171–180 of 237 posts
"not favoring any particular seller"? If it pays, it's on the front page. Are you seriously telling me that somebody who has paid nothing still can get on the front page competing with others who paid?
I don't trust you, Google.
What if Google simply pulled out of those countries? I'm asking this seriously. When they pulled out of China, China blocked them, so they effectively lost. But Europe's countries do not block websites. Google could just pull out of those countries, continue to localize content for those countries' languages, and the users, page views, ad revenue wouldn't go anywhere. And those countries wouldn't be able to lay a fin…
Why would investors be happy of Google catering to a market that has only expenses but no profit or hope for future profit due to regulatory reasons.
I guess EU locals would enjoy the ad-free experience...
It's interesting how on Hacker News, story about Google getting fined was censored and removed yet PR from Google is still on the front page. It's sad that bias and censorship on here is so strong.
It's interesting how on Hacker News, story about Google getting fined was censored and removed yet PR from Google is still on the front page. It's sad that bias and censorship on here is so strong.
> (...) connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both . We truly live in the age of spinning, of euphemisms, where words lose all their meaning. All-pervasive advertising, the most insidious technique of consumer capitalism, is now an idealistic connecting of people (why, rather than fining us indeed they should be thanking thanking us for that, they seem to say…
> When you shop online, you want to find the products you’re looking for quickly and easily. And advertisers want to promote those same products.
No, Google: advertisers don't want to promote the products I am looking for. Advertisers want to promote the products they want to sell. They may happen to be the ones I'm looking for, but probably they are not; probably I don't even want to buy anything and you still want to show me ads.
It's interesting how on Hacker News, story about Google getting fined was censored and removed yet PR from Google is still on the front page. It's sad that bias and censorship on here is so strong.
Why do you say it was censored and removed? It's dropped down to page two, but that's perfectly normal once something has been on the front page for a while.
> (...) connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both . We truly live in the age of spinning, of euphemisms, where words lose all their meaning. All-pervasive advertising, the most insidious technique of consumer capitalism, is now an idealistic connecting of people (why, rather than fining us indeed they should be thanking thanking us for that, they seem to say…
I'd encourage you (and everyone) to read the comments in the other thread happening today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643712 You'll see people baffled by this decision and generally happy with the service and products google offers. It's just a reminder to remember that what doesn't work for you may be pure bliss for other people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Common origin does not disprove animosity or self interest. One wonders what NewsCorp or Oracle concerns are in ecommerce search, but then you remember that they had well publicized scuffles with Google. The last record fine was against a US company, as were recent tax related fines, patterns are harder to refute.
"patterns are harder to refute" -> there is also a pattern, how big US tech companies avoid tax payments in EU, it even has a name ("double irish sandwich")
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But this is relatively meaningless with the current fine structure. Unless the EU's is drastically different, the fine never comes close to matching what the companies are making with these anti-competitive practices, ergo the companies are not sufficiently disincentivized to stop using them.
and to be honest, fines are not going to solve this. Why? making fines to large and forcing companies to pay them up to the point that it hurts them will result in a severe economic impact, which will destabilize te economy. For real gross conduct people should be held responsible in the company, even to the point that they might be personally responsible. People need a vested intrest to not do this kind of behaviour…
Yeah, that's kind of the point. If it's not large enough to cause an economic impact then what good is it? If speeding fines were $10 and didn't subtract points from your license, I'd sure be speeding a lot more.
Their links are shit outside of the US as far as I can tell. At least they are in the Netherlands. It constantly links to US/UK stores (amazon) which are useless for me, since I'm not paying thrice the product price for shipping. It also doesn't know about most of the sites that actual Dutch price comparison sites (tweakers.net/pricewatch) know about, which always give me a better deal.
tip: I never use "google search". I get far better results when I search on google maps instead, as I usually want to find something "here and now" and google maps helps on that, and as a bonus, it doesn't display any ads ;) If I am to do a proper search while at home, on my desk-lap-top I use DuckDuckGo or go straight to Amazon, Argos, Maplin, etc websites depending on the item category.