601–610 of 702 posts
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Are chickens in the farm also customers?
> 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.
In addition - open air held chickens could run away but they choose not to.
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Finally, you seem to think that search users are Google's customers - as they don't pay anything to Google, they are a resource, or product - not a customer. That set of users though is what this whole action from the EU is trying to protect. It's only marginally about the other businesses - the end goal is making sure the population of the EU is benefiting. To that end I have yet to see where or how Google has prove…
From the initial complaint: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-4780_en.htm > (...) systematically favouring its own comparison shopping product in its general search results pages. The Commission's preliminary view is that such conduct infringes EU antitrust rules because it stifles competition and harms consumer (...) > (...) [Google] may therefore artificially divert traffic from rival comparison shopping s…
And I'm saying that not only does the government have a terrible track record, there is no evidence that this actually makes any difference to competition. All it does is show that the government can throw their "weight" around.
Nothing in the historical record of antitrust should make us confident that the court’s dismemberment of one of the most successful companies in history would increase competition.[1]
[1]https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/if-it-aint-broke-dont-bre...
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>- Google Shopping, I never saw a reason to use it and I never did, I prefer to use local shops or Amazon I use Google Shopping for price comparisons across mutliple retailers. (The service was originally named Froogle.) I originally used Pricewatch.com but switched to Froogle/GoogleShopping because it had better results. Unfortunately, the local shops and Amazon don't offer the same breadth of comparisons. E.g. if I…
Those websites are primarily american, so I am assuming you live in America. In Europe, I would say Google Shopping is more bothersome than it is useful. Whatever point you were trying to make by highlighting the usefulness of the service in your region, you forgot to take into account the rest of the world. Besides, if you like to use Google Shopping, no one is stopping you.
At some point they moved towards Google Checkout (Google Merchant/Wallet?) verification and the number of stores you could actually find with it dropped dramatically.
Now it's just high street retailers, a handful of the bigger online places and eBay. Not only is it not as useful, it's killed off the sites that came before it as they tried to adapt and survive.
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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.
> 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. So is the EU going to fine Apple for not allowing iPhone users to access third-party browsers? At least Google doesn't force any lock-in with their platform here (the browser or search engine) - you're free to use any search engine you want.
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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?
The other is a web page with tons of competitors, many of which work well, deciding what their own computers after you specifically requested them to do so.
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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…
Interesting problem though. How would Google differentiate between a search and an address without having the Maps product deeply integrated ? Sure they could identify the address and then render the map using say Apple Maps. But what if Apple Maps didn't understand the address or if their API implementation didn't match up. Seems like it would very much hurt the overall experience.
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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…
That sounds horrible though. Another abomination in the making. The effort to align all those map providers is probably quite significant. Such a massive waste of efforts and engineering time.
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I can demo an alternative to Google Search in a weekend. I can throw comparatively small amounts of money to improve it (e.g. add more sites) such that it is extremely useful to find sites that I designate to have crawled (and it's not difficult to crawl the top N sites). My algorithms will be worse, my crawler less efficient, I probably will ignore javascript, my database will be larger than it needs to be, but none…
>compared to the merely large pile you'd need to run a credible regional alternative to google search for some segment of the population How exactly would a credible regional alternative to google work and why are there exactly zero of them if it's so easy?
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Controversial way to look at this, but surprisingly close to the truth: markets exist for the people. Companies have only one purpose: to serve the people. Their profits are merely incidental. Any type of regulation (or lack thereof) can be traced back to this rule. Freedoms exist only to let companies thrive insofar as that then lets them sell goods that benefit the people. Once that stops, the freedoms stop. I'm be…
> Companies have only one purpose: to serve the people. That seems completely backwards. Governments have only one purpose—to serve the people. Companies have only one purpose—to serve its shareholders. Of course, purely pursuing this purpose can lead to perverse outcomes so we have regulation to keep it in check. > Companies [don't] have any type of inherent right to exist Huh? In so far as individuals have a right…
I hate to split hairs, but no, they don't. Companies are just an arbitrary legal entity.
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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.
In your original post, you said: > If you take the stance that the government is looking out for your interests better than Google is... making a clear implicit counterclaim that Google is looking out for my interests better than the government. But then you say this: > The entire Lean method and deploy-measure-iterate-deploy cycle, is predicated on a feedback loop between users and products. As someone who has done…
Bull, it's explicitly about figuring out what people want to do. You can argue all day long that this can be exploited, but in the end you aren't going to take an action you don't want to without coercion. If I show you a delivery donut ad a 1AM, because you've proven 90% more likely to impulse buy a donut at 1AM and then you do it, how is that not directly correlating to your interests? Conversely if I show you a gym ad at 8AM on Tuesday because I know that's when you get out of the meeting with the fit [insert gender] person at work you've always wanted to ask out on a date, how is that not directly in your interests?
businesses follow revealed preference
Yes exactly, stated preferences are worthless. Revealed preferences are priceless. The amount of people who say one thing and do another approaches 100%.
That's what I mean when I say there's no empirical footing for the claim that businesses can be trusted to look out for my interests.
You decide what your interests are by your actions. If I see your actions and then give you more of those, by definition I am looking out for your interests.
I think what you are trying to say is:
"People make terrible decisions and it's up to the government to prevent companies from letting you make those terrible decisions."
In which case, you're implicitly arguing that people make better voting decisions than purchasing decisions and that voting decisions better reflect their true preferences. A silly idea if there ever was one. I don't think this needs a reference in 2017.