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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

#471

Post by asr »

flexie wrote: post #69
interfixus wrote: post #49

Please enlighten me: What kind of monopoly would that be? Much as I detest an awful lot of Google, I have never once been - and know of noone else who has ever been - forced to use their search against my will. In fact, I get along fine without it, as well as without their analytics and their browser and their cloud stuff, excepting of course that I am often forced to correspond with gmail addresses.

This is not about Google having a monopoly but about Google abusing a dominant position. And even if it were about monopoly, whether or not you are forced to use a product or a service is not what determines if it constitutes a monopoly.

The concept of "Monopoly" in U.S. antitrust law and the concept of "Dominant position" in EU law are basically the same.

Compare the laws here: EU (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...) US (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2)

And whether or not you are forced to use a product is a large part of what it means to have a monopoly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_barriers

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

#472

Post by euyyn »

matt4077 wrote: post #396
Ajedi32 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

It's possible for such tactics to be useful for consumers and still be an illegal use of their dominant market position. Compare MS and the bundled Internet Explorer: Yes, it was more convenient for people not to be required to download a browser after installing the OS. But imagine if MS had been successful, and Internet Explorer had emerged as the only browser: Do you think that would have been in the common intere…

> Compare MS and the bundled Internet Explorer: Yes, it was more convenient for people not to be required to download a browser after installing the OS.

That was a non-issue, as OEMs were able (and did often) pre-install any number of software packages on top of Windows. The issue was MS telling them "if you preinstall Netscape Navigator, you won't get any more Windows licenses from us". Among other things that were unequivocally harmful to consumers.

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

#473

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Analemma_ wrote: post #459
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so I interpret this correctly, are you saying that you purchase things you don't want?

What I mean is I don't see my buying habits having any larger of an impact on the behavior of corporations than my voting habits do on the behavior of the government. The libertarian conviction that businesses will change their behavior to attract my dollars never seemed to have any empirical footing to me.

I think the empirical footing is simply seeing how companies change their businesses to adjust to consumer demands. All of the major players have shown time and time again that they adjust their products based on user behavior. The entire Lean method and deploy-measure-iterate-deploy cycle, is predicated on a feedback loop between users and products.

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

#474

Post by euyyn »

jolic wrote: post #332
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.

> AFAIK this has never been written into law or ruled illegal before. Doesn't seem that different from the case against Microsoft over Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player?

US vs Microsoft was completely different.

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

#475

Post by troisx »

lucozade wrote: post #467

This is going to sound a bit conspiracy theory but here goes... I was looking at the highlights of the EU competition commission[0]. Is it just me or is there a theme (with a few exceptions) that runs something like: + Large US company XXX gets anti-trust fine. + EU company gets state aid approved. + rinse and repeat Maybe it's just a coincidence but I wonder what the P&L for the Competition Commission looks like giv…

Considering how much tax dodging the US companies engage in, I'm not sure that would be unfair if it was true.

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

#476

Post by aparvinash »

zdkl wrote: post #464
mythz wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like they're punishing commercial success, i.e. the goals of most public corporations. Search has been Google's core competency since their inception, they were much smaller than the existing Search engines when they started out but were able to create a better product that users preferred and since that time they've been able to amass a wealth of knowledge, experience and resources. Of course any company is g…

Well, I believe the court has considered their position and feels that "punishing" google is not a matter of commercial success but of anti trust law (the "companies don't have inner pressure to be moral" argument). One's opinion as to whether the court is acting in good faith with regards to its mandate is a matter of faith, I'll concede that; I personnaly have more faith in our individual ability to reorient the co…

Important correction its not the court its the commission. It seems similar to prosecutor handing down the sentence and burden of proof hence falls upon the accused

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

#477

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

vegancap wrote: post #460
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you invited people into your house, and they came of their free will, then you surely got them into your house legally? Yes, you did. And now you have the de-facto monopoly over the key for the front door. So, what could be wrong with asking for half their life savings if they want to be let out?

I don't think a shopping comparison channel, which actually doesn't command a particularly large share of price comparison sites, is comparable to life savings. Surely, you'd take these results with a pinch of salt and 'shop around'?

That's besides the point. It's simply that the fact that you got de-facto power over people by doing legal or even fair things does not necessarily entitle you to use that power however you like.

And at least the EU commission seems to have come to the conclusion that Google has used its power that it got due to its successful search engine to promote their price comparison site more than it did competing sites, and that not solely based on merits of the site itself.

Whether people could potentially evade the manipulation if they cared enough is irrelevant, just as it is irrelevant whether a fraud victim could have figured out they were being defrauded if they had cared enough.

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

#478

Post by euyyn »

rmc wrote: post #338
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…

> At what point does a company cross the line and become one that the EU feels can no longer promote their own product? When a company uses a monopoly in one field (web search) to boost their other businesses. It's the same when Microsoft were convicted in the US of using the desktop OS monopoly to boost their web browser business.

Microsoft never had a "web browser business" they wanted to boost. They had an OS monopoly they preserved illegally like the mob. Not the same.

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

#479

Post by minusSeven »

us0r wrote: post #352
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…

That is not a similar analogy at all.

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

#480

Post by tripzilch »

briandear wrote: post #167
cyxxon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they are forced to stop doing this it will make my search experience worse for me. This seems to be the whole point of the fine. Currently Google's services just so damned conveniently integrated that no one uses competitors' services, even if they are better. The thing is, though, I am totally with you here. I don't want to use one of the other services for maps, or flights, or these snippets for information. T…

The problem too is that the competing services aren’t even that good. For example, if I search for a specific type of Miele oven from here in France, I can type the model number and Google gives me an array of choices from various stores it was awesome. If Google didn’t do that, then what results should it return? A bunch of other shopping sites on which I would do the exact same thing but not have the same quality o…

But to be fair, France is quite a lot stricter about this sort of thing than the EU in general.

Also, I didn't know DailyMotion was French :) Thanks for that bit of knowledge :)

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