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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

#341
post #310
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-competitive practices you're talking about is not being able to decide what content gets displayed on your own website, what relevant information you're allowed to show Users in response to their search results and being forced to give your competitors more prominence. AFAIK this has never been written into law or ruled illegal before.

The specifics are unimportant. What matters is that Google was using its dominance in one market to gain an advantage in a different market. That has been illegal for a long time.

In the US too.

The US just oddly decides not to enforce it, then the EU gets shit on for being anti-American when they correctly enforce things that are illegal in both the EU and US.

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

#342

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. The result is the same. Google has a monopoly on your experience of the web... because it is optimized for users of its browser.

> 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…

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

#343
post #337
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specifics are unimportant. What matters is that Google was using its dominance in one market to gain an advantage in a different market. That has been illegal for a long time.

When has this ever happened to a website before?

To my knowledge it hasn't. But that's irrelevant.

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

#344
post #330
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-competitive practices you're talking about is not being able to decide what content gets displayed on your own website, what relevant information you're allowed to show Users in response to their search results and being forced to give your competitors more prominence. AFAIK this has never been written into law or ruled illegal before.

Sounds a lot like deciding what programs are included in your operating system. Do you consider this materially different, and if so why?

You can easily go to another website if you want results from a different vendor. If you're searching on Google you'd expect results curated from Google, if you can get better, more relevant results else where, everyone can easily do so. I also wouldn't expect any of my Desktop Apps to be laced with content or functionality from competitive products.

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

#345
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps obvious was not a good choice. Anyways: I would say Google is as close to a natural monopoly as the Bell System was in 1956. If you came to me and said “Hey, I want to start a company to compete with Google in search,” I would say you’re out of your mind and don’t waste your energy or your time or your money, there’s just no way. Classic economics would say that if there’s a business in which there are 35 per…

I feel like you're describing growth in general, not natural monopolies specifically. There's a high cost to building a store and the more stores you build, the more customers you serve, the more stores you can afford to build. There's a high cost to making a movie and the more movies you make, the more people pay to see your movies, the more movies you can afford to make.

Sure, barriers are a gray area. In society we draw a sort of arbitrary line for when they're high enough to represent a natural monopoly. We've decided that electric and water companies for example represent high enough fixed costs to warrant being a utility. So the question then becomes how much do you think it would cost to build a search engine as good as Google? I'd say that number is probably ginormous, hence why it should be treated as a utility.

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

#346

I beg everyone answer my question. The anti-trust laws are originated from USA. The anti-monopolies rules are much harsher in US than those of Europe. Why did not federal government pick this up? Since a lot of the companies that are disadvantaged by this Google practice are Us companies. Also I have to agree that this ruling is tough but fair. And the writing is very concise by easy to understand. it is good writing…

According to official logs, Google lobbyists were at the Obama White House more than once a week on average. Donations to Democrats over Republicans was something like a 95-5 ratio from Google staff. Multiple former and future Google employees were top election campaign staff. That kind of near-perfect integration between the world's most powerful information corporation and the world's most powerful government was never going to be undermined by something as nebulous as "monopolistic business practices."

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

#347

I might be in a minority here and I'll probably get down voted but this result scares me... and I used to be CTO one of those competing price comparison sites that show up lower in the results so if anyone should agree it should be me. While it made me angry when Google put their results above ours, I never questioned that they had a right to do that. It is their website. They are not a utility. At what point does a…

The article seems really pretty clear about that line: market dominance. As another commenter said, it's an extremely well-written and clear article.

Did your price comparison site at any time seem likely to be able to dominate the entire EU market? (you can find the exact criteria on the EU site)

If no, you got no problem to worry about.

If yes, that's a kind of nice problem to have I think.

> What's next? Having to give equal ranking to Yahoo! search results in their search page?

Why would anything be next? We have this rule, it works well, has worked in the past, what's the incentive to make it worse?

Your Yahoo!Search example doesn't make sense to me. Not in context of this ruling, any way. How would Google abuse their market dominance in order to ... what exactly, because you didn't specify any wrongdoing, just a crazy sanction pulled out of thin air.

It's not the market dominance itself that is illegal. It's just that if you do it, dominate a market to such an extent, you are held to special responsibilities not to abuse that dominance. Which totally makes sense.

From the article:

"""Market dominance is, as such, not illegal under EU antitrust rules. However, dominant companies have a special responsibility not to abuse their powerful market position by restricting competition, either in the market where they are dominant or in separate markets."""

It's just like that famous Spiderman quote.

Also the ruling is not about a particular party (like Yahoo in yours) that got wronged by an illegal abuse of Google's market dominance, it's about all of them, about the responsibility not to actively stifle competition. You can still be better than the competition, Google is obviously allowed to "hurt" Yahoo by providing better search results, that's what it means when they say dominance is as such not illegal under antitrust. It's just that, in some (but not all) cases of market dominance, it comes with additional power by virtue of dominance (not product), that allows a company to stifle competition (not because they're better but because the competition is not dominant), and antitrust law states that companies in such a position have a responsibility not to do this. Yet Google did. I'm not really seeing how Google could do something similar that involves Yahoo in your example.

About your One Box (that's the Google instant result thing yes?) example, if Google were in the theatre business, I'm pretty sure the Commission would investigate that case for antitrust as well. How that ruling would go, will depend on the specifics of that hypothetical situation, and whether it qualifies along the guidelines as stated partially in the article, and fully in EU regulations on antitrust (which you can click to for yourself).

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

#348

I might be in a minority here and I'll probably get down voted but this result scares me... and I used to be CTO one of those competing price comparison sites that show up lower in the results so if anyone should agree it should be me. While it made me angry when Google put their results above ours, I never questioned that they had a right to do that. It is their website. They are not a utility. At what point does a…

> They are not a utility.

In many ways, they are. They didn't sign up for it, yet here we are..

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

#349
This is despicable. Google is a private company who cannot force anyone to use its services. It is successful because consumers and advertisers have chosen to use its services because it makes their lives better. Google's investors risked and are risking their own money to build the company in hopes of earning a return by providing better services than other companies. Now come government bureaucrats, moral pygmies who live off of taxes coerced from the citizenry, who have none of their own money at risk, who have no expertise, presuming to tell Google that they are harming the consumers who are choosing to use its services. These are despicable little parasites who are doing their best to extract money from companies who are driving civilization forward. See also https://mises.org/library/abolish-antitrust-laws for a more detailed explanation of why antitrust is bad.

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

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American who wishes his government protected him as well as the EU is protecting their citizens, I kinda resent being grouped in here. Google fans would like to make this about US vs. the EU, because it misdirects away from Google's illegal actions. But multiple US companies asked for and supported this investigation against Google. And I wish our government laid down the same charges against them here.

My understanding is that the same anti-trust protections exist in the US, perhaps even stronger ones, but were not applied. Is this just a case of lobbying corruption?

I summarized the bulk of the issue here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14644723

The FTC's staff have previously recommended filing charges against Google, and then the people up the ladder buried it.

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