Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
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Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
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Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
#2> “Dominant companies can’t abuse their dominant position to create advantage in related markets,” she said bluntly, formally accusing Google of exploiting its supremacy in general search to dominate the market for online product searches
It seems completely ridiculous to call those two different markets. Finding the most relevant X on the web is fundamentally part of the same market no matter what X is.
Now, if they'd accused Google of using their market position in search to promote gmail, for instance, they might have a point. Not a very good point, but at least an understandable point. But calling "general search" and "product search" two different markets? They seem to just be looking for a way to extort concessions out of a company that seems like a tempting target, all the more so for not being an EU company.
Later in the same article is an indignant accusation that Google's display of other types of search results don't label themselves as ads. Of course they're not; if you search for an address, and you conveniently get a map of that address (which is one of the most likely things you were looking for), that's not an ad, that's the content you actually wanted. (By contrast, the garbage next to it telling you about other services related to random keywords in the search terms are ads.)
Now, the crazy 2014 deal that fell through certainly does sound like antitrust-style collusion; it's certainly ridiculous to have competitors bid for the right to appear as a list of competing services at the top of Google search results. But far from the "extortion" it's described as, it sounds a lot more like collusion between multiple large companies to exclude smaller players. The solution isn't to find a way to include more companies; it's to forget that that anticompetitive arrangement was ever proposed, and continue on with the current situation where Google shows users whatever it thinks they're looking for.
(I'm not suggesting that Google has pure and altruistic motives here; far from it. They're out to make money. I'm just saying that they've done nothing wrong here, and more generally that there's no wrong here for anyone to be accused of doing. That some random local company in the EU got annoyed at not being at the top of Google search results should not be Google's problem, or anyone's problem other than that company's.)
Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
#3If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves. This is the fastest growing industry for the next several decades with the best paying jobs. It only makes sense to nurture the local companies and local talent instead of giving it all away to the Americans. Europe is always fretting about how they need to create their own Silicon Valley but it's easy to do, kick out the Americans! You'll have your own Baidu, Tencent and Alibabas in no time.
Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
#4If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…
At the expense of the citizens. Why not let companies compete?
Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
#5If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…
At the expense of the citizens. Why not let companies compete?
There is no competition, it's just monopolies. It's been shown over and over that the first-mover advantage on the web is almost insurmountable because of the network effects.
Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
#6If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…
At the expense of the citizens. Why not let companies compete?
Some countries have no problem banning the best technology so that the best local technology can win, even if it's worse, and even if the best technology did nothing wrong. It's easy enough to make up excuses for that after the fact.
It would be nice if at least one such country could just blatantly state their motives up front to be judged on their merits: "We're choosing to prohibit a non-local company to encourage local replacements."
Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the expense of the citizens. Why not let companies compete?
There is no competition, it's just monopolies. It's been shown over and over that the first-mover advantage on the web is almost insurmountable because of the network effects.
Which is why Google was the first search engine ever, and before that people just banged rocks together in the general vicinity of phone lines, because any prior search engine would have had an insurmountable first-mover advantage that Google could not possibly have overcome?
Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
#8If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…
> kick out the Americans
How? Great firewall of Europe? Or what exactly are you proposing?
Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
#9If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…
This is exactly what any economy with self respect should do. China is so happy now. The last thing you need is an NSA arm operating a monopoly in your country.
Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the expense of the citizens. Why not let companies compete?
There is no competition, it's just monopolies. It's been shown over and over that the first-mover advantage on the web is almost insurmountable because of the network effects.
Yeap. We're all still using Altavista, MySpace, Hotmail and Livejournal.