Google Could Face Heavy Antitrust Fines In the EU 292
SquarePixel writes "Europe's competition watchdog is considering formal proceedings against Google over antitrust complaints about the way it promotes its own services in search results, potentially exposing the company to a fine of 10 percent of its global turnover. Google is accused of using its search service to direct users to its own services and to reduce the visibility of competing websites and services. If the Commission found Google guilty of breaking E.U. competition rules, it could restrict Google's business activities in Europe and fine the company up to 10 percent of its annual global revenue (US$37.9 billion last year)."
EU are on crack (Score:2, Informative)
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Read up on rules on monopolies. If you have a dominant position in one area and use that to gain an advantage in other areas, that's when you are in trouble. If no such rules were in place, the natural evolution would be that one company crushing all the others. Be thankful that that this is happening. It's good for you in the end.
Re:EU are on crack (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not clear as to how Google is a monopoly. It does not control the physical or electronic structure of the Internet. Web searching certainly cannot be considered a natural monopoly. It can't stop competing web services.
So how can Google maintain any kind of abusive monopoly.
Re:EU are on crack (Score:5, Informative)
They have over 80% of the global search marketshare. That's what makes them a monopoly. There's nothing illegal with being a monopoly, the question is if a company is abusing that monopoly or not.
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They're at 66.8% in the US, but much higher elsewhere. In Canada, for example, they're above 80% when you combine google.ca and google.com. I'm seeing 80% or more in the global stats I can find, but most of those are skewed one way or another, so it's really hard to get an accurate picture.
Market shares can differ significantly even in countries as close as Canada and the US. AIM was, at least a few years ago, the most popular IM network in the US, but had virtually no presence outside the US. Even in Canad
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The point is that with google there can be no lock-in, so they cannot abuse their monopoly in the same way e.g microsoft can because people are free to go to a competitor search engine at the drop of a hat.
That's not good enough. The point of antitrust law is to keep all markets competitive and driving innovation. For that to happen people have to be free to choose the best search engine for them and the best social network and the best maps, etc. It's not sufficient that they choose the best bundle of those together because it might mean that while we end up with real competition in one market, the other markets are abandoned by innovators because there is no realistic way a better product can win against so
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It is not as clear cut as that though - defining how specific a particular market is and how dominant a product is in relation to that market (and what the cross elasticity of supply and demand is) has a huge effect on whether a particular action is in violation of Article 81 or 82.
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It is not as clear cut as that though - defining how specific a particular market is and how dominant a product is in relation to that market
I do believe Google's search market share has already been legally recognized as dominant in the EU, not that there is really any doubt in anyone's mind. Nor do I think we are in gray area with regard to separation of the search and social network or mapping services markets. Sure there is plenty to argue, but I don't think either of those arguments will get Google anywhere. The real question is if they are actually favoring their own services in a meaningful way, which I have not seen anyone yet establish
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That's not good enough. The point of antitrust law is to keep all markets competitive and driving innovation. For that to happen people have to be free to choose the best search engine for them and the best social network and the best maps, etc.
Except in this case it'll have the opposite effect, because people want search engines to actually give them useful information and (this is the kicker) the company leading the anti-trust complaint against Google knows this, because they're a Microsoft subsidiary which provides part of the equivalent functionality in Bing.
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I would say that slapping Google with draconian restraints is stifling innovation.
Google is free to make the best maps or best social network they can. No one is stifling innovation. The only thing they can't do is win in the market not by making the best product, but by tying it to a product that is dominant in a separate market. They can even integrate their maps or social network with their search provided they offer the same functionality to competing maps and social network service providers. How exactly does this prevent innovation in any way?
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The point is that with google there can be no lock-in,
I agree with that. Google could compromise on the issue a little, but fundamentally it's nothing like what microsoft was doing.
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The thing is that being a monopoly has nothing at all to do with lock in. The mere fact that 80% of people go to google search means that google can abuse that position to gain monopolies in other areas.
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Huh? Google supports POP3, IMAP and ICAL. Google Drive has clients that pretty much allow you to move Google Docs files on to your computer, not to mention exporting to several common formats.
Either you're an ignoramus or a liar.
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It's worse than that!
I was putting together a sort of "on-the-side" project basically seeing if I could setup my own Web Hosting biz, Cloud Services, PaaS, Zimbra a few other bits and pieces.
Naturally I was enticed to use Google AdWords for promo. Got myself a $75 (or $50 voucher whatever) had an Google employed Indian call me to setup the account for free. All very good service. Until the ads started going.
My MAIN competitor in the cloud computing space, IBM, Amazon, these all go without saying but the rea
Re:EU are on crack (Score:5, Informative)
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"You don't even have to be a monopoly to run afowl of antitrust laws; you just have to be able to exert undue influence on market forces."
"Market Forces
Definition:
Forces of demand and supply representing the aggregate influence of self-interested buyers and sellers on price and quantity of the goods and services offered in a market. In general, excess demand causes prices and quantity of supply to rise, and excess supply causes them to fall."
A free service can have a market force? How does that work?
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A free service can have a market force? How does that work?
A free service with pricing power! *bobble bobble*
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For the rest of us, we realize that monopolies do pop up from time to time and in the long term everything will be owned by the same entity if governments don't step in to prevent it.
That only happens if the entity happens to be a government. Otherwise, you can always create a competitor.
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You can always create a competing business, but there is never a guarantee that it can successfully compete - and there are plenty situations, some of which we've seen in real world, where a monopoly can jack up the barrier to entry high enough that effectively no-one can compete.
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It's not maintaining. It just is.
Not to mention the contracts they have (or on what they produce) to be the search box defaults: iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox, Safari.
Remember, Microsoft didn't manufacture their own computers, yet had a monopoly.
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It's what the PR companies have said from day one. It's an ignorant and biased view and implies that somehow you don't have a choice other than google - which is a requirement of a monopoly.
In other words, this article is about nothing and so is the speculation.
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Easy: by being a $3.8 billion per year target for politicians.
The only obvious crime committed here is being popular and making a lot of money.
It is sleazy for a company to favor it's own wares on what a naive customer assumes is a fair market. But that is the nature of 'free' markets and naive customers. The only reason anybody assumes the vendor they are dealing with is free of bias is lack of truth, which is just part of the limited, imperfe
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I'm not clear as to how Google is a monopoly. It does not control the physical or electronic structure of the Internet. Web searching certainly cannot be considered a natural monopoly. It can't stop competing web services.
So how can Google maintain any kind of abusive monopoly.
Google can become an abusive monopoly because of where the money comes from. If a competitor tries to enter the market (ad supported services), Google could tell its customers (companies advertising products) that if they work with the Google competitor, Google will stop doing business with them. That would prevent any competition for Google, which would result in EU citizens not having a free market of competing services.
Oh, and you start out by asking about natural monopolies and then finish with abusive
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I'm not clear as to how Google is a monopoly.
Because it has a de facto control of a particular market. If I am the only producer of X within 1000 miles, then I have a monopoly, even if I don't actively stop anyone from setting up their own X factory. Legally, a monopoly does not require 100% market share, but a "controlling" market share, so I would be a legal monopolist even if there's a few tiny X factories within 1000 miles, but when you go into a shop to buy some X, most of them only stock my product.
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Where does it end? (Score:2)
Read up on rules on monopolies. If you have a dominant position in one area and use that to gain an advantage in other areas, that's when you are in trouble. If no such rules were in place, the natural evolution would be that one company crushing all the others. Be thankful that that this is happening. It's good for you in the end.
Fully agree. However, when does one thing (search) become two things (search, maps), in which the one is used to abuse the other? Based on the suggestions here, the only thing
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Even if Google does what they suggest, Why is it illegal for a company to promote itself over others on the services it provides for free. If you don't like Google, don't use their services. It's not a requirement.
Google makes money (a lot of money) from advertisement. So it's not really "free" in the sense that Google does something good for you.
It would be another story if Google wasn't the dominating search engine. It's exactly like Microsofts browser story -- leveraging costumers into associated products. Google can push G+ to its users and draw them from Facebook, just because they have the best search engine. This leveraging is what is illegal (for a monopoly). If 2-3 companies are competing, it would be fine.
Re:EU are on crack (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that nobody's forcing anybody to use Google. In fact, the real monopolist still forces every computer you buy to come with Windows and default you to Bing for searching. And they make it pretty tricky to change. I know, I know. When it works, it's pretty easy to change, but I've never actually seen anybody change the default search engine - even those that still use Google by typing www.google.com into the location bar. And I've seen cases where the search engine choice website hasn't worked at all.
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Except that nobody's forcing anybody to use Google.
This is completely irrelevant. Whether you have monopoly influence because of a natural advantage (control the only source of something) or you've been granted it by a sovereign nation, or you simply outcompeted everyone else; what matters is what you do with the monopoly. With great power comes great responsibility. When you have this kind of power you can basically break capitalism, profiting from lack of innovation. This is bad for society, so we passed laws about what you can and can't do with that kind
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It's entirely relevant, because I'm pretty sure that (as one of the main organisations pushing the EU to fine Google) Microsoft's actually relying on the fact that it's trivial to switch away from Google search in order to benefit from these antitrust actions. If the EU does place restrictions on Google, Bing will suddenly have better search results than Google by virtue of still being allowed to give relevant context-specific results for things like maps. I expect they have the advertising campaign all set
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Re:EU are on crack (Score:4, Insightful)
Remind me again why Microsoft is required to show alternate browsers, when IE is free?
(They've actually failed and the EU is back after them, but that's besides the point)
Moreover, a majority of "search" boxes default to Google, as opposed to a customer making a choice. (iOS, Android, FF, Chrome, Safari)
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Moreover, a majority of "search" boxes default to Google, as opposed to a customer making a choice.
At least they allow consumers to make a choice. Microsoft's been paying various mobile phone providers to set search on the phones they sell to Bing and not allow users to change it, for instance. They're the only Android phones out there which don't allow you to change your search provider despite Google creating Android.
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Because it's abuse of a monopoly... In typical law, the issue is not having a monopoly, it's using a monopoly in one area to achieve a monopoly in another area...
Examples:
Microsoft had an OS monopoly, and used it to achieve a web browser monopoly by bundling the browser with the OS, making it impossible to uninstall and making it repeatedly re-default itself.
Google has a search monopoly, and are in the process of using it to achieve {a web browser monopoly by sticking chrome adverts on every page | a maps m
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All that does is shows just how successful google is being in forcing their way into the maps monopoly. Their search product was originally just that, a search product... At that time, people would tend not to use anything other than multimap for their maps. Google by integrating maps into their search, leveraged their search monopoly to gain a maps monopoly. These days, you'll be hard pushed to find a single person who doesn't instantly type maps.google.com if you say "could you bring up a map of that",
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Why
Your answer is right there in the summary: anti-trust. Do you need to have it spelled out what that means?
for free
No, it doesn't. The fact that you don't pay anything does not always mean it is for free. In this case, someone else pays. It is for free to you. It is not for free. There's a difference that matters.
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The dictionary says:
provided without, or not subject to, a charge or payment: free parking; a free sample.
Both examples are paid for be someone else. The local government or a company pays for the car park, the company providing the sample pays for its production - they essentially pay the factory on your behalf.
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If that's your definition of free, please name one man-made thing that is free.
You can run semantics if you like, but that wasn't the point.
Everyone considers Google and many other web services to be free, but they aren't, they are still a for-profit company and they are making shitloads of money on their search engine. That is why all the rules of commercial enterprises apply to them, including anti-trust rules.
The GP argued the "for free" point as if that would change the laws and rules they need to follow. My point is that it doesn't, because they are a company, not a charity, and
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The size of the fine is good IMO - a fine should hurt a lot, so the offender will not want to repeat the offense. After all, if the company can still profit from the illegal activity after paying the fine, it will do so (say that a fine is $1k, but the company got $2k from doing whatever resulted in the $1k fine - this means that the activity gets $1k profit and is worth doing, despite the fine). Fixed sums (say $1M) may destroy small companies but be pocket change for big ones, so making the fine be a part
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Accepted Industry Practice (Score:5, Insightful)
Bing does this as well, I do not think it is particularly fair to start fining people for doing something that has been going on and in the open since internet searches were first born.
Now if they wanted to created some regulations to protect internet searches to make them fair, well that would be a good start.
Re:Accepted Industry Practice (Score:5, Insightful)
Bing does this as well, I do not think it is particularly fair to start fining people for doing something that has been going on and in the open since internet searches were first born.
Just as bundling a browser with an OS is something that has been going on since the internet was born, yet Microsoft must provide a ballot screen in the EU and Apple does not. Microsoft promoting its products in Bing results puts them in front of at best 20% of the market. Google gets their products in front of 80% of the market. One company has more influence that the other in this case, just as Microsoft has more influence than Apple in the OS market.
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Yes but that ruling was unfair as well, actually far more so. Not only was it an accepted industry practise, but it was the best practice for computer users.
Bundling a single software product for all important tasks, is simply the best way to distribute a OS.
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Re:Accepted Industry Practice (Score:4, Insightful)
First Microsoft just bundled a web browser and threatened to take away OEMs's Windows licenses if they dared to uninstall it and/or bundle Netscape instead. Next it integrated Internet Explorer into the operating system so you didn't have a choice but to use it one way or another. That's clearly anti-competitive behaviour and they were rightly punished for it.
Most importantly, it gave them the ability to add extensions that would only ever work on IE on i386. ActiveX plugins and the like. And it worked - so well that some businesses are still stuck on IE6. The best part was that once they had actually destroyed Netscape, Microsoft disbanded the IE development team and stopped actively developing it. All this was the kind of lock-in that the EU was trying to prevent, but the process took too long.
Fortunately things managed to right themselves somehow, with Netscape returning from the dead as Mozilla (and I still remember lots of people saying it would never work, and that it was a crock of shit), but the whole 'Only works on IE' thing persisted for a long, long time. It's only really the success of iOS and Android which has finally made people realise that making a site that only works on Windows is a Bad Idea.
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Bing does this as well, I do not think it is particularly fair to start fining people for doing something that has been going on and in the open since internet searches were first born.
In the early days no one had monopoly influence on the market. Antitrust laws have been on the books since the 1800's without much change. If Google doesn't have lawyers and businessmen that understand them they should dissolve the company now as their incompetence is staggering. If Google did go ahead and leverage their influence in search, they knew what they were doing and deserve to be smacked down for it because they were breaking the law and hoping to lawyer their way out of it.
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Is the web search a different product than the maps search?
In terms of markets and thus the law, absolutely. There are companies that sell each of those services and not the other.
Hands up who's complaining? (Score:5, Insightful)
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> the only people who complain to the EU are competitors
No shit, Sherlock. If you aren't directly affected by Google's practices, you wouldn't legally have any grounds to make a complaint.
If Google wants to (legally) compete as e.g. a mapping service, it has to do so on a level playing field, not by using its dominant position in the search market.
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They're competitors who don't want to compete on a level playing field. I've seen a whole bunch of these so-called vertical search engines, and Google delayed far too long in downranking them - not only were they useless, they'd got so good at gaming Google's search results that they were starting to make Google itself useless for many searches. I've no doubt they managed to make a bit of money by making the Google results useless and hoping people would click their ads in desperation, but it was a pretty a
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The people who suffer from something complain about it. Are you trying to say that this surprises you?
The point is not, and never should be, about who complains, but about whether or not the complaint is justified. If you break into my house, it shouldn't matter if I or my neighbours or someone walking the dog notices and calls the cops, should it?
Please stop the "if we just stopped doing anything, the magical invisible hand of the market would sort everything out" nonsense. Few theories in the history of m
About time (Score:3)
I doubt very much though that the EU will/can do very much here.
One part of the problem is that people are trusting Google more than almost any other company. Google often exercises restrain and good will and of course for most services doesn't charge anything (because its users are not its customers actually), so people are extremely forgiving.
I'm not sure about what will grow out of Google. I wouldn't be surprised though if Google were the first iteration of a more or less lenient super-AI of the future. If any of you have read the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks: The first Minds probably looked very similar to Google. If *this* will be the ultimate outcome, I'd say fuck the EU and hail Google.
Reality isn't a novel though...
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Google only wants one thing - more money.
That's a rather strong claim, since it directly contradicts the statements the company has made since its inception, including the legally binding statements made in its IPO documentation. It's also hard to fathom why the people who control the company's voting stock (the founders) would care that much about becoming wealthier -- they already have more money than they could ever possibly spend. And because they control the voting stock, no one else is in a position to override them.
Strong claims require
I agree to a point... (Score:2)
But to me, this is akin to a restaurant being threatened with fines for not directing some of the customers to its competitors.
The search engine industry should advertise like everyone else, or offer superior service.
Google's own services as Advertisements? (Score:2)
Maybe Google should have simply posted up their own services as an Advertisement item in search. Instant First rank, no problem -- they could even have the department "pay" the rest of Google to do it (although I'm pretty sure they would have to be careful with accounting rules, taxes, and so forth).
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In that case MS should be able to buy that advertisement space. If Google doesn't let them, then again it is a breach of EU rules.
This isn't news (Score:2)
This is getting old, the every couple days another story splashing the Evil Google name in the headlines with hardly any change from the previous round. There will be progress in the MS-EU-Google tussle over time but basically there's nothing to say until it's over and done with. And by then some of the wild accusations of exposure will magically have faded to something actually reasonable.
Non-car analogy (Score:2)
Isn't this kind of like asking the concierge for a dinner suggestion and being referred to a restaurant in the hotel rather than outside? ... I have a pretty good idea in advance what they are going to say.
If I ask someone who runs a landscaping company who I should get to mow my lawn
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Re:EU needs money to give to Greece (Score:5, Funny)
And 1% would give everybody a monthly income of 800. And why stop there? A 25% tax would give everybody 20,000 euro a MONTH and everybody will be filthy rich and nobody will have to work ever again. You, Sir, are a genius!
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Most of the smaller traders in the markets will disappear,
Most small traders already pay a premium that is greater than 0.5%
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This money is added to the central budget of the EU.
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For example, suppose I have two businesses each doing a billion euros of business. One is so
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It's not blocking foreign businesses. Don't do bad things and you don't get to pay fines.
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If you really want to have a restaurant analogy in this case you should frame it like this. A restaurant that has 95% of business already, already has you as an existing customer for an unrelated product requires you to walk through their restaurant to a small door in the back that allows you access to the town's other restaurants. Their undue weight is approaching monopoly in that their inertia allows them to obs
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Also the point of these fines is that they have to hurt
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Also the point of these fines is that they have to hurt more than what the corporation gain from breaking the regulations or they are powerless.
It's worth noting that it hurts the foreign company more than the local because there is less relevant business to absorb the fine. For example, if Google were solely an EU company, it might be worth it to pay the fine, keep doing business as usual, and just bribe the appropriate regulators to prevent the issue coming up in the future.
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and even by frequency the Commission fines a lot more European based corporations than it does foreign ones.
Or further evidence that the policy helps exclude foreign businesses from the EU market.
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Would make more sense to me to fine them 20% (or whatever) of all EU monies, instead.
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It would have been nice if they could have actually regulated them before hitting them with a $3.7 billion fine for putting an ad for their products on the side of their delivery trucks.
I.e., tell them they could be liable, and could you please stop that? Instead of the very first move being to make a massive hit on a foreign company (as also seen in the anti-Samsung verdicts in the US and Europe).
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They heavily promote Chrome with Google Earth, Youtube (especially to Windows XP users) and search, possibly Gmail and maps too.
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" The first thing I tried to test it was searching for "maps" on Google search and sure enough Google Maps came up first."
I tried to search for "foot ball" and +"foot ball" and there was not a single match in the first dozen results, those were all for the dyslexic morons that Google expects us to be and just assumes we are searching for 'football' and don't know how it's spelled.
If I insist and ask for +"foot ball" -"football" the first link doesn't have the second search term, as expected, but also not th
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you mean the thing which you can *turn off*?
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Exactly. Google couldn't get Facebook to play, so they took it upon themselves to provide a better user experience. In fact, facebook provided information to Microsoft which they integrated with Bing, so it was possible, but they chose not to do this for Google, so Google simply took it upon themselves to innovate. But some Europeans with a baguette in one hand and a shitty search engine/service in the other complain from their corner of the world. Oh no, their crappy subpar website is ruined by the evil Go
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I guess Samsung is a small man with no finances. Assuming you don't count billions in revenue and the largest slice of the tablet market. Or how about the lawsuits between Microsoft and Motorola.
Re:Google is Evil (Score:5, Insightful)
And thank God. When I type <name of store>, City, State I want a map. Not a plug for MapQuest. Not a plug for Bing. And most certainly not iOS 6 telling me I'll have to charter a kayak, and, by the way, Gander Mountain has a great deal on paddles.
A related problem: My local Wal-Mart has a Subway inside the store. Why don't you go picket them? There's clearly no way other sandwich services can compete.
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You don't have to be a "shill" to realize your scenario, as presented, is ridiculous. You don't want a map, but claim Google is unfairly depriving MapQuest their share of the "people who don't want a map" market?
Google is trying to put something useful in that spot. Search for "Keanu Reeves" and, instead of a map, you'll get a short bio. Search for "Pb" and you'll get it's periodic table entry.
Bing and Yahoo! could do something like that, but they'd rather fill that space with ads.
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All this presupposes that Google has a "monopoly" in search, which is retarded beyond measure. You can make a much more compelling case that they have a monopoly in advertising, but that has nothing at all to do with poor MapQuest.
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There is no "natural" monopoly in search, and switching to a competitor is so trivial it's sad. In America, at least, you have to do more than win a popularity contest to be a monopolist.
"But where's the ability to choose another map data provider?" you ask. It's in that bar, at the top of your browser. If anyone actually wanted Bing maps, bing.com is even shorter to type than google.com.
And if Google's spidering is "directly hampering"F a business' "ability to stay operational," they deserve to go bankr
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"Google just shoved their map in there ... and no other service can do that."
So if you go to Starbucks you want them to offer you coffee from the guys around the corner?
And they have to offer you that _first_?
Are you crazy?
It's a private company, not some Government Agency who has to be impartial.
They show you what they have, if you don't like that, don't go there.
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That is... the worst analogy ever.
Google is a public company, not a private one.
Starbucks is not a coffee monopoly who controls 80-90% of the world's coffee.
Your argument means that Microsoft should be free to integrate anything they want into Windows. Anything at all. And if you don't like it then don't buy a Windows PC.
It's very simple - Google controls a monopoly share of web searches. A monopoly share is legal as long as you don't use it in illegal ways (such as using it to push into new markets). Go
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How can Maquest compete when Google is shoving their maps right into their monopoly search?
Why would I care as a user? I want convenient search, and Google gives me just that.
Re:Google is Evil (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some interesting parallels here. Google is starting to look more and more like an operating system, with the menu bar at the top and the integration of a lot of their services into a desktop-like interface. And in a way, the "start menu" for this operating system is Google Search (it is after all the one at google.com). So the question then is, are they allowed to bundle other applications with this operating system, or should they allow others to compete with their own applications? In that sense it's similar to the whole Windows/IE bundling case. And in fact, Google could argue just like Microsoft did (although MS made some ridiculous claims about it being technically impossible to remove IE) that the embedded Maps is not a separate service at all, but that Search simply has an embedded viewer for search results that are geographical locations, which happens to be powered by the same technology as Maps.
Of course, what matters legally is the effect the thing has on the markets, not any kind of technical consideration. In that case, Google Search is a near-monopoly in the search market, and it's conceivable that its embedding of Google Maps to display results advantages Google Maps over other mapping services. I'm not sure how you would prove that (and have no idea what the standard of proof would be here), but if it turns out to be the case, then Google could remedy it by offering any other mapping services an open API that they can use to register their mapping service with Google, with Google then giving the user the option to choose a mapping service for showing embedded search results. That would be similar to the IE solution.
As for Google being evil, right now the EU is investigating if there is a crime at all. Antitrust law is a murky thing; there is no exact borderline where a market leader becomes a monopolist and where integrating services or products becomes too big a distortion of the market. So let's wait for the EU opinion first. Then, let's see how Google handles it. Will they work with the regulators to find an acceptable solution and implement it quickly, or will they try to lie, sue and lobby their way out of it like Microsoft did? I'd say that their reaction of a potential complaint constitutes a much better test of their character than just the fact that the EU has decided to investigate something.
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OK, go use Bing. Or Blekko. Or Dogpile. Or Ask. Or is that too hard for you to do? You don't like the way Google works so don't keep using it.
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Some people haven't learned the lessons of history.
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you are too late for the USSR, sorry.
tell me about how bad life is in the us when people are lining up for iphones and ipods every time a new one is released. or people paying 1200 a year for cable tv. or how about people leasing cars they could never afford to buy. yeah times are hard in the us. not. what is up in the us is whining.
Re: (Score:2)
Errrm, they already do search competing video services too. They have done since before video search was integrated in the main search page. Try searching for South by Dave Otto [google.com] (just plucking a random video off the Vimeo front page) for example.
Re: (Score:2)
As this comes directly from Microsoft and a couple of paid minions of them its pretty lame. Its so obvious who is behind this. What Google should try to do is to get any remedies they have to do be written down as much of it is applicable to Microsofts own promoting of MS Office inside Windows and its Server products etc.
When you cant compete, litigate. If everybody laughs at you for the sheer audacity, get a couple of toady minions to do your dirty work.
Actually, this did not come from MS.
It came from a crappy competitor to google product search called foundem. Unfortunately they consider the idea of learning about SEO to be akin to learning about black magic so they are suffering as no new users ever find them anymore.
They searched for things like "product search engine" in google and found they were not even listed on the first page and went straight to the EU screaming foul that Google Product Search came out first. Instead they should have tried the sa