151–160 of 702 posts
Unjust enrichment of disgusting bureaucrats. In this case, google did nothing wrong other than display what they want on their own site, and for that they have to pay their hard earned money to an undemocratic authoritarian commission. No thanks.
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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.
Google's flagship product is the Google search engine, which provides search results to consumers, who pay for the service with their data. anyone else finding the plainness of that last sentence to be staggering? ...
It's mostly just fluff, but they do make a good point about the role of Amazon and eBay in product searches. I remember one of the early criticisms of the EU in this case being that they defined the "market" to exclude Amazon and eBay. Anyone know what the EUs reasoning for that is?
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I get that competition is vital for a free-market to function, unless Google gained power in this scenario through external influences such as government, then surely it has gained its position through market competition?
Yes, but the method of it gaining power is irrelevant – what matters is how that power is used. There's nothing wrong with Google having a huge market share. But when that market share is used to essentially hide knowledge about competitors, isn't it obvious that the market becomes less free?
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Google holding a dominant position or a monopoly on search is not by itself illegal. However, using that position to gain entry in a different market (shopping, in this case) is considered anti-competitive and hence illegal.
No, I realise that. My question is how are they supposed to hold a monoply or dominance, when there is nothing but preference or lazyness stopping anyone from switching to a competing service?
Dominance is reflected by the reality of market share, not by whether or not someone could theoretically switch search engine. In the EU they have a very dominant position (95% I think?).
It's no different from saying MS had an effective monopoly/dominance in the 2000s, even though you could theoretically install Linux.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law#Dominance_and_...
Please enlighten me: What kind of monopoly would that be? Much as I detest an awful lot of Google, I have never once been - and know of noone else who has ever been - forced to use their search against my will. In fact, I get along fine without it, as well as without their analytics and their browser and their cloud stuff, excepting of course that I am often forced to correspond with gmail addresses.
Google holding a dominant position or a monopoly on search is not by itself illegal. However, using that position to gain entry in a different market (shopping, in this case) is considered anti-competitive and hence illegal.
The same way that maps pops up automatically when google search realize that I search for a place (or the weather widget).
Now, I don't use Google shopping very often because in my experience it is meh
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…
This is a ridiculous figure, how can they come up with a figure more than 2x times the amount of the previous record (for Intel's egregious behavior) for deciding what content goes on their own platform, which wasn't previously known to be illegal? What do they want to force Google to do now, prohibit being able to advertise on their own platform? give their competitors priority placement for free? How many rival com…
> This is a ridiculous figure, how can they come up with a figure more than 2x times the amount of the previous record (for Intel's egregious behavior) for deciding what content goes on their own platform, which wasn't previously known to be illegal By following the rules & regulations set out, which Google will have been fully aware of. This is explained in the link and should not have required calling it "ridiculou…
There was no previous ruling that indicated that displaying their own relevant content on their own Search pages was illegal. It's absurd to think displaying relevant content in the context of what the User is searching for is illegal, or that they should've been investing resources in helping their competitors get more exposure.
These shackles on User Experience are going to give Amazon and Bing an advantage who aren't limited in their ability to provide integrated services or forced competitor placement.
> Doesn't mean they have to show terrible shopping pages, they just have to compete with them on an even footing rather than pushing every other comparison site back to almost nowhere in the results.
Are they going to be able to charge for prominent placement or do competitors get it for free? If there was an Auction Google could just outbid everyone since they're going to keep the bulk of the revenue, which they're unlikely going to be allowed to do, so if they're not forced to give prominent placement for free, they're going to have to charge an amount they wont be able to bid for themselves.
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".
I think the provided explanation is clear and the punishment reasonable.