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European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

bbc.co.uk

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Re: European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

#121

Post by pgeorgi »

skrebbel wrote: post #91
c3o wrote: post #85

I work for the Pirate Party MEP in the Parliament. My understanding is that this is mostly about German (and to a lesser degree Spanish) publishers putting pressure on Google for their various interests, including that they want to be paid when Google uses snippets of their content in Google News: https://juliareda.eu/2014/11/breaking-up-google-or-just-bank...

Curious, what is the Pirate Party's stance on this? (I have no idea how to find individual MEP votes on bills)

https://juliareda.eu/en/ is the website of the Pirate MEP, and she's quite active in her communication.

There's some mention of Green MEPs every now and then which is because she joined their coalition.

Re: European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

#122

Post by adventured »

brador wrote: post #8
Elrac wrote: post #5

As someone living in Europe, I think they don't realize that, in a way, Google is bigger than the European Parliament. The citizens of Europe barely take the European Parliament seriously, and there's not much reason for Google to. I happen to be a fan of Duck Duck Go. But I think Google can do without Europe more easily than Europe can do without Google. There's no need to go to extremes, either. Just like Microsoft…

You know collectively Europe is the largest economy in the world? It's not something any company can just shrug away. I believe the goal of this and recent similar decisions is to fracture the internet, allowing for easier law making and rent seeking.

That claim gets throw around a lot.

The US has more assets than Europe.

US GDP is growing drastically faster than Europe's GDP. Europe's economy hasn't grown since 2007, with GDP still below those levels. In another year or two, the US will also have a larger GDP than Europe.

Re: European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

#123

Post by tonfa »

skrebbel wrote: post #91
c3o wrote: post #85

I work for the Pirate Party MEP in the Parliament. My understanding is that this is mostly about German (and to a lesser degree Spanish) publishers putting pressure on Google for their various interests, including that they want to be paid when Google uses snippets of their content in Google News: https://juliareda.eu/2014/11/breaking-up-google-or-just-bank...

Curious, what is the Pirate Party's stance on this? (I have no idea how to find individual MEP votes on bills)

http://www.votewatch.eu/en/term8-digital-single-market-joint...

(and she voted against)

Re: European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

#124

Post by avz »

skrebbel wrote: post #91
c3o wrote: post #85

I work for the Pirate Party MEP in the Parliament. My understanding is that this is mostly about German (and to a lesser degree Spanish) publishers putting pressure on Google for their various interests, including that they want to be paid when Google uses snippets of their content in Google News: https://juliareda.eu/2014/11/breaking-up-google-or-just-bank...

Curious, what is the Pirate Party's stance on this? (I have no idea how to find individual MEP votes on bills)

I think there are actually two interesting questions here since there are now many Pirate Parties in Europe. One about the general stance of pirate parties and one about the stance of the German PP specifically.

I would generally expect a pirate party to support free-of-charge publishing of snippets and linking to content on the internet as a basis for the open internet. On the other hand, I wonder whether the German Pirate Party is able to look beyond what may be construed as an interest of German publishing industry.

Re: European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

#125

Post by celticninja »

vdaniuk wrote: post #82
DannyBee wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Everyone on HN works for someone. I am not my company. Google has plenty of views i don't agree with, and I have plenty of views they don't agree with. If you believe comments on HN (or almost anywhere else) should have conflict of interest disclosures, you may as well shut it all down. Everything here is opinions of people, presented as opinions of people.

I would certainly be not against some external entity or random event shutting HN down. That would lead to genesis of new communities and contribute to spreading the influence to several or dozens of separate entities. Ironically, voice of the hackers, the independents, the non-affiliated is weak here. The voice of the tech establishment, the VCs, the startups, the megacorps is heard loud and clear. Do you not see ho…

YC censors plenty on HN, especially negative stuff linked to YC alumni or startups.

I posted something the other day about the myo and i got a error page everytime I submitted it. tried submitting something else and bang it goes straight through.

I dont care that they censor stuff but that they are underhand and sneaky about it gives me pause for thought when I see content on here from YC startups, was it pushed to the front page artificially? Probably. Best to err on the side of caution and assume that it is just YC trying to sell me on their latest startup.

Re: European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

#126

Post by gress »

DannyBee wrote: post #60
ckelvin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you work for Google? If you do, ny the same metric, shouldn't we discount all your numerous posts defending Google and attacking their competitors?

I do work for Google, but i explicitly don't speak for them on HN. I also don't work for Google Legal, and don't work on issues related to this stuff. I have opined on this stuff long before i worked for Google, and will long after. Google literally does not pay me for my views on this. Ben is literally paid for his anti-google views on this stuff. You are of course, welcome to discount whatever you like. You should…

You are part of Google, an you are paid by them. You are invested in Google, and your interests are heavily aligned with them.

Claiming that they don't pay you for your views may be true in the sense that this is not an official assignment for you, but to pretend that you are not heavily incentivized to act in what you perceive to be Google's interests is dishonest.

Re: European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

#127

Post by woah »

DannyBee wrote: post #60
ckelvin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you work for Google? If you do, ny the same metric, shouldn't we discount all your numerous posts defending Google and attacking their competitors?

I do work for Google, but i explicitly don't speak for them on HN. I also don't work for Google Legal, and don't work on issues related to this stuff. I have opined on this stuff long before i worked for Google, and will long after. Google literally does not pay me for my views on this. Ben is literally paid for his anti-google views on this stuff. You are of course, welcome to discount whatever you like. You should…

Come on. Really? This is a ridiculous post. Seriously go back and read it. The worst part about Google is its employees insistence that they can do no wrong.

Re: European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

#128

Post by dogma1138 »

If i were Google i would give the EU a day without Google. But in any case the EUP can vote for what ever they wan't they do not have any legislative power, as it (and all other) power (s) within the EU lie in the hands of the European Commission, which luckily is not "democratically" elected and it's members are appointed by the Council of Europe.

The EU parliament for some time now has been a mess of fringe politics from both the extreme right and left, all the crazy parties that can't get elected in their own countries join forces and form even crazier pan European parties, and whats worse is that all the crazy (and just plain bad) politicians that can't get elected locally manage to get elected to the EUP...

Re: European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

#129

Post by corin_ »

ouiya wrote: post #97
arikrak wrote: post #41

I know this won't happen, but it's a ridiculous idea. Google's search revenue is what helps fund many of its other projects; they couldn't be separated.

You're right, which is what's generally considered an abuse of monopoly. No opinions from me on this- but funding or subsidizing other businesses using a market dominant business constitutes abuse of monopoly.

No - well, not in the way your parent meant. It's abuse if you're using the fact that it's a monopoly to benefit your other areas. It's not abuse if one division of a company makes enough profit to subsidize other areas, that's just a way companies manage budgets and is unrelated to whether they have a monopoly or not.

Re: European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

#130

Post by avz »

pacala wrote: post #116
avz wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making implicit assumption that a new OS must come in with a new ecosystem built from scratch. There is a significant number of standards (e.g. POSIX, ELF, PDF etc) that can help you ensure different levels of interoperability with existing software and data. Implementing such standards lowers the cost of building an ecosystem significantly. Also, with the push to the cloud, fewer applications need to be provi…

> Driving adoption is a matter for all products in the market, not specific to operating systems. It's a matter of degree. To simplify, the costs of switching are linear in the complexity of using the product. I apologize that I don't know how to precisely model human network effects (you need to learn the product from someone) on top of it, but intuitively the societal costs are super-linear. Computer systems are by…

Computer systems may be complex, but they're not the most difficult to use. I'd say a lathe for example is harder to use than a smartphone or a PC.

Generally, high complexity of the implementation does not necessarily translate into high complexity of the interface.

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