551–560 of 702 posts
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/22/google-ag...
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99% of the population. Last time checked significant portion of the population uses various tools including ad-blockers, and other privacy tools to decrease their online foot print. So that point is wholly incorrect. You mean significant portion of the population who does not mind being tracked constantly by Google. Most likely the most unsavy masses. Not anyone that cares about their privacy.
> Last time checked significant portion of the population uses various tools including ad-blockers, and other privacy tools to decrease their online foot print. In what alternate reality ?
Whether or not that number is correct, it's definitely a significant portion of the population doing it.
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"It is generally conceded in our age that a critically strategic producer has an obligation to the public for the sake of the common good." And what happens if Google says, "f * it, we're not providing a utility, we're not taking traffic from European IPs anymore"? I am no anarcho-capitalist, but I really think more folks should read Atlas Shrugged.
Even if Google did this, and got past the shareholder lawsuits, what would happen? Nothing much. Someone else would step in. Greed and free markets makes the "Atlas Shrugged" scenario nonsense. I'm sure there are millions of smart people who would love it if all the other smart people stopped producing. All it means is more market share for them. I'm guessing you're posting this as someone who is fully sucked into th…
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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…
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Can you give an unbiased concrete example (eg. tainted baby formula, collapsed bridge, corrupted hard drive from virus) of something that has benefited google to the direct harm of one of it's users? The biggest argument I've seen is that people don't like that they aggregate the data you give to them.
AMP. This is entirely what the AMP argument has been all about.
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> 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?
Chickens in a farm aren't situated similarly, with respect to the farm, as users are with respect to Google services.
Chickens can't freely choose a different farm, or to use no farm at all.
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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!
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>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…
> 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. Which is why they determined Google's market dominance in Search , not shopping sites. Your analogy should be about the single most popular restaurant guide in town, opening up their own restaurant and then only writing reviews for…
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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?
As a consumer, I have (much) more trust that my interests are advanced by the EU than google. The same people that brought you that idiotic cookies warning?
I suppose the Guardian shouldn't alert people that the NSA listens to their telephone calls, either. (Because every spy agency does it?)
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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…
The thing about anti-trust is that being a monopoly is allowed. What's not allowed is using a monopoly position to get a large advantage in another market.