoft does: Bing -- second largest search engine XBox -- one of the largest gaming platforms, including Indie games. Windows -- most popular consumer OS Halo -- one of the most popular game franchises ever Kinect -- hottest selling consumer electronics gadget ever Windows Live Messenger -- most popular IM platform in the world Hotmail -- one of the largest email sites in the world IE -- one of the most po…

I guess that's the whole problem, Microsoft wants to be everything to everybody. Now just compare the same with Apple. They don't have 1/10th the product line as Microsoft and are still more successful. Focus is important here, when you do so many things and none of them properly you are ultimately in a situation where all your products are weak quality wise. There are always better alternatives in the market and peo…

Now just compare the same with Apple. They don't have 1/10th the product line as Microsoft and are still more successful.

The Apple comparison is a red herring. Apple is unique, not only to the computer industry, but virtually all industries. No other company has risen so quickly, from so low, on a few products.

To put it another way, if you take Apple out of the equation, MS appears favorable to just about every other company in the industry. From SAP, to HP, to Google, to Facebook, to Twitter, to EA, to DropBox, to Oracle.

Re: Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

#124

Post by zmmmmm »

0x12 wrote: post #96
oldstrangers wrote: post #53

The antitrust regulator just asked about sending in a third party to review google's search algorithm. Haha. Hahahahaa. Not a chance.

And why not? Google could put up a lot of resistance but if the government wants something bad enough they generally get it. The other option is not to do business in that particular country, and for google that option is not on the table.

Not sure if it was the GP's point, but it seems incredibly naive to think that the search algorithm itself is such that someone can just go in and "look" at it and gain any meaningful understanding. Even assuming Google is guilty of outright manipulation there's never going to be a smoking gun of "if(website == google) rank = rank +1, it is going to be an abstract machine learning algorithm with hundreds of inputs and dozens of outputs, all themselves the results of complex statistical properties gleaned from the web. There would be zero insight available to any mere mortal who might gain access to the code driving it.

Re: Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

#125

Post by zmmmmm »

misterkeeter wrote: post #24

Seems to me that one way you can tell Google has competition is the facebook.com/cspan tag at the bottom of the screen.

Yes, I find it odd that Google gets so much attention while Facebook never rates a mention. I find Facebook way more creepy and actually much harder to switch away from - I can use bing any day of the week and the results are comparable. I can use G+ today and the results are useless. To my mind there has to be some recognition of whether a "monopoly" is due to exploitation of natural barriers to entry or not, and Google seems one of the least problematic in this regard.

Re: Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

#126

Post by zmmmmm »

drgath wrote: post #121
npollock wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually just did. They argued that Google is free, and there's nothing to prevent users from using a different search engine. The argument seems to be that a large market share does not constitute monopoly power. In order for monopoly power to exist, there have to be barriers preventing users from switching search providers.

> In order for monopoly power to exist, there have to be barriers preventing users from switching search providers. That is incorrect. A "monopoly" is simply having a large enough control over the market that you dictate how others access that market. Monopolies are not illegal. Google does have a monopoly on search, Schmidt admitted that much today by saying they are "in the area" of having one. Abusing your monopol…

> Abusing your monopoly power is however illega

However the principle that underwrites all of it is harm to the consumer. If you can't prove harm then it is hard to justify action. If consumers are choosing the monopoly provider willingly with zero compulsion by factors other than that it serves them well then you have a good argument that the monopoly is not harming the consumer.

The best argument would be that the purchasers of advertising are harmed because Google's ad prices are bolstered by their monopoly on search. However even there, Google uses a quite transparent and open bidding system for ads. They have no direct control over what people pay, they don't set their own prices - Google only shows ads at the prices people voluntarily bid. This doesn't put them in the clear but it makes it pretty hard to prove they are gouging or any of the other obvious signs of a monopoly abusing their power.

Re: Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

#127

Post by ashishgandhi »

ybot wrote: post #120
ashishgandhi wrote: post #119

> "Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp and also a witness at today's hearing, said otherwise. He said Google demanded that Yelp comply with Google demands to be included in Google's search engine, including providing its content to Google." Is that quoted out of context? If not, that sounds worrying.

From Jeremy Stoppelman's written testimony, as posted on Yelp's blog (here: http://officialblog.yelp.com/2011/09/seeking-a-level-playing... ): "In 2010, Google began incorporating the content that it indexed from its competitors into Google Local without permission. Although Google had previously acknowledged that it needed a license to use Yelp’s content, it was now using it without permission to prop up its own, le…

That sounds evil.

Re: Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

#128

Post by arron61 »

ashishgandhi wrote: post #119

> "Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp and also a witness at today's hearing, said otherwise. He said Google demanded that Yelp comply with Google demands to be included in Google's search engine, including providing its content to Google." Is that quoted out of context? If not, that sounds worrying.

Google Places is just another search engine but specifically for places (aka restaurants and stores). It used to be the case that it will aggregate all reviews from multiple review sites and show snippets of the reviews and then have a corresponding link for them to click on to go to the real site.

So in a sense, it's really just another search engine again, no different than the universal Google search, image search, product search, and etc. It's using the same indexed data but presented in two forms. Yelp wanted Google to remove them from product search and not universal search. This is why the google lawyer said this requires extra engineering. Yelp basically wants one thing and not another.

If you do a product search now, of course, you don't see any Yelp links at all (since they requested Google to remove them) and you see no snippets from any other review sites. All you see are google's own reviews and then some links on the bottom showing show more reviews from other sites. This was changed - and I think it makes it worse for Yelp and other review sites - but they wanted it this way.

Re: Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

#129

Post by anon1385 »

mrtron wrote: post #60
coderdude wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He shares the point of view of the person defending Google (she's a former anti-trust investigator?). If you can freely and instantly switch from Google to Bing then you cannot claim they have a monopoly. If you don't like Google's results there is nothing locking the consumer into Google except their own choice.

Not only can you switch instantly from Google to Bing, you can do the same with the indirect competitors such as yelp. Yelp claims Google is hurting consumers because often Yelp's results are better than what Google displays as their own Location results above. Is it really hurting a user to have to scroll slightly down? Or if Yelp's results were really better would users not go directly there or use their apps as an…

Not only can you switch instantly from Google to Bing, you can do the same with the indirect competitors such as yelp.

That argument is quite compelling for search, where switching is easy and other search engines are going to give you fairly comparable results most of the time. But search isn't the only market Google is in. In the advertising market the "just switch" argument doesn't hold as much weight in my opinion: what good is switching to an advertising network that doesn't generate any views? If Google can dominate advertising and analytics due to their search monopoly, does any other advertising platform stand a chance?

Disclaimer: I've never been a Google customer, and I don't really know how much competition they have in the advertising market, so I don't know how much ability they have to jack up prices etc.

Re: Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

#130

Post by itsnotvalid »

myko wrote: post #115
itsnotvalid wrote: post #113

They still haven't open sourced Android 3.0, in which they said they would never release that part of Apache licensed code to the public. So there could then be a possibility, again be hidden APIs so that their tablet app offerings could be better than others. I personally think that, if you claim open source, some should be able to obtain the code if they are using the software itself. I clearly don't think a normal…

Do you have a reason to believe the source code will not be released for Ice Cream Sandwich?

If ICS would run nicely on tablets, it would have some meaning.
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