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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

#531

Post by eveningcoffee »

dragonwriter wrote: post #499
eveningcoffee wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google users are not (in most cases) their customers but a product Google sells to their actual customers. Google long term interest is to increase the margin of their product by increasing their dominance in multiple markets over multiple tiers. If they do this by using their monopolistic power then they are in violation of the law even when by doing that they provide a service that some of their users see usable.

> Google users are not (in most cases) their customers but a product Google sells to their actual customers. No, Google users are suppliers of a product (ad views) that Google sells to their customers. But they are suppliers that are paid via in-kind exchange (with Google services) rather than cash, which is exactly equivalent to being customers of Google services that pay with in-kind exchange rather than cash. So,…

Are chickens in the farm also customers?

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

#532

Post by lossolo »

omnimus wrote: post #486
troisx wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly. Many opinions here are the "market will solve everything" american way. But what many people fail to mention is how american corps avoid taxes. In my country fb and google are main online services with milions customers yet they pay no taxes. Its amazing what you can do when you are 2big2fail

> "market will solve everything" american way

This got us 2008 financial crisis, deregulations were the main reason. You need to add greed to every equation you make and then you get different results.

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

#533

Post by ridewinter »

on_and_off wrote: post #157
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.

I will need to do a bit of research, because instinctively I don't see how shopping is not a part of search. The same way that maps pops up automatically when google search realize that I search for a place (or the weather widget). Now, I don't use Google shopping very often because in my experience it is meh

Agreed. If I search for a jacket, I'm using Google to price compare. If I want to use a different price comparison service, I'll google for price comparison sites instead.

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

#534

Post by tripzilch »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #494
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Define monopoly, Google is the largest search engine, Amazon is the largest eretailer. Personally I don't think Google has a monopoly, as there are alternatives (a monopoly is supposed to be when their exist no competitors, not just when a business is so much better than everyone else that people choose to use them). Plus, switching search engines takes literally seconds. Amazon used to only push other's products, no…

The term "market domination" is actually the one under consideration with this ruling. Previous time this happening with Microsoft, they just happened to also be a monopoly.

"Market domination" is in fact defined in the article (and in more specific detail if you follow the links there).

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

#535

Post by tokenizerrr »

joveian wrote: post #525
tokenizerrr wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that is pretty much the entire idea. If you don't let them track you, they don't have a reasonable assurance that you're a real legit non-malicious human being. So you get to fill out the actual captcha. Pretty sweet deal, yeah? 99% of the population gets an easy checkbox, and all the people who care just need to fill out some questions to prove they're not a bot. It's not like you're blocked from using the form.

It isn't always a "just fill out some questions" issue; some of the captas they show are essentially impossible for humans. The one Google service I can't avoid (well, maps also but I can't reember a problem there) is Google Scholar and I occasionally get the almost impossible captchas there (I think I got one out of at least six I tried on different occasions). Logging in avoids the issue (and tends to fix it for a…

Obviously it's up to the sites to decide when to present a captcha.

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

#536

Post by ridewinter »

kuschku wrote: post #53
ruiramos wrote: post #18

Not sure I get the logic here. Will they be fined next for showing the Google Maps embed (and street view) when you search for places nearby? What's the difference?

That's another case that's being worked on. The preferred solution of the EU would be that there would be a standardized API between search engines and map providers, shopping providers, etc, and you could simply choose which map provider you'd want, and that'd be shown in every search engine. This is still being discussed, of course, as no solution has been found yet, but in general the idea is based on Android's In…

So if Spotify creates a music recognition feature that competes with Shazam, would they need to create an API that allows you to choose your music recognition service from within Spotify? This a very slippery slope!

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

#538

Post by aluhut »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #445
zdkl wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer, I have (much) more trust that my interests are advanced by the EU than google. This is an opinion which I don't feel the need to convert anyone to but I really don't understand the opposite view. Can someone explain why they believe google and other "emerging" power centers saveguard their interests better than the EU?

Can someone explain why they believe google and other "emerging" power centers saveguard their interests better than the EU? 1. Because it's in their long term best interest to have a customer for life (No political cycle) so they are more incentivized than a politician would be to support the interest of the consumer. 2. They have a more insight into user desires and actions on a day to day basis, meaning they can p…

Wow. Really sad to read that here but:

1) They are a quasi monopoly. The word you use to describe searching on the internet is "googling". Most of the phones on this planet run on their OS. So please...don't fool yourself.

2) Who's creating those desires? You think that the desire for millions of useless shit products that drive the global market are created by some neccesity deeply in our DNA? Or maybe by your free will? Or is this just the ad-industry stealing the attention from you and fitting you into a pretty tight frame of the optimal customer while preaching to you: "everybody/your idol loves this, you have to love it too".

Prediction in the age of advertising is just like advertising itself. A convenient lie.

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

#539

Post by Dylan16807 »

itp wrote: post #355
lkbm wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This has nothing to do with Chrome. It's entirely about the search engine and the results it gives.

(Though google does set up special APIs for Chrome first, like SPDY. But that's done in a responsible way.)

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

#540

Post by petre »

It's just a covert trade war with the US. The US fines VW, then the EU fines Google and Facebook and maybe Apple too. I don't like Google's practices or their ad network but this is just about taxes and clawing back some money after Google used Ireland and the Caymans to avoid paying some taxes in the EU. In the UK they got a slap on the back last year - some 300M in back taxes.
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