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European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

europa.eu

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Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#201

Post by captainmuon »

A maybe bigger damage is that I don't trust Google's search results for product recommendations anymore. It used to be (when product search was still new), that you could search for something, "barbecue grill", "best graphics card", and the first few results gave you a good overview of the market. Now, it is almost worthless, as the results are determined by commercial interests, not the popularity of the products. And this is not even considering the point of this fine, the highlighted "product search" results, I'm just talking about the "organic" results.

Oddly, I've found Amazon's rankings for many product categories (not for all) to be very good.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#203

Post by jamesbrownjr »

Kenji wrote: post #19

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.

"Survival of the fittest" does not scale to society level. The EU tries to regulate the market to allow more participants to profit from it.

This strive for a less divided population is probably a reason why right-wing populist (or "undemocratic authoritarian") parties don't appeal to a majority in EU countries.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#204

Post by HerraBRE »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #172
HerraBRE wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually feel it's misleading and wrong at a very fundamental level; this was the only thing I disagreed with in the whole press release! Consumers "pay" for Google's services by giving ads attention so the ads have value and Google can sell them. All the data harvesting is a means to a end: to make the ads more appealing so you'll click. Google don't profit from the data directly; in fact all the data harvesting a…

No it's not so you will click it. They collect the data from customers and offer it to the advertisers. The data is a big part of the product they sell to advertisers: targeting advertising. They don't sell user clicks (why would anyone pay for that?), they sell targeted advertising.

That is not how Google's business works.

Advertisers quite literally pay for clicks. That was part of how Google disrupted the market back in the day; most other advertising networks were selling "impressions", but Google was so confident in the relevance of their ads that you got impressions for free and only paid when a customer actually clicked on it.

The click is worth paying for, because it is a signal that the user has seen the ad, thought about the ad, and is interested in the ad. Advertising gold.

Obviously Google have many products (they bought Doubleclick an "impressions" company), and there are analytics value-ads and all sorts of things. But the core of their business is still pay-per-click advertising.

Your idea that advertisers are buying raw data is a misunderstanding.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#206

Post by tokenizerrr »

devoply wrote: post #110
tokenizerrr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do a lot of profiling. Like if you're logged into a google account at the time, and other session checks. Perhaps your browsers had different cookies/localStorage, which could explain it.

Say that this is true. Google can only use its own data from its own browser to improve the web and penalizes everyone who is not using their browser. The result is the same. Google has a monopoly on your experience of the web... because it is optimized for users of its browser.

Not sure what you're talking about. It's all just standard web technologies. Cookes, localStorage, etc.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#208

Post by TeMPOraL »

aapjesverkoper wrote: post #200
TeMPOraL wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the GP is complaining about how the rules are structured so that you can never win. And it's true - they are. By design.

Are you honestly implying that google, a multi billion dollar corporation hasn't 'won'?

Winning would be if they were allowed to use their dominant market position to full, unrestricted extent.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#209

Post by tokenizerrr »

devoply wrote: post #183
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Say that this is true. Google can only use its own data from its own browser to improve the web and penalizes everyone who is not using their browser. No, it also works on other browsers. I know because I exclusively use Safari and I encounter this one-click-captcha thing regularly. The thing is it only works on browsers you use regularly. It looks like they are analysing/tracking the behaviour of your browser (usi…

Okay say that this is true, then if you want any sort of decent user experience you MUST let Google track you and analyze your behavior. So many ways for Google to win. So many ways for the user to lose. I do run a bunch of stuff on my Firefox to prevent that, perhaps that's a reasonable explanation as to why. Google owns the server, Google owns the client, Google owns DNS, Google owns domains, Google even owns > 50%…

Yes that is pretty much the entire idea. If you don't let them track you, they don't have a reasonable assurance that you're a real legit non-malicious human being. So you get to fill out the actual captcha.

Pretty sweet deal, yeah? 99% of the population gets an easy checkbox, and all the people who care just need to fill out some questions to prove they're not a bot. It's not like you're blocked from using the form.

Re: European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

#210

Post by megablast »

patrickaljord wrote: post #103

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 hope that the next companies that messes up gets fined even more.

Although, of course, what VW did is a billions times worse, and actually resulted in deaths.

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