Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

europa.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 702 posts

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

#621

Post by anth1988 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #602
e12e wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

it has one principle, a regulated free market. 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…

Canada is used as an example of why AT&T didn't need to be broken up.

Ask a few Canadians how they feel about the telecom oligopoly.

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

#622

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

kaeluka wrote: post #348
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…

> They are not a utility. In many ways, they are. They didn't sign up for it, yet here we are..

They are an advertising company blowing money on free inducements to get you to click on their ads. Utilities don't work that way.

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

#623

Post by zepto »

patrickaljord wrote: post #319
catdog wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they didn't benefit, if using those services were a net loss, then people wouldn't be using them. 1. They may benefit more from better services. 2. As far as I know Google operates a lot of services which are not profitable by themselfs. > Also, I like to draw a line between monopolies imposed by force (eg taxi offering horrible services making competitors illegal through licensing) and those used by people volu…

> 1. They may benefit more from better services. 2. As far as I know Google operates a lot of services which are not profitable by themselfs. So what? Billion dollar companies subsidizing tech for the masses (even selfishly) is not a bad thing. That's one of the best thing about capitalism. > It's a bit like when (in the old days) the major phone company No, it's not like that, phone companies were granted monopolies…

Erm, Microsoft lost it’s dominance in part because it too lost an anti-trust case. Are you saying you wish Microsoft had been powerful enough to stifle Google the way Google is now powerful enough to stifle its competitors? What’s another 15 years?

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

#625

Post by speeq »

redm wrote: post #260

This was rumored to be coming for some time. The most interesting part to me: "Vestager said the EU might also need to take a closer look at Google’s behavior concerning maps, travel and restaurant reviews."

So we'll just have a worse search experience here. Thanks EU..

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

#626

Post by datguacdoh »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #552
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ?

"PageFair 2017 ad blocking report: Usage up 30%" Whether or not that number is correct, it's definitely a significant portion of the population doing it.

30% from what starting base? If the number was relatively small to begin with, 30% growth doesn't really mean much.

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

#627

Post by adjkant »

literallycancer wrote: post #437
oskbor wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

EU citizens vote in their national elections. EC members are nominated by national governments. If your government appointed someone that you feel doesn't represent your interests and you feel strongly about it, you should vote for someone else in the next election. This is exactly how representative democracy should work.

Yet polls across the world have shown this logic to be very flawed. The citizens often disagree with the actions of their representatives. That's a flaw of representative democracy itself.

Point is, representative democracy doesn't mean the action of the representative is the one the population agrees with.

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

#628

Post by zepto »

cJ0th wrote: post #264
flexie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business is what is stopping Google from not servicing Europe. Google makes huge part of its profit on search in Europe and pays almost no tax in Europe. If Google stopped servicing Europe, one or more European competitors would emerge in days or weeks and Google's dominance would be threatened worldwide within months. It would be a completely suicidal move.

Yeah, it seems "search" isn't as untouchable as it used to be. Qwant, for instance, may not be a 100% there but it is quite good. https://www.qwant.com/

What are you taking about? Any Google Search competitor needs to be seriously better than google in order to stand a chance, ‘not 100% there’ is equivalent to not there at all.

Moreover Qwant is just bing search results repackaged.

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

#629

Post by cwills »

amelius wrote: post #195
jordonwii wrote: post #154

Google posted a response blog post: https://www.blog.google/topics/google-europe/european-commis... It's mostly just fluff, but they do make a good point about the role of Amazon and eBay in product searches. I remember one of the early criticisms of the EU in this case being that they defined the "market" to exclude Amazon and eBay. Anyone know what the EUs reasoning for that is?

From Google's piece: > When you shop online, you want to find the products you’re looking for quickly and easily. And advertisers want to promote those same products. That's why Google shows shopping ads, connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both. The problem is that when you are shopping for something, you don't want advertisers to be influencing what you s…

> The problem is that when you are shopping for something, you don't want advertisers to be influencing what you see in search results. You generally want the best match to your search, not the product with the biggest advertisement budget behind it.

So they should remove advertising from google search results altogether?

Like saying TV networks shouldn't put ads/product-placements in their shows because their viewers are only interested in the shows/content.

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

#630

Post by vinceguidry »

eveningcoffee wrote: post #601
dragonwriter wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So if chickens could choose a farm, they would become customers? In addition - open air held chickens could run away but they choose not to.

Do Google users get slaughtered? I mean, that is why it's undesirable to be a chicken in a chicken farm, right? If it weren't for that, then choosing the farm you are on would be quite the desirable ability.

What if all that happened on chicken farms was one of their feathers got plucked once in awhile?

Post reply on HN