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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

#71

Post by lucozade »

gpribeiro wrote: post #37
forthefuture wrote: post #8

Capitalism is like a competition that when you win you don't ever get to play again.

Capitalism implies economic agents that follow fair rules. What this ruling shows is that EU haven't forgot what capitalism is all about.

Hmm. The rules are a tad arbitrary. This would be entirely allowed if less people used Google search relative to its competitors.

Note, it's not illegal per se. It's not illegal because of a de jure monopoly. It's not even illegal because of the number of users they have. It's illegal because Bing, Yahoo et al are not as relatively successful.

It was the same with browsers. Microsoft were hit for bundling. Apple haven't been though they've done identically the same thing. Why? Because enough people bought Android phones in the EU.

I do find it dubious that, effectively, the primary criteria for illegality is not what the defendant did but what some other actors didn't do. Seems wrong to me.

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

#72

Post by theBobBob »

The thing is, personally I prefer getting integrated results from Google's other search services when I do a Google search. I like getting Google Maps results when I search for a location, I like getting Google Flights results etc. When I do a Google search I am not just using it as a simple website search. I want it to use it to search the whole Google suite of services. If they are forced to stop doing this it will make my search experience worse for me.

Random, maybe silly idea. Maybe they could start providing two search streams. One would just be a simpler website search while the other would be a more involved google services search as well as a general website search. This way search users could explicitly say that they want to see direct integrated results from the whole Google ecosystem.

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

#73

Post by calcifer »

jlebrech wrote: post #58
Inconel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how big the EU market is I'm sure the profit Google derives from it is many times this judgement.

so EU can keep knocking on their door because google has no choice but to pay up?

Why shouldn't the EU keep knocking on Google's door if it keeps violating the law? Especially a law that protects the livelihoods of EU citizens.

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

#74

Post by interfixus »

calcifer wrote: post #65
interfixus wrote: post #49

Please enlighten me: What kind of monopoly would that be? Much as I detest an awful lot of Google, I have never once been - and know of noone else who has ever been - forced to use their search against my will. In fact, I get along fine without it, as well as without their analytics and their browser and their cloud stuff, excepting of course that I am often forced to correspond with gmail addresses.

Google holding a dominant position or a monopoly on search is not by itself illegal. However, using that position to gain entry in a different market (shopping, in this case) is considered anti-competitive and hence illegal.

No, I realise that. My question is how are they supposed to hold a monoply or dominance, when there is nothing but preference or lazyness stopping anyone from switching to a competing service?

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

#75

Post by charlesdm »

andmarios wrote: post #20

The press release is well written. It explains why Google is fined in an easy way to understand, covering most aspects; what is the problematic behavior, why it is considered as problematic, which data lead to this decision, etc, whilst not painting the company in a negative light. Opinions on the decision will sure differ among readers, but I think the decision is in place with the majority of EU citizens' consensus…

Decisions, decisions. Is this Vestagers works again?

I'm more interested in seeing how much of her work will actually hold up in court. Better to focus on 10 good cases, than spread yourself thin on 30 and lose 80% of them. I guess she'll be long gone by then. The joys of politics.

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

#76

Post by devoply »

flexie wrote: post #55
andmarios wrote: post #20

The press release is well written. It explains why Google is fined in an easy way to understand, covering most aspects; what is the problematic behavior, why it is considered as problematic, which data lead to this decision, etc, whilst not painting the company in a negative light. Opinions on the decision will sure differ among readers, but I think the decision is in place with the majority of EU citizens' consensus…

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 than yours by abusing a commonly offered service that you offer for free. Going forward this is worrying for other Google services as well and their cloud offering. Are they going to add a delay in responding to certain browsers, I dunno. Maybe there is a reasonable explanation, I dunno

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

#77

Post by HerraBRE »

romanovcode wrote: post #26
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? ...

Well it's the truth, isn't it?

I actually feel it's misleading and wrong at a very fundamental level; this was the only thing I disagreed with in the whole press release!

Consumers "pay" for Google's services by giving ads attention so the ads have value and Google can sell them.

All the data harvesting is a means to a end: to make the ads more appealing so you'll click. Google don't profit from the data directly; in fact all the data harvesting and processing is a significant cost factor. There are certainly other businesses that resell data and profit directly from data harvesting, but AFAIK, Google is not really one of them.

It's a bit like saying that you pay a café by letting them observe you while you sit in their chairs. A basic misunderstanding of what's actually going on.

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

#79

Post by matthewmacleod »

jlebrech wrote: post #58
Inconel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how big the EU market is I'm sure the profit Google derives from it is many times this judgement.

so EU can keep knocking on their door because google has no choice but to pay up?

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!

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

#80

Post by wukerplank »

jlebrech wrote: post #58
Inconel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how big the EU market is I'm sure the profit Google derives from it is many times this judgement.

so EU can keep knocking on their door because google has no choice but to pay up?

Or they could comply with EU laws to stop the knocking.
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