Google's response to the European Commission fine • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#211

Post by Radim » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 6:07 PM UTC

FussyZeus wrote: post #179

kazen44 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 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.

Correct. It's a lose-lose situation, and therefore should be avoided.

Your "speeding tickets" example demonstrates this beautifully. We all know people who need an externally imposed speed limit, a scalar number that is so OBVIOUSLY SILLY it doesn't even take into account primary safety factors such as the weather, surrounding traffic situation, vehicle condition etc (as drivers do instinctively). People who worship that number as the source of "safeness"... because some bureaucrat somewhere said so. These are sad, broken people; actually dangerous to be around when driving.

Put differently: a person who cares about the fines and "points deducted from their license" more than their own safety and self-preservation, is a great adept for the Darwin Awards. Applies to businesses equally.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#212

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 6:12 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #206

waqf wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because they are in a competitive industry and they like having market share?

Competitive? In social media (e.g. against FB, maybe), but what competition does Google have for search? Neither Bing nor anything like DDG matter.

[deleted]

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#213

Post by FussyZeus » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

Radim wrote: post #211

FussyZeus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 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.

Correct. It's a lose-lose situation, and therefore should be avoided. Your "speeding tickets" example demonstrates this beautifully. We all know people who need an externally imposed speed limit, a scalar number that is so OBVIOUSLY SILLY it doesn't even take into account primary safety factors such as the weather, surrounding traffic situation, vehicle condition etc (as drivers do instinctively). People who worship…

If you expect any regulation, be it speed limits or anti-trust legislation, to have an effect on the situation the penalties for violating them must reflect that, i.e. there needs to be a real reason for the business/individual to obey them. Financial penalties are the most direct way to do so.

Where speed limits are often arbitrary and I think rather useless to maintain safety, to say that also applies to anti-trust and monopoly regulations is a stretch. People tend to forget that the first of these sorts of laws grew up next to companies like Standard Oil and US Steel, companies so large they literally held a stranglehold not just on the people who did business with them, but even to a great extent on their competition. Who's to say Google isn't a monopoly? Not so very long ago with a few keystrokes Google changed the fortunes of hundreds if not thousands of media companies by cracking down on linking and changing how their algorithm worked. Whether or not you agree with their decision (I do, but that's besides the point) is irrelevant; the fact is that Google has the power to greatly influence the flow of traffic on the web, and this power is completely, 100% unchecked and rife with opportunities for abuse.

And as for your co-opting my speeding metaphor, it's also worth noting that while speeding itself isn't so awfully unsafe, plenty of other things that will cost you "points on a license" are also things like drunk driving, reckless driving, driving without insurance, driving vehicles that have damaged components, etc. in other words: things that not only affect your safety, but the safety of those around you.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#214

Post by euyyn » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

saurik wrote: post #199

euyyn wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's not what happened. People were very happy indeed with Microsoft products. Back when Netscape Navigator was better than Internet Explorer in all respects, people were very happy with NN too, and would have been happier if they could have bought Windows computers in which the software preinstalled by the OEM included Netscape. Do you know why they couldn't? MS told the OEMs "you put NN on your computers, yo…

Did you read the comment I was replying to? I ask, because it sounds like you did not. I am going to quote the entire thing to make this extremely blunt, as I don't trust you will read it otherwise :/. > 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 servi…

> a bullshit argument: using the apparent benefits of the monopoly to defend its existence; this (bad) argument also applies to Microsoft.

It doesn't apply is what I'm saying.

> In my post, I demonstrated that if that posted truly believed that, then they had better be prepared to defend Microsoft as well.

You didn't, because your argument was based on the false premise that MS got in trouble "for having the gall to believe that web browsers should be free" or, as you detail now, that monopolies shouldn't exist and that their benefits aren't enough of a reason for them to exist. Being a monopoly isn't what got MS in trouble, harming consumers to protect that monopoly from competing OS's is what did. There's no need to "defend the existence of a monopoly", because monopolies aren't illegal.

I don't care about your personal attacks. This is a website for discussion, not pissing contests.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#215

Post by euyyn » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 6:28 PM UTC

saurik wrote: post #202

euyyn wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course everybody prefers a browser to be pre-installed, but Microsoft did way more than that. They strictly harmed users to protect their Windows monopoly from the threat of Java apps. Java applets distributed via the web (executed by Netscape Navigator) had the potential to displace Win32 as a preferred API, thus making Linux and other OS's able to compete with Windows in terms of application offering. Some OEMs…

"That's the joke." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xECUrlnXCqk The comment you are replying to is showing by way of parallel to Microsoft that this polemic from Google is an absurd defense: your entire comment is something I would imagine the person you are replying to agrees with, which is precisely why they made the comment they did, as it demonstrates in a visceral way how absurd it is to be trying to give Google a…

> your entire comment is something I would imagine the person you are replying to agrees with, which is precisely why they made the comment they did

Let that person reply then? I'm refuting the parallel between the two cases, even if you don't see it.

Microsoft prevented other companies from selling computers with Netscape Navigator preinstalled.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#216

Post by dpraburaj » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 6:28 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #121

autokad wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to get down voted out the wazoo for saying it, but I will voice my opinion anyways. The EU has long used 'anti trust fines' as a way of levying tariffs against US companies.

I find comments like yours baffling. The basic tenement of capitalism, as worshipped in US, is that it needs competition to function. If a monopolist prevents competition from functioning (either by hiding their products on the largest search engine on earth, lowering prices under profitable margins or other tactics used by such entities) capitalism degenerates into socialism led by a corporation instead of state. It…

The marketshare of a company(at a point in time) does not determine whether a business is a monopoly or not, high/low barriers to entry in the particular industry do.

There are multiple search engines providing the same service that Google does and the cost of switching is so negligible as to be almost non-existent.

While I generally appreciate the EU's approach towards protecting the consumer's best interests, this just reeks of making up excuses to extort money from a highly successful company just because they can get away with it.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#217

Post by majani » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC

Jerry2 wrote: post #147

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.

I wouldn't say censorship is at play. There have been analyses showing that Google is a favorite topic of HN users[1], and also there have been customer service scenarios that prove that there are a lot of Google employees on here. Those are probably the forces at work in this case.

[1] http://blog.datadive.net/which-topics-get-the-upvote-on-hack...

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#218

Post by waqf » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 7:11 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #206

waqf wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because they are in a competitive industry and they like having market share?

Competitive? In social media (e.g. against FB, maybe), but what competition does Google have for search? Neither Bing nor anything like DDG matter.

In what sense do Bing and DDG not matter in search?

They have less market share, true, because Google has a better product. Your argument seems to be that Google doesn't bother to have a better product (in search), because Google has all the market share, because Google has a better product.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#219

Post by Ajedi32 » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 7:16 PM UTC

ksk wrote: post #208

Ajedi32 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The OP isn't talking about Google linking to 'search results pages' Really? It certainly sounds like that's what he was talking about: > wouldn't need to search again, but would be on the search results of that other site In any case, linking directly to the actual product is _already_ what Google does. So if that's the goal, then what's the issue? > An advertising company says "Our users think our ads are awesome"…

Google was not fined for displaying ads, but for promoting its services, illegally, via product tying. Google search should be responding to a query with relevant web pages that their crawler indexed. Instead, they insert a popup that links to their shopping service and try to make a buck off of that. This is the first complaint, the second is that they demoted rival shopping services from their search results.

I can't really speak to the second complaint, since I'm not privy to the internal workings of Google's ranking algorithms (though I have anecdotal evidence that the overall quality of Google's search results in these situations is just fine), but as for the first one: as a consumer I very much like Google's integrations between search and their other services. Those integrations are one of the main things that makes Google's search engine better than its competitors. Being able to search for a nearby business and immediately see whether it's open, with a link to get directions to it on Google Maps, is incredibly useful. Same goes for the product results being discussed here, and for other services like Google's built-in calculator, dictionary, image search, etc.

If such integrations are illegal under EU law, then in my opinion the law is harmful to consumers and needs to be changed. I'm not an EU citizen though, so I don't really have a say in the matter. I can only sit back and hope this ruling only results in the quality of Google's search results being gimped in the EU, and not in non-EU countries.

Re: Google's response to the European Commission fine

#220

Post by xtracto » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 7:28 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #42

8draco8 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In return EU have healthy job market with ~40hr work week and proper healthcare. Most of EU companies are not trying to keep me as developer in a golden cage, offering me everything so I wouldn't have to go home anymore. There are many healthy business hubs here in Europe (London, Cardiff-Bristol-Bath, Berlin and many others), maybe they do not have that superstar status as SV but they are still good places to be. So…

From what I've seen, salaries in EU tech hubs are significantly lower than in provincial markets in the US - where weeks are close to 40 hours and managers would laugh at paying for lunch or putting in cots so you can spend the night. Most Americans don't work in the tech hubs, yet still earn significantly more on average. FYI, anyone with a decent job in the US has access to some of the best health care in the world…

>FYI, anyone with a decent job in the US has access to some of the best health care in the world

This is so funny. IIRC what Republicans in the USA are arguing is that the new health care plan that they want to pass gives "access" to healthcare to everyone, as long as they are "willing" to pay for it.

I have access to a space flight sure, the only thing stopping me is money.