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European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

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

#351

Post by throwaway2016a »

bjl wrote: post #292
throwaway2016a wrote: post #275

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…

Once you gain a certain amount of market share you no longer have the right to engage in certain kinds of anti-competitive actions. There's nothing extreme about that; the laws have been in place for over a century.

I see your point and actually agree to an extent. But controlling what goes on on the company's own website doesn't sit well to me. Take this example:

Walmart has a hair salon in many of their stores. Walmart's primary business model is not hair but product sales. But obviously Walmart wants you to get their hair cut at their salon. This is similar to the government stepping in and saying that the store must allow other Salon's equal placement in their building. They own the building.

It would be anti-competitive to do something to prevent other salons from opening down the street or lowering the prices in their salon to bellow cost to push out competition. But I don't buy that they can't do what they want in their own store.

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

#352

Post by us0r »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #275

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…

>I might be in a minority here

Nope. It's crazy. You don't go to the most popular restaurant in town and have them tell you to go get desert across the street because the superior food and experience hurt their sales.

Even looking at the commissions fact sheet (Search Engine market share) [0]. 3 of the 4 other companies are billion dollar enterprises. Microsoft decided to make it difficult to switch to Chrome/Google in Windows 10 (no more 1 click). With this consumers are still switching back.

Out of all the bad shit google does, this shouldn't even be on the radar.

For the other end of the story this is an interesting read [1].

[0] - http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-17-1785_en.htm [1] - http://www.foundem.co.uk/Foundem_Google_Timeline.pdf

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

#353

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #316
calcifer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google holding a dominant position or a monopoly on search is not by itself illegal. However, using that position to gain entry in a different market (shopping, in this case) is considered anti-competitive and hence illegal.

So when Amazon decided to sell hardware, would that be anti-competitive? Pretty much, you could use the argument you just made against any business that delved into another space. Apple with phones back in the day, Microsoft with Hardware, Walmart and groceries, etc etc etc. There are almost infinite examples, very few businesses haven't expanded their product line and reach. Using their own business to do so is just…

> So when Amazon decided to sell hardware, would that be anti-competitive?

Which monopoly does Amazon have that they're abusing to sell hardware?

> Pretty much, you could use the argument you just made against any business that delved into another space.

Nope; only businesses which are a monopoly.

Amazon has no monopoly, therefore the argument cannot be used against them. Plus nobody is stopping Google from opening a new website (e.g. GoogleShopCompare.com) and doing anything they want, using their huge brand and financial power, what they're saying is wrong is embedding it into their existing monopolistic property to give it an unfair advantage (Google.com).

It is exactly comparable to the Microsoft/Windows issues in the 1990s. Microsoft could sell/give away IE, they just couldn't bundle it with their monopoly (Windows) to give it an unfair advantage. Google previously got into trouble for exactly this due to Google Maps being bundled with Google.com.

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

#354

Post by Ajedi32 »

denis1 wrote: post #326
makomk wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should scare you. The EU just used their regulatory power to force the world's biggest search engine to make their user experience worse in order to benefit other companies. Before Google penalized all the vertical search sites, doing a Google search for certain kinds of products was a terrible experience; page after page of crappy information-free autogenerated sites hoping to make $$$ from ads and referral fees…

Or you should be happy, that the EU actually uses their regulatory power to benefit the consumer no matter how big the company they're going against is.

Does it benefit the consumer though? I fail to see how showing links to search results pages from other companies in response to a product query is better for consumers than just showing them a listing of the products they actually searched for.

[Google's response][1] to this ruling suggests they have data which confirms this:

> While some comparison shopping sites naturally want Google to show them more prominently, our data shows that people usually prefer links that take them directly to the products they want, not to websites where they have to repeat their searches.

[1]: https://www.blog.google/topics/google-europe/european-commis...

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

#355

Post by itp »

lkbm wrote: post #330
mythz wrote: 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?

I do consider this materially different.

From the Wikipedia summary of United States v. Microsoft Corporation[0], "Underlying these disputes were questions over whether Microsoft altered or manipulated its application programming interfaces (APIs) to favor Internet Explorer over third party web browsers, Microsoft's conduct in forming restrictive licensing agreements with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and Microsoft's intent in its course of conduct."

I feel like this detail is being lost in a lot of the comparisons I've seen made between Google now and Microsoft then. Google promotes their own services on their own website, sure. At the same time, they haven't changed Chrome to not load competing services. They have done nothing to prevent users from using competing search engines in Chrome. They don't prevent competing web browsers from loading Google sites. They don't force web sites that use Google ads to block competing browsers.

So the parallel doesn't work for me. The EU decided these were different markets, I disagree. I'm a user, I use Google to find things on the internet. I use other sites. I search Amazon directly from inside Chrome, I visit other sites without issue... I'm just not seeing the anticompetitive actions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

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

#356

Post by ocdtrekkie »

makomk wrote: post #312
throwaway2016a wrote: post #275

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…

It should scare you. The EU just used their regulatory power to force the world's biggest search engine to make their user experience worse in order to benefit other companies. Before Google penalized all the vertical search sites, doing a Google search for certain kinds of products was a terrible experience; page after page of crappy information-free autogenerated sites hoping to make $$$ from ads and referral fees…

The infoboxes are, in fact, one of the cases where Google regularly stole work from websites without permission and then denied them ad revenue by ensuring people didn't ever visit those sites to get it: https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynet...

Also, note that Bing doesn't lock you into their ecosystem in those boxes the way Google does. Take a look at "Uptown Funk":

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=uptown+funk - Links to YouTube and Play Music

https://www.bing.com/search?q=uptown+funk - Places YouTube up top, then links to Groove AND Amazon MP3 (If you search "The Cure Lady Gaga" it also offers iTunes. Apparently it doesn't know that iTunes has Uptown Funk as well. Oops.)

This is a live example of how Google violates antitrust law, but it's competitors do not.

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

#357

Post by lkbm »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #307
jpttsn wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you deign to explain why you think so, or is it so obvious that I should just be ashamed for not seeing it?

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…

Crawling the web is easy now. Your point makes sense if the behavioral data they acquire from users makes a huge difference. Maybe it does, but I feel like someone can build a better mousetrap and be better than Google, even without behavioral data. Google, right now, is thought to have the best mousetrap, not simply one well-tuned to a large mouse behavior dataset.

Maybe I'm wrong about that--I'm sure ML has become increasingly important in how Google ranks results, but I'm unconvinced that it's a severely anti-competitive factor.

(That said, I do still use Google over DDG largely because of the personalization and the integration with their other services.)

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

#358

Post by mtgx »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #275

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…

Anti-trust applies when a company has extreme dominance, like over 90% (which Google does have in Europe). Same applied to Microsoft.

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

#359

Post by bjl »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #351
bjl wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you gain a certain amount of market share you no longer have the right to engage in certain kinds of anti-competitive actions. There's nothing extreme about that; the laws have been in place for over a century.

I see your point and actually agree to an extent. But controlling what goes on on the company's own website doesn't sit well to me. Take this example: Walmart has a hair salon in many of their stores. Walmart's primary business model is not hair but product sales. But obviously Walmart wants you to get their hair cut at their salon. This is similar to the government stepping in and saying that the store must allow ot…

> But I don't buy that they can't do what they want in their own store.

Then you're unfamiliar with anti-trust law.

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

#360

Post by Ajedi32 »

timClicks wrote: post #335
makomk wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should scare you. The EU just used their regulatory power to force the world's biggest search engine to make their user experience worse in order to benefit other companies. Before Google penalized all the vertical search sites, doing a Google search for certain kinds of products was a terrible experience; page after page of crappy information-free autogenerated sites hoping to make $$$ from ads and referral fees…

> "user experience worse" Not necessarily. I read this as saying that if other players have well marked up content, they should have their listings appear in infoboxes, perhaps alongside Google's. Not that the infoboxes be removed.

Pretty sure that's what Google Product Search used to do. They ended up having to change it because the resulting quality of those listings was terrible.

See https://commerce.googleblog.com/2012/05/building-better-shop...

Maybe if they tried again they could do better this time; I'm a little skeptical though.

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