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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

#541

Post by bad_user »

oskbor wrote: post #389
ko27 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll probably get down voted Damn, I hate this trend of making you comments appear more controversial. > What's next? You really should not argue this point. We need to stop "big" companies doing "anti-consumer" practices. The reason why those terms are in quotation marks is because when you are discussing antitrust and monopoly laws those terms are not well defined. You should only look at these rulings per-case b…

Don't pretend to speak for "EU citizens". What have we got to do with Brussels and Microsoft stealing money from Google? Google is not a utility, it is a product company and you are free to use other companies products

> you are free to use other companies products

It doesn't work like that. Because of their market dominance, there really are no alternatives. This is a combination of companies simply giving up on competing with Google, but also in terms of SEO, Google is the only one that matters for publishers and advertisers drive profits towards Google as well. Mobile? They now own it.

And btw, if you'll mention DuckDuckGo or Bing, the there's a high probability you're not living in the EU, since those are really, really bad at local or non-English searches.

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

#543

Post by joveian »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #535
joveian wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In some sense, sure, thus my use of the word promote. Depending on what (if anything) Google does to promote that it might be antitrust related.

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

#544

Post by siliconviking »

zdkl wrote: post #367
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,…

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?

You mean just like they have forced millions of websites to show the "Warning: This site uses cookies" message (which arguably cost a fortune in compliance costs and user annyoance, but made no difference in the end)?

I would encourage a "follow the money" train of thought when thinking about this.

My question then becomes: if this money (the $2.7bn) did not accrue to the EU, or was not levied at all, do you still think the EU would still pursue this as ferociously as it has, just to protect the consumer?

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

#545

Post by tokenizerrr »

joveian wrote: post #543
tokenizerrr wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In some sense, sure, thus my use of the word promote. Depending on what (if anything) Google does to promote that it might be antitrust related.

Nothing. It's trivial to sign up and implement recaptcha, I've done it several times. You just get some code that shows a captcha.

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

#546

Post by merpnderp »

aluhut wrote: post #538
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're talking about advertising pushing useless shit on people they wouldn't want? But they don't see the advertising until they've already searched for the item!

That's either some magical advertising that makes people search for things before they've seen it. Or you're wrong.

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

#547

Post by dontnotice »

zdkl wrote: post #367
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,…

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?

It's not about you and who you trust the most, it's about if this makes sense or not. The EU is not infallible, they are subject to political pressures and there have been enough of that in this case that they started asking the wrong questions and reached the inevitable wrong conclusions, which are easy to welcome since they serve their protectionist instincts.

Google is not a utility, it's not the water company nor the electric company, or even your ISP, it's essentially a website one which you are free to use or not and the price of admission and switching and opportunity costs are nil, same as for all competing websites, so dictating what Google's website can display and declaring it's contents illegal and worthy of billion dollar fines makes zero sense.

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

#548

Post by jolic »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #164
sguav wrote: post #14

Google's flagship product is the Google search engine, which provides search results to consumers, who pay for the service with their data. anyone else finding the plainness of that last sentence to be staggering? ...

EU citizens should be proud to have representatives that understand this kind of technology. I wish I could say the same here in the UK.

This is part of a whole debate which you find by searching for "personal data as counter-performance". For example:

> The German Minister for Interior, Thomas de Maizière, has voiced many of the concerns of Member States over the concept of “private ownership of data” and the risk this might entail for consumer privacy. Minister de Maiziere cautions, “If I can sell ‘my’ data, there is a danger of privacy being up for sale. Then at some point, only the wealthy will be able to afford to opt out, while the economically weaker are effectively forced to put ‘their’ data up for sale”. The DCD proposal also conflicts with the rights and remedies detailed in the UK’s Consumer Rights Act, which become invalidated when consumers exchange personal data in return for access to digital content. While the UK government has stated that it has “no fundamental objection” to applying these rights to situations where consumers exchange personal data for access to ‘free’ digital content, it has also said these rights could “unduly inhibit” that “very innovative business model”. Most recently, Giovanni Buttarelli (EDPS) published an Opinion on the Commission’s proposal, warning that “individuals should not be required to disclose personal data in ‘payment’ for an online service”.

https://cdt.org/blog/ec-proposal-to-pay-with-personal-data-c...

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

#549

Post by tripzilch »

xorium wrote: post #87
matthewmacleod wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they could consider not engaging in uncompetitive practices. The thing is, if they want to do business in the EU they have to abide by the rules of the EU. It's not that complex!

It's not that complex! Corporate law is extremely complex.

It seemed pretty clear-cut to me, from the well-written article :)

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

#550

Post by tripzilch »

jlebrech wrote: post #291
matthewmacleod wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a glib answer. Google is free to continue doing business in the EU and is does not 'have no choice but to pay up'. That's simple.

I think the more "complex" the EU tries to make it in order to extract money from big corps the harder it can also be for smaller firms if those rules apply to those also.

But this ruling is specifically about companies with market dominance, so it does very much not apply to smaller firms.
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