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Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

reuters.com

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Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#121

Post by brainwad »

thayne wrote: post #120
brainwad wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google would say they aren't preferencing their product. They are preferencing the merchants who actually sell the products over middlemen who try to extract rents from said merchants. Because they put free links to merchants' product pages in search results. TBH it's the same as Google not linking to other search engines' result pages in its search results. Why would it, when it can link directly the content the use…

Google is a middle man extracting rents from the merchants. I'm pretty sure merchants that pay for google ads get preferential treatment in google shopping results. Is it any worse than PriceRunner? Probably not, although I haven't used PriceRunner so I don't know.

In Google the ads are at least segregated from normal results, like for web search.

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#122

Post by dgellow »

DANmode wrote: post #94
dgellow wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From HN guidelines: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. and yes, downvoting is a perfectly fine disagree button, what else do you think it is

It makes boring reading because the discussion, for those who have cared about it in the past, remains the same. Anyway, downvote = “This doesn’t belong here.” or “This doesn’t attempt to contribute to the discussion.” If everyone here downvoted each time they disagreed, there would be few comments alive…and little discussion. The reply button is the disagree button. Otherwise, for comments of any length, it isn’t ev…

> If everyone here downvoted each time they disagreed

That’s what they do. It’s how HN works. I’m pretty sure pg said that a while ago. You can write a reply if you want to engage, you don’t have to. You can downvote or not if you disagree, that’s up to you.

Edit: found it, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Edit 2: that comment is almost 20y old! Fuck I’m becoming old

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#123

Post by lenkite »

Danox wrote: post #113
exabrial wrote: post #84

The problem is Google/Apple and these people that self-identify as platforms" should probably divest from providing any 1st party services on their "platforms".

What Europe needs to do is actually compete. China appears to be successfully competing so much so in certain areas the United States had to ban certain things. There is no reason why there can’t be a search engine or any other major service or hardware system originating from Europe other than all the red tape, the EU puts in the way they kill small companies before they even get a chance to get bigger You can’t com…

China successfully competed by insisting on a framework of "forced technology transfer" and joint venture requirements. To access the Chinese market, US firms were nearly always required to share proprietary technology and intellectual property with local Chinese partners.

Also, do recall the "Great Firewall". And kindly remember that Social Media, Communications, Search & Information, News Outlets, etc were all banned.

All this protected domestic innovation and the domestic market.

Good for China - this is what all nations trading with the US should have done to avoid extreme US monopoly and influence. China is the nation smiling while the boots of the American Big Bully and Bigger American Oligarchs have become rather tiresome.

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#124

Post by DANmode »

dgellow wrote: post #122
DANmode wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes boring reading because the discussion, for those who have cared about it in the past, remains the same. Anyway, downvote = “This doesn’t belong here.” or “This doesn’t attempt to contribute to the discussion.” If everyone here downvoted each time they disagreed, there would be few comments alive…and little discussion. The reply button is the disagree button. Otherwise, for comments of any length, it isn’t ev…

> If everyone here downvoted each time they disagreed That’s what they do. It’s how HN works. I’m pretty sure pg said that a while ago. You can write a reply if you want to engage, you don’t have to. You can downvote or not if you disagree, that’s up to you. Edit: found it, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 Edit 2: that comment is almost 20y old! Fuck I’m becoming old

> That’s what they do

That’s what you do.

> You can write a reply if you want to engage, you don’t have to.

Downvoting is engaging - in my opinion,

just incompletely - if nobody else has replied yet enumerating your dissenting viewpoint.

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#125

Post by dgellow »

DANmode wrote: post #124
dgellow wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If everyone here downvoted each time they disagreed That’s what they do. It’s how HN works. I’m pretty sure pg said that a while ago. You can write a reply if you want to engage, you don’t have to. You can downvote or not if you disagree, that’s up to you. Edit: found it, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 Edit 2: that comment is almost 20y old! Fuck I’m becoming old

> That’s what they do That’s what you do. > You can write a reply if you want to engage, you don’t have to. Downvoting is engaging - in my opinion, just incompletely - if nobody else has replied yet enumerating your dissenting viewpoint.

I’ve been on HN since a very long time, I can assure you it’s not a me thing. Anyway, given pg‘s comment the topic is pretty much settled

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#126

Post by Ferret7446 »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #69
victorbjorklund wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure Google would loose its search business if Google search only contained websites owned by Google.

Because of the introduction of AI overview, click-through rates are dropping like crazy. Up to 70% of Google searches now end without any clicks to third party websites. So most search users already stay completely within Google's ecosystem.

If they didn't introduce AI overview, people would just switch to ChatGPT. You can't ban a new technology, someone else will use it.

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#127

Post by DANmode »

dgellow wrote: post #125
DANmode wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s what they do That’s what you do. > You can write a reply if you want to engage, you don’t have to. Downvoting is engaging - in my opinion, just incompletely - if nobody else has replied yet enumerating your dissenting viewpoint.

I’ve been on HN since a very long time, I can assure you it’s not a me thing. Anyway, given pg‘s comment the topic is pretty much settled

That’s a lame appeal to authority.

Here’s mine (the reply to the pg comment - their account is older than yours, if that matters): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117237

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#128

Post by Eridrus »

akersten wrote: post #82

So what is the resolution supposed to be? Randomize the results whenever a user searches for a vague product category that is also something that Google provides? The article is pretty light on detail about what "favoring their own service" actually meant. Just that it appeared above Klarna's when a user searched BNPL? It all seems vague and hard to cure. The algorithm is typically very good at surfacing the least sh…

Iirc Google's solution to this was to make the top of page shopping panel something companies could bid on and then conduct arms length auctions where Google Shopping and its competitors get to bid.

Presumably Google Shopping will be better at matching users to items and be able to big more than most on average, but 3rd parties can still develop an edge in some niches.

Anyway, the EU wasn't satisfied and fined them another 7bn. And obviously competitors like free traffic, not having to pay Google.

I think they have since started removing rich units for things like Flights/Hotels and trying to figure out what product they are allowed to actually provide in the EU.

But in general, they are just going to keep getting sued forever because they have a strong incentive to find the line on how to monetize search and obviously other aggregators do not like this and have the EU on their side.

In general, operating in the EU seems like a mine field where you have to accept that you're going to get shaken down regularly and do the best you can to thread the needle profitably.

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#129

Post by victorbjorklund »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #69
victorbjorklund wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure Google would loose its search business if Google search only contained websites owned by Google.

Because of the introduction of AI overview, click-through rates are dropping like crazy. Up to 70% of Google searches now end without any clicks to third party websites. So most search users already stay completely within Google's ecosystem.

That doesn't matter. The reason people are using Google in the first place is because it has access to data from many sites, not their own only. If Google tomorrow removed all websites they don't own from the search index, nobody would use Google. It would be useless.

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#130

Post by sigmoid10 »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #129
sigmoid10 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the introduction of AI overview, click-through rates are dropping like crazy. Up to 70% of Google searches now end without any clicks to third party websites. So most search users already stay completely within Google's ecosystem.

That doesn't matter. The reason people are using Google in the first place is because it has access to data from many sites, not their own only. If Google tomorrow removed all websites they don't own from the search index, nobody would use Google. It would be useless.

That was only true before AI overview. Now all that info they scraped from public websites and fed into their models will still be available without anyone ever leaving Google's services.
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