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Google should be broken up, say European MPs

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Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#81

Post by rtpg »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #42
rtpg wrote: post #30

I know a lot of people kind of scoff at the idea of breaking up Google because they happen to offer the best product, but here are the 4 points mentioned >The manner in which Google displays its own vertical search services compared with other, competing products > How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - to include within its own services > The exclusivity Google has to sell adver…

First point is kind of hard to fight in my opinion, since a company has the right to publish its own services. That changes once a company becomes a monopoly, specifically because it leads to market distortion. We've got rules against this sort of thing for a reason…

I always thought that anti-trust laws kicked in when the power was abused, so to speak.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#82

Post by coldtea »

gchp wrote: post #28
agd wrote: post #7

> Google has around 90% market share for search in Europe It's a complete monopoly and the barrier to entry is huge. Might be a good thing to break them up.

I agree that its a monopoly, though I find it funny that serious time & consideration is being given to discuss breaking them up. Google are a company who have a product (search, among many). Their product is successful (many people use search). Competitors obviously find it hard to break into the market, and want to make that easier. Is this not how business works? A company creates a product and tries to make it as…

>Is this not how business works?

Yes, and the society/lawmakers deciding to take your business down or make it illegal is how society/law works.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#84

Post by oblio »

Dewie wrote: post #68
oblio wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When debating pro-against EU, we should never forget how pre-EU Europe looked like. We've been incredibly good at killing each other. I'd pick a huge beauracracy over arms races any day of the week.

So you think that if the EU disbanded, there would be more wars (and/or arms-races) in Europe? Between which nations?

1. Yes.

2. Don't know - we're good at surprising people!

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#85

Post by lotsofmangos »

Dewie wrote: post #68
oblio wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When debating pro-against EU, we should never forget how pre-EU Europe looked like. We've been incredibly good at killing each other. I'd pick a huge beauracracy over arms races any day of the week.

So you think that if the EU disbanded, there would be more wars (and/or arms-races) in Europe? Between which nations?

There are still arms races in Europe. They are just a lot quieter and are mostly battleship envy.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#86

Post by aroberge »

I am puzzled regarding the various rants (by politicians and others) of the type "we must break up Google"... Let me mention a couple of points which I never see addressed by people pushing this idea:

1. There exists a well established protocol/convention (robots.txt) that can be used to indicate to search engines that "these pages should not be indexed", thus preventing copying content from those pages. As far as I know, Google respect robots.txt. Companies (most often, news related organizations) that complain about Google copying their material can make use of robots.txt to prevent Google from indexing their content. Are they saying that Google does not respect this? ... or that complaining companies are clueless about this?

2. How do they think a pure Google Search company, without ad revenues, could generate revenues to sustain its operation? Search (for microsoft, yahoo and google) [and free email services] are most likely something akin to loss leaders / promotional tools.

Legislating against anti-competitive behaviour (e.g. restrictions on advertisers to move their online ad campaigns to rival companies) is something that should be done if indeed it is occuring. However, everything else appears to be without logical foundation to me.

But perhaps I am missing something...

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#88

Post by rtpg »

dghf wrote: post #76
fear91 wrote: post #24

Google's grip on search is absolutely enormous, especially in Europe. They literally decide lives of thousands of people when they change their algorithms. With one update, they kill thousands of websites someone lives off and then they replace them with big brands or their own services. This isn't healthy for anyone and I wish there was more competition. It would do a lot of good to everyone.

But there is competition. Bing, DuckDuckGo, even Yahoo's still hanging in there. There are no technological or commercial barriers to switching search engines: no-one is making people use Google search (except I guess maybe on Android devices or Chromebooks -- I don't have and have never used either, so I don't know). People use it because either (a) it returns better results or (b) inertia. If it's (a), using it is…

I would say that the technological barrier exists for google just like with IE and MSFT: Google is the default browser in Firefox + Chrome.

The IE solution was to offer an explicit browser choice in EU versions of windows. A similar one could be imagined here. The "solution" would be to disallow Google from making an exclusivity agreement with FF and to have a choice screen in Chrome. Unfortunately this would cause immense harm to Mozilla...

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#89

Post by pjc50 »

vince_refiti wrote: post #23
oblio wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When debating pro-against EU, we should never forget how pre-EU Europe looked like. We've been incredibly good at killing each other. I'd pick a huge beauracracy over arms races any day of the week.

Don't they still subsidize their agricultural sector, and dump stuff on the international markets and hurt non-EU farmers? I consider that to be very uncompetitive.

Yes, although the US does exactly the same thing in different fields. Most countries have some sort of national protected agriculture.

Re: Google should be broken up, say European MPs

#90

Post by rtpg »

aroberge wrote: post #86

I am puzzled regarding the various rants (by politicians and others) of the type "we must break up Google"... Let me mention a couple of points which I never see addressed by people pushing this idea: 1. There exists a well established protocol/convention (robots.txt) that can be used to indicate to search engines that "these pages should not be indexed", thus preventing copying content from those pages. As far as I…

1. robots.txt is not a replacement for copyright law, it is a "protocol" used by most crawlers.

2. A pure Google Search company could show ads, by being a client/distributor of ads from a (pure) Google Ads company. Just like how ads on your blog get you money.

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