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Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

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Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#31

Post by rtpg »

biokoda wrote: post #19
dylanjermiah wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the expense of the citizens. Why not let companies compete?

Short term expense of the citizens. Nurturing local business is a long term benefit strategy. Protectionism is how every nation on the planet developed. Why are Americans driving South Korean/Japanese cars and not the other way around? Because the south koreans and the japanese imposed large tariffs on car imports and the US did not. Their car companies had free range on their own turf. Which gave them time and money…

The US practices a huge amount of protectionism as well.

The reason that the Americans are driving Japanese cars is that they were built in the US (which happens because of the protectionism). Ford doesn't build cars in Japan. The end result is good for most people (consumers get more choice, jobs are still in the country).

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#32

Post by hueving »

biokoda wrote: post #19
dylanjermiah wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the expense of the citizens. Why not let companies compete?

Short term expense of the citizens. Nurturing local business is a long term benefit strategy. Protectionism is how every nation on the planet developed. Why are Americans driving South Korean/Japanese cars and not the other way around? Because the south koreans and the japanese imposed large tariffs on car imports and the US did not. Their car companies had free range on their own turf. Which gave them time and money…

>Why are Americans driving South Korean/Japanese cars and not the other way around?

They care about consumer freedom, that's why. What you are implying is that competition can never work and that people with a head start should be regulated away.

It screws the consumer and there is no proof it works best in the long run. France is super protectionist but they aren't doing so well. In many cases, it just has knock on effects that make other industries uncompetitive. Can't buy the best engines, therefore we can't compete in any market that requires good engines, etc.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#33

Post by IBM »

>Although she uses Google frequently, Vestager says it doesn’t cloud her view of the case. “Congratulations for being big, but don’t misuse it. For Europeans, this is very fundamental,” she says.

>That might be the scariest thing of all for Google. It isn’t dealing with an antitech ideologue or a competition czar consumed with cementing a personal legacy. It faces a straightforward prosecutor in a hostile political climate dominated by powerful local business interests with their own regulatory agendas. Good luck to Google searching for a way out of that.

I've been following this story for a while and I watched the press conferences she gave and that's the impression I got from her as well.

I think Google is definitely not going to skate by like they did in the US with a slap on the wrist. The investigation into Android is going to be another big one and if they break up Google's ability to bundle/tie in their services, it pretty much neutralizes the entire benefit of Android to Google as a defensive moat.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#34

Post by oblio »

NeutronBoy wrote: post #14
icebraining wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeap. We're all still using Altavista, MySpace, Hotmail and Livejournal.

While I agree with the sentiment, I would argue that the network effects now are significantly stronger than they were 10-15 years ago. Back then, the internet was still a novelty for many (those who had the internet, anyway). This was before broadband was commonplace, before smartphones, before Facebook and the iPhone were a thing.

The network effect becomes even stronger now, as the Internet crosses the chasm. Grandma won't switch from Facebook soon, unlike her teen techie granddaughter.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#35

Post by JakeColtman »

kennethh wrote: post #23
guelo wrote: post #3

If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…

There were many search companies in the start and for a long time all of them did the same, google came and delivered a better product and kept innovation. People came and saw the google homesite with a logo, textfield and a button. This is simple we can make this also without knowing all the stuff behind it. Search is now a mature industry, it is always better to go for the new places where there are no dominant pla…

I agree that protectionism is normally bad, but the reason that it is bad is that it suppresses competition most of the time.

If guelo's argument that Google not being in China fostered more tech companies in China is correct, then removing an initially dominant foreign company with big first mover advantage and economies of scale can actually increase competition in the market.

That said, once the home grown companies are sufficiently mature to compete on a level playing field with already established companies I agree the protectionism should be withdrawn again

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#36

Post by paganel »

klipt wrote: post #28
hansibansi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, the reason why they differentiate product and general search is, because Google injects a carousel at the top of the page, regardless of its relevancy. Thus, the differentiation. Secondly, the big discussion of abusing its market dominance was ultimately triggered by Yelp and other vertical search engines. Google first ripped of Yelp by scraping their content and then added it to their own Google Places…

I've traveled in countries where I fired up the Yelp app, and it had no results anywhere in the country. But Google maps brought up restaurants etc just fine. So I'm pretty sure Google has data sources other than Yelp. Remember they also acquired Zagat a while back.

I've worked for a Yelp-lookalike website in an Eastern European country, sometime in 2010. The whole thing cost my employer a lot of money to get started, think programmers' and sales people's salaries, to say nothing of the people that we had actually outside the office, walking the streets of our ten-or-so biggest cities and trying to document each and every local business.

And then, towards the end of 2010-early 2011, Google decided to enter the game with its Google Places. They had no people on the ground to collect businesses' addresses and make sure that the advertised phone numbers were actually correct. But, surprise, surprise, in a matter of less than 6 months all of this data was on Google Places. At the time I was actually telling my boss: "hey! at some point the EU is bound to do something! They cannot just rip people off like this". It "only" took the EU ~6years.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#37

Post by levosmetalo »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #6
dylanjermiah wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the expense of the citizens. Why not let companies compete?

Some countries have no problem banning the best technology so that the best local technology can win, even if it's worse, and even if the best technology did nothing wrong. It's easy enough to make up excuses for that after the fact. It would be nice if at least one such country could just blatantly state their motives up front to be judged on their merits: "We're choosing to prohibit a non-local company to encourage…

And what exactly is wrong with that? As long as the price / performance is not totally off, I'd always rather pay a bit more for a slightly worse service if I know VAT money will stay in my city, tax will be paid in my state, salaries would be paid in the same job market where I am, and the profit would be invested in my neighborhood.

There are local monopolies everywhere, even in the USA. And they are protected by the local (city, county, state, federal) legislation that favors local business. Just try coming out of nowhere and starting new water supply business somewhere in Texas (constructed example, but point stays).

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#38

Post by [deleted] »

biokoda wrote: post #19
dylanjermiah wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the expense of the citizens. Why not let companies compete?

Short term expense of the citizens. Nurturing local business is a long term benefit strategy. Protectionism is how every nation on the planet developed. Why are Americans driving South Korean/Japanese cars and not the other way around? Because the south koreans and the japanese imposed large tariffs on car imports and the US did not. Their car companies had free range on their own turf. Which gave them time and money…

[deleted]

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#39

Post by eru »

abritinthebay wrote: post #21
JoshTriplett wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why Google was the first search engine ever, and before that people just banged rocks together in the general vicinity of phone lines, because any prior search engine would have had an insurmountable first-mover advantage that Google could not possibly have overcome?

While I agree with the general point you are making - the Internet as a whole had not reached a general populace tipping point until after Google was a major player in search. I think we, as technologically included people, tend to overestimate how old the internet is to most people outside of maybe early email usage. Also the implosion of companies (like Yahoo) is a factor here. If Yahoo hadn't been really stupid th…

> [...] the Internet as a whole had not reached a general populace tipping point until after Google was a major player in search.

MySpace vs Facebook happened after Google rose to dominance.

Also, Google Video vs YouTube.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#40

Post by eru »

paganel wrote: post #36
klipt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've traveled in countries where I fired up the Yelp app, and it had no results anywhere in the country. But Google maps brought up restaurants etc just fine. So I'm pretty sure Google has data sources other than Yelp. Remember they also acquired Zagat a while back.

I've worked for a Yelp-lookalike website in an Eastern European country, sometime in 2010. The whole thing cost my employer a lot of money to get started, think programmers' and sales people's salaries, to say nothing of the people that we had actually outside the office, walking the streets of our ten-or-so biggest cities and trying to document each and every local business. And then, towards the end of 2010-early 2…

Sorry, I don't follow. How did Google rip anyone off here?
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