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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

#631

Post by wyager »

matt4077 wrote: post #419
wyager wrote: post #42

What would Google have to do to ignore this fine? If they cut any physical presence in the EU, would the EC have any way to enforce this fine? Put another way, if the EU tried to take money from some random e.g. American or Japanese company without a physical presence in the EU, what channels could the EU use to twist their arm across national boundaries? Somewhat related, there could be good money in providing an ex…

Yawn... Google isn't going to give up a double-digit percentage of their market to indulge these sorts of nationalistic revenge fantasies. The EU has strong legal institutions, and is a democracy ruled by law, with standards at least as good as the US. They aren't any more hostile to businesses than the US, which has basically identical antitrust laws. Find the list of EU antitrust actions, and you'll see they take a…

Physically leaving the EU doesn't mean giving up all of their EU revenue. That's the magic of the internet.

The hypothetical friendly nation wouldn't be the US, for the reasons you mention.

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

#632

Post by snakeanus »

devoply wrote: post #76
flexie wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Next up, the Adsense and Android antitrust cases. How do I know? I googled it: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-google-antitrust-idUSKB...

At this point they are also apparently abusing their capcha. You use it from Firefox, solve like 3 different captcha, my most recent experience with Cloudflare. Use it from Chrome, instant check after failing a login. And it's from the same IP that has done it over and over again. If you were the least bit intelligent you would not do this... unless you were trying to make the user experience of other browsers worse…

Last time I tried to login to namecheap with firefox I got like 5 captcha checks (select all tiles with signs) and ended up with the annoying one that says "click on the tiles until you don't see any more cars", the annoying part with that was that it took AGES until the new images appeared. When I tried the audio thing it said "we are sorry but you computer is sending up automated network requests" or something like that.

When I tried again with chromium it got instantly verified.

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

#633

Post by petre »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #569
petre wrote: post #540

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.

* The US fined VW fair and square. VW has a large North American business anyway - there is no significant US/EU "trade war". Besides, American car manufacturers like GM are also implicated: https://electrek.co/2017/05/25/gm-dieselgate-scandal/ * Ireland is in the EU and contributes towards the EU's coffers. * The EU is also going after VW ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/eu-sues-germ... ), but the r…

While I agree with all of your points, we have yet to see GM being fined in the US. Otherwise VW is probably the worst offender and still getting a pat on the back in the EU. The EU plans to punish VW since 2015. Rather than do that, they went after individual member states (backed by taxpayers) for failing to punish VW.

Ireland gave some big corps special tax deals as it's the case with Apple. It's also used by big corps to pass earnings through as it had lower corporate taxes compared to other member states. This is an Irish feature and a flaw in the tax policies of other EU states, which the EU tried to fix with transfer taxes.

What I am saying is that the EU is failing to punish VW while being maybe a little too harsh on US corps. I think we can all agree VW is a much worse offender than Google: selling cars that poison the air and lie about it vs. a few search results clearly labelled as sponsored ads up on the first page.

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

#634

Post by stickfigure »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #448
stickfigure wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, the cookie notices are a bad implementation of a good policy, (informing users that they're being tracked.)

No. The cookie notices are the natural consequence of a bad policy driven by a good motivation. Well-meaning but stupid busybodies are cluttering up my world. See also: California prop 65 warnings.

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

#635

Post by [deleted] »

wbl wrote: post #558
tripzilch wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Lots of tourist towns have sponsored free maps that do exactly this.

[deleted]

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

#636

Post by allendoerfer »

chimeracoder wrote: post #514
denis1 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have answered your own question: They don't do it, because Google, their competitor, does allow it, so there is choice.

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

#637

Post by vkou »

thinkfurther wrote: post #618
vkou wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google isn't a charity, and is under no obligation to serve Europe. It's in Europe, and will remain in Europe because it is profitable to remain there.

This goes both ways.

So? If Google leaves, there's always Bing, DDG, the search engine formerly known as Yahoo!, Yandex...

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

#638

Post by esturk »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #455
gpderetta wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Google is not a shopping service. Using a dominant position in one market to acquire one in a different market is not allowed.

Last I checked the Google group of services did in fact include a shopping service, and a mapping service etc... so I'm not sure what you mean. They have a dominant position in many markets.

And this claim is not about the other dominant positions because if they are the better product, they will be shown. This is about Google trying to prop up an inferior product in a non-dominant position using their dominant search position. In this case, the inferior non-dominant position product is Google Shopping. There better dominant positioned product out there that Google does not own which it is not showing fairly.

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

#639

Post by mk89 »

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…

There are regulations made to prevent monopoly, abuse of market dominance, etc, which are supposed to guarantee a fair market.

It bites everyone, every kind of group where some competition is involved, even smaller companies, and we all agree on that.

However, when Google is touched, we all feel that we don't live anymore in a free world, that communism has won, etc - at least that's the kind of feeling I perceive every time they have to pay for something.

Why the break up of the Bell System [0]. Afterall it's their business, right?

Why was Microsoft forced (back then) to let people choose which browser to install? Same reason.

I don't know if you have ever read the book "Thinking in systems - D. Meadows", there is an interesting chapter about this which explains why such regulations are important.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

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

#640

Post by aluhut »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #593
aluhut wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They are a quasi monopoly. Ok, and? The idea that monopoly is bad - ipso facto - is silly and monopolistic abuse of consumers is largely theoretical. Governments don't like monopolies because they challenge their power, and don't forget nearly every "bad" monopoly was the result of a government license to monopolize. The whole "Trust Busting" trope that underlies the anti-trust act was not because consumers were bein…

> Ok, and? The idea that monopoly is bad - ipso facto - is silly and monopolistic abuse of consumers is largely theoretical.

What?! Monopolies always abuse their power because they can. I live in a country where we still feel the bad influence of a former monopolist ISP (Telecom/T-Online). THEIR influence on the government hurts the customer and even customers of other ISPs. It even hurts the tax payer who may not even have internet because his money may flow into subsidies for them. For example: they recently started eating up net neutrality in Germany. Because they can.

One of the most misused powers of monopolies is dictating a price. Just like we had a few months ago also in Germany with the biggest breweries. Millions of customers have been cheated.

IT IS ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR. They pay for this. How you can tell something like that "silly" is beyond me.

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