Microsoft was punished for pumping a market with a free product, with its development supported by revenues from a monopoly product, so that they could afford to give it away where competitors could not. If Google offers something for free, kills off its competitors who were charging for their version, and then starts charging when they're the only ones left, then the French court has a point.
Even the headline in the linked article is absurd: "French court protectionism fines Google Maps for succeeding". No, that's not what they were fined for. They were fined for what French competitor Bottin claimed would happen two years ago--Google would offer Maps for free, make their competitors go bankrupt, and then start charging for Maps once they controlled the market. That's precisely what ended up happening!
Still trolling, I see. A few quick notes: * Google doesn't have a monopoly anywhere, even in search. * Google Maps is not given away, it sports ads, and the API costs money to access * You fail to mention Mapquest, or MS maps. Why just sue Google for its maps? Because it is the best one out there? * Why should Bottin be kept alive? Why not Garmin?
In short, you're wrong on two fundamental counts: that this is anything but protectionism of the most basic nature, and that somehow Google Maps is both special, and not, in the world of online map services.
Still trolling, I see. A few quick notes: * Google doesn't have a monopoly anywhere, even in search.
Google search most certainly is a monopoly. A legal monopoly does not require 100% market share. Companies have been deemed monopolies with under 50% share and Google is way higher then that - go google it if you don't believe me.
Now, having a monopoly is not illegal, but using your monopoly profits to corner other markets is illegal. This is exactly the same thing that MS was convicted of a decade ago. Google it. When MS was killing Netscape it took the authorities years to act and the trial also took forever to end - Google just hasn't been doing this long enough to end in court yet.
Monopoly is a control or advantage obtained by one entity over the commercial market in a specific area. Monopolization is an offense under federal anti trust law. The two elements of monopolization are (1) the power to fix prices and exclude competitors within the relevant market. (2) the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen or historical accident.
I have no idea how Google Search has the ability to either fix prices or exclude competitors through anything but offering a better product. Feel free to provide your argument, but at this point I see no evidence that Google is in a position where it either has a monopoly (control of or advantage in the search market), or that it is using monopoly power to advance that position.
Why don't you read your definition again? According to that, Google most definitely does have a monopoly in search. They are dominant in that area. And what they're getting slapped for is not for having a monopoly on search, which is quite fine, but by abusing that monopoly to edge themselves into other markets and drive out competition.
Please show me how Google has the ability to fix prices in the Search market, AND how they grow their market share in that market through means other than normal business operation.... Note that being dominant in an area has very little to do with being a monopoly, and even less to do with monopolization of your market position.
Google is able to provide for their many web services for free from all the advertising revenue that they earn with Google Adwords, DoubleClick and AdMob. They've pretty much cornered the advertising market with their dominate share of the search engine market and web applications. They secured their top spot with their purchases of Sprinks (2003), Applied Semantics (2003), dMarc Broadcasting (2006), YouTube (2006), AdScape(2007), DoubleClick (2007), AdMob (2009), Teracent (2009), Invite Media (2010), and Admeld (2011). This doesn't include all the other purchases of search technology companies, review sites (including Zagats), web applications, voice of IP providers, social media analytic services, and shopping sites.
They are basically buying out potential competitors, potential technology that they can use for their advantage, or high traffic websites that would suddenly use one or more Google advertising subsidiaries.
This is similar to the tactics used by Microsoft in the late 80's early 90's to secure their dominate position.
> Well, you try to create a search service that is not free (= funded by ads) and I think you will quite soon realize what Google has done to the prices of online search. But that really was not my point.
and? (btw, were you aware that web search was free (= funded by ads) for a decade before google?)
> Google search is a monopoly in the sense that most people use it and the google.com front page.
you clearly don't understand what a monopoly is. Please at least *try* to comprehend the definition. NeutronC
btw, were you aware that web search was free (= funded by ads) for a decade before google?
No I wasn't. I was under the impression that WebCrawler, the first publicly accessible full-text World Wide Web search engine, predated Google by only four and a half years.
Your right, it's not all about market share. It's about being able to control the market, and abusing that control.
I certainly have a choice to not use google maps, or google search. I can easily switch from google maps, to yahoo maps, or to mapquest; it takes seconds. Absoluty nothing ties me to google.
This is not true with OSes. If I switch from windows, to linux, I will not be able to run my applications. OS makers have much more potential than search engines, to abuse their monopoly positions.
Wrong. It's not the maps that's the question here, it's the Google Maps API.
It'll take you far longer than "seconds" to switch your web application to a different mapping API.
This is similar to running your Windows applications on Linux. All you have to do is run them under Wine, and then fix the problems with Wine where it doesn't quite get the API interpretation right for your particular application. That'll only take "seconds", right?
Having a 100% market share does not give you a monopoly. A monopoly is power to dictate terms. This requires barriers to entry for others, and a lack of suitable alternatives for customers. Given how I can still type www.bing.com in my browser, or how I could easily go out and rent a large datacentre start trawling the web and make a search engine, google doesn't have a monopoly in search.
For monopoly you need control. e.g. Microsoft had a monopoly not because it's system was popular but because you couldn'
His argument is that's it's illegal to use a monopoly you already have in one market to obtain a monopoly in another market by squeezing out competition. There's nothing circular here.
The same could have been said with microsoft. There were (and are) other operating systems, web browsers, spreadsheet applications, word processing applications, etc. The courts said at the time microsoft had enough of a lead that by leveraging that lead into other markets that is wrong.
Google is charging when it did not in the past. If google didn't change there would be no issue. The change in behavior is the problem. If you kill the competition with a free product then when you are the only game in town,
* Google doesn't have a monopoly anywhere, even in search.
Maybe you should stop being a child and trying to insinuate that the only way someone can have a monopoly is by being the only actor. That's not true, and hasn't been for a long time.
* Google Maps is not given away, it sports ads, and the API costs money to access
It was with respect to the developer API, which is what the case is about. You could use that API for FREE, not free + ads. And now that they are the dominant player in the space, and one could easily say they got there because they were free, they are raising their prices. That is the very definition of anti-competitive.
You fail to mention Mapquest, or MS maps. Why just sue Google for its maps? Because it is the best one out there?
Because they're the ones with the legal monopoly.
Why should Bottin be kept alive? Why not Garmin?
Why should Google Maps get to survive by subsidies from other Google divisions? Why can't they compete on their own?
Maybe you should stop being a child and trying to insinuate that the only way someone can have a monopoly is by being the only actor. That's not true, and hasn't been for a long time.
And maybe you should get some reading skills. I have the sneaking suspicion I know more about what it takes to be declared a monopoly, and what is actually a crime when it comes monopoly behavior than you. I provided a handy link a bit above in case you are interested.
And now that they are the dominant player in the space, and one could easily say they got there because they were free, they are raising their prices. That is the very definition of anti-competitive.
How does it differ from new companies offering a deal to anyone who tries them? Furthermore, you still haven't demonstrated that Google Maps is the dominant player in the space of online map services, or how Bottin somehow is affected by them.
Look up "legal monopoly", "monopoly", "natural monopoly", and "monopolistics behavior". There are some subtle differences there
Yeah, like the fact that only one of them is a myth. This article [google.com] explains how natural monopoly arises from city government's monopoly ownership of roads and failure to efficiently price access to utility rights-of-way beneath the roads.
> Maybe you should stop being a child and trying to insinuate that the only way someone can have a monopoly is by being the only actor. What do you think "mono" means in the word?
The definition on Wikipedia is: "A monopoly (from Greek monos (alone or single) + polein (to sell)) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity."
German anti trust laws therefore don't talk about monopolies but about illegal market domination which is assumed to happen above 30% mark
Microsoft took technology that already existed and people already used and paid for and gave it away free until the competition died out. (Word/Word Perfect Anti-trust suit ??). With Browser technology they forced Windows VARS to install IE and play by a set of rules that said no competitive products could be installed (initial Anti-trust suit) even if the customer requested it. When busted, they spit in the courts face and forced vendors by forcing vendors to only install
Sorry but Google Maps was not a new product and neither was internet map services when Google acquired it. Mapquest was around since 1996 and even OpenStreetMap predates it and there were plenty of other services. But hey we gotta keep up the Google defenses!
Sorry, but you miss the very obvious point I made: What is Google charging for? It's not the Google Map service. It's the APIs so that you can access the Google data without Google services.
Comparing that to what Microsoft did, and does is simply ignorant. Sorry, no other way to put it. Ignorance can always be cured with education though.
It became extremely popular, and is still FREE to use for anyone.
No, it's not. Not for DEVELOPERS, which is the entire point of this suit. The Maps API used to be free. Now that they have a dominant market position, it's not.
Funny, I have multiple websites that use the Maps API and I've yet to see a bill from Google for usage or the functionality made unavailable. What crack pipe are you smoking?
Maybe you should read the manual. See the usage limit column? The pricing starts above that. So, Google provides the API for free, until you start leeching off it. Fair enough. Why should Google subsidise others' businesses?
Are you seriously not getting this? Google Maps API was introduced into the market free of charge to everyone. Customers who used to pay companies like Bottin Cartographes for their map service switch to Google Maps since it's free. After stealing marketshare and customers, in October 2011 Google begins charging for its service. How is this not textbook antitrust?
Are you seriously not getting this? Google Maps API was introduced into the market free of charge to everyone. Customers who used to pay companies like Bottin Cartographes for their map service switch to Google Maps since it's free. After stealing marketshare and customers, in October 2011 Google begins charging for its service. How is this not textbook antitrust?
Stealing market share? Really? Providing an exceptional products and services to gain customers is stealing?"
I guess you are entitled to free health care, the Government owes you a house and a job, and people that work for a living are idiots right?
And we wonder why the US is so F%^&Uked up right now.
Need an analogy? Here ya go. The Church gives away wrapped sandwiches to people every day. Do you have the right to demand that they give you as many Ziplock bags as you want for free? I mean, wh
Stealing market share? Really? Providing an exceptional products and services to gain customers is stealing?"
No, keeping a product free by using revenues from a different market (in which you are a dominant player) in order to gain customers and destroy competition only to then turn around and start charging for said free product is clearly antitrust. What is not clear about that?
When they start charging for you to use Google Maps, then start complaining. Until then, don't bitch about getting hand outs from them.
Ah, I see why you don't understand. You just came here to spout your ideology based off a perceived slight without even attempting to understand the discussion at hand. Before you run your mouth off, why don't you pay a little bit of atte
Did Google stop anyone at Mapquest from updating their product to be as good or better than Google's products? No
Yes. Google supplemented their product running at a loss from other products for the sole purpose of taking marketshare. This is fine if they kept it like this but then to suddenly turn and charge for the service they have:
a) abused their market position, and b) created barriers to entry for competitors (customers now have an expense if they wish to revert back to mapquest)
You may not think this is right. It doesn't matter. The fact is other companies have done the same and have lost lengthy court battles ov
Do you understand what a Monopoly is? I believe that you have something wrong in your concept.
I didn't say anything about a monopoly. Nowhere did I mention anything about a monopoly. Don't put words in my mouth. You don't have to be a monopoly to exhibit anticompetitive behavior.
Did Google stop anyone at Mapquest from updating their product to be as good or better than Google's products? No
Did Google stop vendors from using APIs and Hooks from other vendor codes? No
Did Google say "Anything we ever do will be free of charge."? No
Did Google stop any company from using Mapquests products? No
Did Google tell the Internet that no other vendor could put products out there? No
This isn't about a better product. This is about taking a product that it would costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce, giving it away for free to destroy your competition, then turning around and charging for it once the competition is gone. It's caled dumping and it's one example of an anticompetitive practice [wikipedia.org].
Uh... I think you may have missed something. This isn't about paper map companies. The company that sued Google, Bottin Cartographes [1bis.com] offers the same product as the Google Maps API.
Microsoft was punished for pumping a market with a free product, with its development supported by revenues from a monopoly product, so that they could afford to give it away where competitors could not.
Wrong. Microsoft was convicted of tying [wikipedia.org] (among other things). Bundling two products in the same shrinkwrap is tying. Offering two services on two separate websites is not tying.
Even the headline in the linked article is absurd: "French court protectionism fines Google Maps for succeeding". No, that's not what they were fined for. They were fined for what French competitor Bottin claimed would happen two years ago--Google would offer Maps for free, make their competitors go bankrupt, and then start charging for Maps once they controlled the market. That's precisely what ended up happening!
So instead of France doing something back then, when the competitors could have made money, they waited until those competitors went bankrupt and levied a fine for their *own* profit?
Punished? You call that punishment? I'm not saying google is innocent at all, I'm just saying the big fat bastards at Microsoft weren't punished in a meaningful way. And, for the record, I have installed 5 windows machines and have never seen the "browser ballot". Nor did I see it in existing machines.
Microsoft was punished for pumping a market with a free product, with its development supported by revenues from a monopoly product, so that they could afford to give it away where competitors could not.
Can we at least try to have a less tenuous relationship with facts? Microsoft wasn't charged with dumping (which is what you're accusing Google of), they were charged with tying, which means refusing to allow someone who wants to buy Windows to get it without Internet Explorer (ostensibly discounted for the value of Internet Explorer). They're totally different things.
Incidentally, the reason Microsoft wasn't charged with dumping -- and the reason that isn't what Google is doing now -- is that software and
Bogus. Google's big competition in the States is ESRI, with their ArcGIS products. ESRI also has a free version that provides users limited functionality, and they also have a version that users pay a boat load of money for... for a LOT more functionality.
As another user pointed out, Google is not alone in this space. If Bottin has a better product, they will be able to make money with it. If all they have is a bare bones, basic map service, they are going to have a hard time to convince me.
I find it difficult to understand how "Linux", being a loose consortium of code trees under no one's direct control, not even Torvalds', and who's chief product everyone has the source code to, would be in any position to suddenly pull some kind of magic lever and induce all users to start paying a license fee.
Yep, that's exactly the difference there. The code is out there and freely available, and it can't be taken away. The main kernel devs could, in theory, band together and start a new company, and only release new versions under a proprietary license, but that'd be pretty infeasible since there's literally thousands of contributors and many of them can't be contacted (it's part of why the kernel can't be changed to GPLv3; they have to get permission from all contributors; good luck with that). But even if
slightly off topic: there's literally thousands of contributors and many of them can't be contacted (it's part of why the kernel can't be changed to GPLv3;
this bothers me, not that i think the linux kernel should move to gplv3 today but who knows what the copyright regime will be in a few decades. i don't realistically expect mickey mouse to suffer any great reverses and instead i think it has to be assumed (without giving up the good fight) that things will only get worse. in fact i'd expect to see proposed
The other thing they could do is just not bother to ask, if the situation becomes such that it'd really be that advantageous to switch. All they have to do is put out a big public announcement announcing their intentions, saying "contact us if you have a problem with your contribution's license being changed". Then, deal with the ones who disagree, and for the rest, forget them. If they pop up later, then deal with them, but otherwise if they never complain then there's nothing to worry about. After all
Respect for the law is important. It's the difference between Sony (at least, back when they fought for Betamax) and Grokster. Groups that figure it's so much easier to simply ignore the law and do whatever they want tend to get smacked very hard. And it doesn't even matter whether the authority being ignored is just, or corrupt, they all react the same. Why do you think corporations spend all this money trying to slant the laws in their favor? It'd be so much cheaper to simply ignore them.
You're confusing crimes and torts, a common mistake.
Go back and re-read what I wrote: I said they should make a public notice of their intentions, and give all contributors plenty of time to respond, rather than trying to contact each one directly. If some of them aren't paying attention, then too bad; a year of notices in the Linux press isn't enough? If after that time, they have a problem, then they can try to resolve it then, but I suspect very, very few contributors would be complaining after a year
Unfortunately, the part where you said "If some of them aren't paying attention, then too bad" is plain and simple against the law. It is a copyright violation to redistribute someone's work without their permission, and you are contemplating doing precisely that.
It doesn't matter that what you proposed is a reasonable-sounding way to deal with the issue. It's against the law.
This is the thing holding up a lot of really interesting things, like Google Books. Hell, even the big multinationals can't do t
What are you talking about? The Linux kernel is already being redistributed, apparently with their permission, because they agreed to the GPLv2 license when they contributed. The only difference is we're proposing changing the license to another one that also allows redistribution, so there's no change there, just some slightly different terms, mainly about patents.
Also, I don't see what's so bad about saying, "well, we tried to contact you all, but your email addresses were invalid and you never said any
Is Linux unfair competition for Windows because it's given away for free? It's a stupid argument. If a group wants to give something away for free, let them. You can compete with free.
That's not necessarily true. If a company is generating massive revenues from a dominant product (in this case web search advertising), using that revenue to fund development of a free product in another market can be viewed as an anticompetitive abuse of monopoly position. Competitors who don't have a source of monopoly revenues have to offset their costs by charging for their product. To make your comparison more accurate, imagine if Ubuntu supplanted Windows as the dominant desktop OS by giving away a free product, and then once all competitors were completely marginalized, began charging for Ubuntu Linux. People would have little choice but to pay because it would be the dominant OS that everything ran on.
No. It would require Ubuntu to have a near monopoly, or maybe just a LARGE warchest, generating enough income through some other product that they can absorb a loss on the operating system development/distribution. The comparison falls apart, because, other than an operating system, what is Ubuntu doing well enough in to build a warchest or monopoly.
If a company is generating massive revenues from a dominant product (in this case web search advertising), using that revenue to fund development of a free product in another market can be viewed as an anticompetitive abuse of monopoly position.
No, it can't. The source of the money isn't the thing that matters. If Warren Buffet is preposterously wealth, but has no dominant market position in anything (just a lot of money), and he decides he wants to start giving away eyeglasses for free (i.e. below cost) until all competing eyeglass makers go out of business so that he can subsequently monopolize the market, he's going to be in trouble. It has nothing to do with the source of the money used to sell things below cost.
By contrast, Google, who wasn't selling below cost (because free + ads is profitable and therefore not below cost), wasn't doing anything wrong. They were doing exactly what competitors in a free market are supposed to do: Providing a competitive product for a low price while still making a profit. The fact that some of their competitors couldn't hack it in a market with aggressive competition is not the fault of the company offering the best product for the lowest price.
This is made blatantly obvious by the fact that they raised their prices before they had anything close to a monopoly in the market in question. They still compete with Microsoft, OSM and others. If customers don't want to use Google Maps or decide that the higher rates are too high, they still have multiple alternatives.
France is just butthurt that the French competitors were among those who couldn't compete.
That's horseshit and you know it. Google was the dominant player in that space, period. To deny it is to stick your head in the sand and go "LALALALALALALALALA".
And yes, Google was giving away use of Google Maps FOR FREE. Not Free+Ads, but FREE. If you were a developer, you were allowed to use the Maps API for free. And now that they have achieved a dominant market position, mainly because their API was free, they are charging for its use. That is the very definition of anticompetitive: Artificially lower your rates through subsidies from your other departments, then once you've achieved dominance, raise your rates.
Google was the dominant player in that space, period.
Because they're offering the best product for the lowest price while still making a profit, right? You do know that it's not illegal to a have a large market share as a result of all your competition sucking.
And yes, Google was giving away use of Google Maps FOR FREE. Not Free+Ads, but FREE. If you were a developer, you were allowed to use the Maps API for free.
If you go to maps.google.com, you see ads. If you click on the "Google" logo in the corner of a map on a site that uses the Google Maps API, it takes you to maps.google.com, where you see ads.
On top of that, the antitrust problem comes when someone sells below cost. Google's cost for providing an additi
I'm don't know the specifics of French competition law, but if it's harmonised with EU competition law (like the UK is) then the point of law under which Google will have been caught out is on *abuse* of a dominant position. It's absolutely correct to say that having a large market share isn't illegal in its own right, but your behaviour once you're in a dominant position (for whatever reason) can be. Yes, this does mean that (for example) the same behaviour that you've been doing for years is perfectly legal one day and then anti-competitive the next through no fault of your own.
Using profits gained in one market to force out competition in another definitely is illegal under EU competition law (which, as said above, I'm applying by analogy, which may be incorrect). Using it to enter a market is fine - more undertakings in a given market should ultimately be pro-competitive, to the benefit of consumers - but continuing to cross-subsidise to force out competitors can very much be illegal.
It should also be noted that the test(s) used for establishing predatory pricing isn't set in stone as "below cost", but crudely speaking being very close to that point will create the rebuttable presumption of abuse of dominance.
IIRC Google is only charging for the API for massive for profit use. First 25,000 loads a day are free after that I do not remember the price but I remember thinking it was fairly cheap. Good product and free to cheap on price.
Anyone who builds a company or a product that is critically dependent on another company providing data FREELY out of the goodness of their hearts who doesn't expect that the day may come when they pay for that data is an idiot. No different than if I had a plot of land on a street and wasn't doing anything with it and allowed the local farmers to set up stands there on the weekend to sell fruit and veg. Over time the wear and tear on the land might require me to have some maintenance done so when that co
I don't disagree that the price isn't excessive, but that is not what this is about. Google used outside revenue (from search) to build a product and give it away for free. They even leveraged their search monopoly to make it more popular. The effect of this was to drive other map companies out of business. Once they obtained a dominant position with maps, they began charging for them. This looks to me like a clear example of anti-competitive behavior. Google is allowed to enter new markets, allowed t
Oh boo fricken hoo. I remember when Google was trying to pay these map weasles for access to their map data, but they wouldn't let Google use it for what they wanted at any price. They were a bunch of jerks and you couldn't post a hand-drawn map to your yard sale but they'd threaten to sue you for IP theft. They were relics holding onto rent-seeking behaviors and holding back progress. So in 2004 Google bought Keyhole and Where2 and a bunch of other assets and liberated the map data. And now those jerks are out of business, or going there. Cry me a fucking river.
I should have included this in my post: Not only can I now see my own house in.5M resolution, but to a greater or lesser scale Google has given me a view of the entire fucking planet. I can see Red Square. I can see the Sahale. If I want, I can explore overhead views of North Korea, Iraq or Madagascar.
None of this was ever, or would ever have been, possible before. When I was in school these places were abstract theoretical things and if the map geeks had their way they would be still. Now I can see
What the hell are you talking about? What ads? There's no ads in Google maps that I'm aware of. I use Google Maps' API on my own little website on one page plus "geoxml" to show some data; there certainly aren't any ads shown. I'm only required to show the copyright notices at the bottom of the map, saying who has the copyright for the map data or images.
Google does use ads for their search engine product, and their Gmail product, but those are separate products and irrelevant to the maps API.
Have you ever noticed the Google logo in the corner? That's them getting their name in front of your customers (an advertisement), which is worth more to them than the near-zero it costs to actually serve the maps. Now try clicking on it -- you end up at maps.google.com on a page that contains more ads, this time the kind Google gets paid cash for.
It's a pretty big stretch to call a company logo an "advertisement". If that were the case, then why do TV networks carry ads for other companies? Why don't they just put their own logo everywhere, and advertise themselves only?
Expecting tons of people to click on a Google logo on a website's embedded map is a bit silly.
It's a pretty big stretch to call a company logo an "advertisement". If that were the case, then why do TV networks carry ads for other companies? Why don't they just put their own logo everywhere, and advertise themselves only?
Obviously because there comes a saturation point past which the value of selling the ad space is more than the value of further advertising of one product to the same prospective customers: It's the same reason that GM buys one or two ad slots on each network rather than 100% of the ad slots on a single network.
In addition to that, the context is different. If you're already watching CNN, an ad for CNN isn't very effective: Anybody who sees the ad is already watching CNN; there is little prospect to convert
No, it can't. The source of the money isn't the thing that matters.
I tend to agree, for example if a startup enters a market and offers their product for free because they have enough VC to do so until their competitors drop out of the market that is the same thing, the only difference here is that those funds didn't come from a VC firm, they came from a monopolist. So if google set up a VC firm and did this with Maps as a separate entity would that be illegal just because google has a monopoly on search? And what does this mean for all the Android software they give away
The problem with your analogy is that it's trivial for someone else to make a complete clone of Ubuntu and give that away for free or dirt-cheap, undercutting Ubuntu, thanks to the fact that nearly all the software Ubuntu distributes is free and open-source. In fact, someone is already doing exactly this; it's called "Linux Mint". Lots of people are pissed at Ubuntu because of the Unity fiasco, so they're switching over to Mint, which is almost exactly the same thing (uses Ubuntu repositories even), excep
That's not necessarily true. If a company is generating massive revenues from a dominant product (in this case web search advertising), using that revenue to fund development of a free product in another market can be viewed as an anticompetitive abuse of monopoly position.
In the United States, antitrust laws were established to combat business practices very similar to this. Standard Oil would open an oil shop in a new town, sell their oil for extremely cheap until all the other shops had closed, then raise the price when they were the only player left (this was their business model). While I am not claiming that Google is being as nefarious as Standard Oil, but what they did is effectively the same. The problem is not having too much money, but using that money to give p
In the United States, antitrust laws were established to combat business practices very similar to this. Standard Oil would open an oil shop in a new town, sell their oil for extremely cheap until all the other shops had closed, then raise the price when they were the only player left (this was their business model). While I am not claiming that Google is being as nefarious as Standard Oil, but what they did is effectively the same.
The problem then becomes deciding what google are allowed to charge for their product and how flexible that can be. As well as if you have only one competitor in the market does google have to match that competitor's price no matter what they do or charge more and why can't they charge less? Google has a monopoly in search which funds Android so should they be forced to charge for Android because of the existence of OSes like Symbian, webOS, WP7, etc?
The problem is not having too much money, but using that money to give products away, driving competitors from the market, then charging for it once they are in the dominant position.
The issue with that is in this case they began charging b
The point isn't that Google were giving it away free, which as you say is really the same as any other price. It is that the were selling it a huge loss to corner the market.
False: Linux is not windows, you can give it for free, people wanting windows will have to pay for windows. Linux it's a fair competition, not a free giveaway of the same product.
Also, MSIE was a proprietary product given away for free.
Maps are "Open" content, anyone can enhance a maps utility for viewing a/o navigating... with colors a/o algorithms..., and then copyright or patent the enhancements for profit. You can't say that for Closed Source Software (CSS) like MSIE.
Bonch might be a noob, T-bag plant, or MS-marketeer on/.
More to the point, certainly Linux is not anywhere near making Apple or Microsoft worry but Google is. And every day on Slashdot, it seems, there's another story where Google is behaving in ways we'd expect from the nefarious Microsoft but not from our loving friends at Google.
Even if it were, people could still fork it. At this moment all distributors for Linux do what the Linux people want (broadly) but if they so desire, they could fork it and do whatever they like.
Companies do not get convicted of being a monopoly. They get convicted of abusing the power that comes with it. Don't like what Linux is doing? Fork your own.
I don't see how that's fine-worthy. That's the market working. If the consumers of those products are not smart enough to read between the lines, and recognize that building products on top of free services is a bad idea, then Google deserves the win in my book - they bought into a system where they're beholden to someone, and that someone ought to be able to monetize that situation at some point or another.
If people get fed up with Google, and there is a demand for another service, then one will come along and fight them for it - it's not like Google didn't unseat the original kings of search by simply creating a better product.
One of the principles of a free market is that people have perfect information and act rationally on it. If people lack information then it isn't an example of a free market working properly. So no, taking advantage of people who aren't smart enough to read between the lines is not a good example of the market working. It may be profitable, but it isn't a "free market".
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand.[citation needed] A free-market economy is one within which all markets are unregulated by any parties other than market participants.[citation needed] Free markets contrast sharply with controlled markets or regulated markets, in which governments more actively regulate prices and/or supplies, directly or indirectly.[1] In its purest form, the government plays a neutral role in its administration and legislation of economic activity, neither limiting it (by regulating industries or protecting them from internal/external market pressures) nor actively promoting it (by owning economic interests or offering subsidies to businesses or R&D). A free market is not to be confused with a perfect market where individuals have perfect information and there is perfect competition.
The way the term "free market" is used in the article is just to indicate government has no intervention or at best a neutral position. When people espouse the virtues of a "free market" they're usually talking a market where there is perfect competition. That is, the company with the best product gets the most customers, prices follow the laws of supply and demand, etc. The only way these laws actually work is if it meets several conditions, one of which is perfect information and rational buyers. Otherwise you have failures in the system and you end up with collusion, scams, monopolies, etc. Sure the government isn't involved, but it's a far cry from a properly functioning "free" market. So I think it's safe to say there is no such thing as "free" market without a perfect market.
I disagree, it is pretty obvious that free markets will not be perfect. The issue is whether they function better than regulated markets or not. What gave you the idea that people think free=perfect? Maybe it is a cultural difference, or maybe it is just people say perfect when they mean "most perfect", or "better than the alternatives."
What gave you the idea that people think free=perfect?
Because an imperfect free market is what we saw during the industrial revolution. When most people say they want a free market, they don't have child labor, unsafe working condition, rampant and unfettered pollution in mind. Profit-seeking entities actively try to move away from the equilibrium price predicted by perfect market economics by violating the tenants of a perfect market economy. They collude with each other, price fix, employ unsafe labor practices, pollute the environment, etc. The only reason they can do these things is because of information imbalances.
Here's how the argument usually goes. I say "In a free market unregulated by government, companies create unsafe products. This is why we need the FDA." The free market proponent in turn says "In a free market, a competitor will enter the marketplace that does not create unsafe products, and people will buy that product instead. Thus, through the miracles of the free market, the irresponsible company will go out of business and the economy will regulate itself." But again, this does NOT happen in an imperfect free market because of barriers of entry, imperfect information, geographic conditions, etc.
So I still maintain that when people talk about the "free market" they're talking about this ideal economy that can regulate itself without the need for government intervention. The perfect market exists on this very unstable equilibrium where if any of the assumptions are violated, you slide in the direction of a monopolistic, oligopolistic, monopsonistic, etc. market. It's not always that bad, but in the worst cases you need government intervention and thus no such thing as a "free market" without a perfect market.
Because an imperfect free market is what we saw during the industrial revolution. When most people say they want a free market, they don't have child labor, unsafe working condition, rampant and unfettered pollution in mind. Profit-seeking entities actively try to move away from the equilibrium price predicted by perfect market economics by violating the tenants of a perfect market economy. They collude with each other, price fix, employ unsafe labor practices, pollute the environment, etc. The only reason
I also don't see why you think there was a "free market" during the 1700-1900s, please provide some evidence for this. Maybe we are still using two different definitions.
I don't think there ever has been a market truly free from external regulation. What you call a "free market." The industrial revolution wasn't a free market due to things like the patent office and post office. But it was heavily deregulated, and I think that the effects of are readily apparent. Companies seek to maximize profits. Fair wages, environmental concerns, worker safety etc. work to undermine profits. As a seller, why would I ever put safety rails around my vat of molten iron?
The real argument is whether or not you think an organization would arise to play the same role the FDA does.
It wouldn't regulate, it would inform consumers of what is trusted and what is not trusted and offer expert opinion in court. It would be like the FDA without teeth.
Also, keep in mind I am not talking about anything being perfect. I am comparing a theoretical concept to the way it works today. Does the FDA have perfect information? How common are errors in approving drugs? How many contaminated foodstuffs get through? How many false positives are there? If you have enough money can you get around FDA bans?A
Only communists like free markets. In a perfectly free market, profits are zero. The job of the government is a balancing act. Not enough freedom to eliminate profits, but not enough regulation and laws to stifle the markets either. Pick any large company and ask them if they would like to be in a free market (no regulations; patent, copyright, trademark monopolies, government support against nefarious companies doing things like dumping). Capitalist love government regulation (just only when it works
One of the principles of a free market is that people have perfect information and act rationally on it.
No, it's not. The concept of perfect information is a straw-man anti-free-market theorists use to easily dismiss actual free market theories without the need to actually engage them. On the contrary, contemporaneous free market theorist such as Mises, Hayek and others have written extensively on how one of the main characteristics of the free market is the lack of perfect information (and many times of any information at all) and the fact that people act non-rationally most of the time, then explaining why,
The key is in the free market's lack of centralization, which results in, to use a modern analogy, a strongly optimized neural network in which each node (each individual or, more precisely, each individual at each atomic economic transaction in which he engages) is doing the best it can, input-output-wise, given the constraints under which it operates.
That's the problem - different individuals are operating under different constraints. In particular, there's an interesting economic idea called rational ignorance [wikipedia.org] - basically, at some point the cost of gathering more information in order to make a decision exceeds the expected benefits, so that it's rational to just go ahead and decide without that information. There are three problems. Firstly, this threshold is much lower for individual consumers than for corporations or corporate executives making corpo
That's the problem - different individuals are operating under different constraints.
True enough. But then, that's also why free market advocates defend a state/judicial system which deals only with preserving order by preventing one individual from interfering into another's liberty, so that each one can do whatever they like as long as it isn't damaging to 3rd parties, and with enforcing contracts. Anything else is conducive to all kinds of distortions, including those you mention. For instance, large corporation can become so large to the point of tilting the knowledge factor precisely b
The problem is that the consumer will have no competitor to run to. The provider forces the competition out of the market by subsidizing their new product with profits from an existing product.
I understand that it's possible for a competitor to then come to market, but then Google has enough money to pull a similar strategy: charge less than the competitor needs to charge to stay in business, and raise prices again once the competition dies.
This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would it?
Microsoft was punished for pumping a market with a free product, with its development supported by revenues from a monopoly product, so that they could afford to give it away where competitors could not. If Google offers something for free, kills off its competitors who were charging for their version, and then starts charging when they're the only ones left, then the French court has a point.
Even the headline in the linked article is absurd: "French court protectionism fines Google Maps for succeeding". No, that's not what they were fined for. They were fined for what French competitor Bottin claimed would happen two years ago--Google would offer Maps for free, make their competitors go bankrupt, and then start charging for Maps once they controlled the market. That's precisely what ended up happening!
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Informative)
Still trolling, I see. A few quick notes:
* Google doesn't have a monopoly anywhere, even in search.
* Google Maps is not given away, it sports ads, and the API costs money to access
* You fail to mention Mapquest, or MS maps. Why just sue Google for its maps? Because it is the best one out there?
* Why should Bottin be kept alive? Why not Garmin?
In short, you're wrong on two fundamental counts: that this is anything but protectionism of the most basic nature, and that somehow Google Maps is both special, and not, in the world of online map services.
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Informative)
Still trolling, I see. A few quick notes:
* Google doesn't have a monopoly anywhere, even in search.
Google search most certainly is a monopoly. A legal monopoly does not require 100% market share. Companies have been deemed monopolies with under 50% share and Google is way higher then that - go google it if you don't believe me.
Now, having a monopoly is not illegal, but using your monopoly profits to corner other markets is illegal. This is exactly the same thing that MS was convicted of a decade ago. Google it. When MS was killing Netscape it took the authorities years to act and the trial also took forever to end - Google just hasn't been doing this long enough to end in court yet.
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By what definition? From http://definitions.uslegal.com/m/monopoly/ [uslegal.com]:
Monopoly is a control or advantage obtained by one entity over the commercial market in a specific area. Monopolization is an offense under federal anti trust law. The two elements of monopolization are (1) the power to fix prices and exclude competitors within the relevant market. (2) the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen or historical accident.
I have no idea how Google Search has the ability to either fix prices or exclude competitors through anything but offering a better product. Feel free to provide your argument, but at this point I see no evidence that Google is in a position where it either has a monopoly (control of or advantage in the search market), or that it is using monopoly power to advance that position.
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:4, Interesting)
Why don't you read your definition again? According to that, Google most definitely does have a monopoly in search. They are dominant in that area. And what they're getting slapped for is not for having a monopoly on search, which is quite fine, but by abusing that monopoly to edge themselves into other markets and drive out competition.
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Google is able to provide for their many web services for free from all the advertising revenue that they earn with Google Adwords, DoubleClick and AdMob. They've pretty much cornered the advertising market with their dominate share of the search engine market and web applications. They secured their top spot with their purchases of Sprinks (2003), Applied Semantics (2003), dMarc Broadcasting (2006), YouTube (2006), AdScape(2007), DoubleClick (2007), AdMob (2009), Teracent (2009), Invite Media (2010), and Admeld (2011). This doesn't include all the other purchases of search technology companies, review sites (including Zagats), web applications, voice of IP providers, social media analytic services, and shopping sites.
They are basically buying out potential competitors, potential technology that they can use for their advantage, or high traffic websites that would suddenly use one or more Google advertising subsidiaries.
This is similar to the tactics used by Microsoft in the late 80's early 90's to secure their dominate position.
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They've pretty much cornered the advertising market with their dominate share of the search engine market and web applications.
Actually, that's pretty far from the truth. If you want the leader of online advertising, you want Facebook. There's some discrepancy in how the numbers pan out, but they all agree: Facebook beats Google fairly handily in the online advertising market.
http://www.allfacebook.com/report-facebook-leads-2011-online-display-ad-sales-2011-06 [allfacebook.com]
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/04/facebook-one-third-online-ads/ [techcrunch.com]
You actually missed the more troublesome buy in your list: that of flight data company ITA. Because of the way t
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> Well, you try to create a search service that is not free (= funded by ads) and I think you will quite soon realize what Google has done to the prices of online search. But that really was not my point.
and?
(btw, were you aware that web search was free (= funded by ads) for a decade before google?)
> Google search is a monopoly in the sense that most people use it and the google.com front page.
you clearly don't understand what a monopoly is. Please at least *try* to comprehend the definition. NeutronC
4 1/2 years (Score:2)
btw, were you aware that web search was free (= funded by ads) for a decade before google?
No I wasn't. I was under the impression that WebCrawler, the first publicly accessible full-text World Wide Web search engine, predated Google by only four and a half years.
By your own definition Google is not a monopoly (Score:3)
Your right, it's not all about market share. It's about being able to control the market, and abusing that control.
I certainly have a choice to not use google maps, or google search. I can easily switch from google maps, to yahoo maps, or to mapquest; it takes seconds. Absoluty nothing ties me to google.
This is not true with OSes. If I switch from windows, to linux, I will not be able to run my applications. OS makers have much more potential than search engines, to abuse their monopoly positions.
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Wrong. It's not the maps that's the question here, it's the Google Maps API.
It'll take you far longer than "seconds" to switch your web application to a different mapping API.
This is similar to running your Windows applications on Linux. All you have to do is run them under Wine, and then fix the problems with Wine where it doesn't quite get the API interpretation right for your particular application. That'll only take "seconds", right?
The US Government is a monopoly (Score:2)
Let's see which markets it has cornered:
education, law enforcement, price of money...
Oooh, but Microsoft bundled a browser!
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Having a 100% market share does not give you a monopoly. A monopoly is power to dictate terms. This requires barriers to entry for others, and a lack of suitable alternatives for customers. Given how I can still type www.bing.com in my browser, or how I could easily go out and rent a large datacentre start trawling the web and make a search engine, google doesn't have a monopoly in search.
For monopoly you need control. e.g. Microsoft had a monopoly not because it's system was popular but because you couldn'
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His argument is that's it's illegal to use a monopoly you already have in one market to obtain a monopoly in another market by squeezing out competition. There's nothing circular here.
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The same could have been said with microsoft. There were (and are) other operating systems, web browsers, spreadsheet applications, word processing applications, etc. The courts said at the time microsoft had enough of a lead that by leveraging that lead into other markets that is wrong.
Google is charging when it did not in the past. If google didn't change there would be no issue. The change in behavior is the problem. If you kill the competition with a free product then when you are the only game in town,
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
* Google doesn't have a monopoly anywhere, even in search.
Maybe you should stop being a child and trying to insinuate that the only way someone can have a monopoly is by being the only actor. That's not true, and hasn't been for a long time.
* Google Maps is not given away, it sports ads, and the API costs money to access
It was with respect to the developer API, which is what the case is about. You could use that API for FREE, not free + ads. And now that they are the dominant player in the space, and one could easily say they got there because they were free, they are raising their prices. That is the very definition of anti-competitive.
You fail to mention Mapquest, or MS maps. Why just sue Google for its maps? Because it is the best one out there?
Because they're the ones with the legal monopoly.
Why should Bottin be kept alive? Why not Garmin?
Why should Google Maps get to survive by subsidies from other Google divisions? Why can't they compete on their own?
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Maybe you should stop being a child and trying to insinuate that the only way someone can have a monopoly is by being the only actor. That's not true, and hasn't been for a long time.
And maybe you should get some reading skills. I have the sneaking suspicion I know more about what it takes to be declared a monopoly, and what is actually a crime when it comes monopoly behavior than you. I provided a handy link a bit above in case you are interested.
And now that they are the dominant player in the space, and one could easily say they got there because they were free, they are raising their prices. That is the very definition of anti-competitive.
How does it differ from new companies offering a deal to anyone who tries them? Furthermore, you still haven't demonstrated that Google Maps is the dominant player in the space of online map services, or how Bottin somehow is affected by them.
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Look up "legal monopoly", "monopoly", "natural monopoly", and "monopolistics behavior". There are some subtle differences there
Yeah, like the fact that only one of them is a myth. This article [google.com] explains how natural monopoly arises from city government's monopoly ownership of roads and failure to efficiently price access to utility rights-of-way beneath the roads.
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> Maybe you should stop being a child and trying to insinuate that the only way someone can have a monopoly is by being the only actor.
What do you think "mono" means in the word?
The definition on Wikipedia is:
"A monopoly (from Greek monos (alone or single) + polein (to sell)) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity."
German anti trust laws therefore don't talk about monopolies but about illegal market domination which is assumed to happen above 30% mark
Wasn't Mapquest around way before Google maps? (Score:2)
If so, why wasn't mapquest a monolopy? I think yahoo maps were also around before google maps? Why wasn't yahoo fined?
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>Google doesn't have a monopoly anywhere, even in search.
A 91% share in France isn't a monopoly?
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/03/googles-market-share-in-your-country.html [blogspot.com]
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Apples to Bananas comparison.
Microsoft took technology that already existed and people already used and paid for and gave it away free until the competition died out. (Word/Word Perfect Anti-trust suit ??). With Browser technology they forced Windows VARS to install IE and play by a set of rules that said no competitive products could be installed (initial Anti-trust suit) even if the customer requested it. When busted, they spit in the courts face and forced vendors by forcing vendors to only install
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry but Google Maps was not a new product and neither was internet map services when Google acquired it. Mapquest was around since 1996 and even OpenStreetMap predates it and there were plenty of other services. But hey we gotta keep up the Google defenses!
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Sorry, but you miss the very obvious point I made: What is Google charging for? It's not the Google Map service. It's the APIs so that you can access the Google data without Google services.
Comparing that to what Microsoft did, and does is simply ignorant. Sorry, no other way to put it. Ignorance can always be cured with education though.
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Informative)
It became extremely popular, and is still FREE to use for anyone.
No, it's not. Not for DEVELOPERS, which is the entire point of this suit. The Maps API used to be free. Now that they have a dominant market position, it's not.
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Funny, I have multiple websites that use the Maps API and I've yet to see a bill from Google for usage or the functionality made unavailable. What crack pipe are you smoking?
READ THE FUCKING MANUAL [google.com] noob.
Maybe you should read the manual. See the usage limit column? The pricing starts above that. So, Google provides the API for free, until you start leeching off it. Fair enough. Why should Google subsidise others' businesses?
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you seriously not getting this? Google Maps API was introduced into the market free of charge to everyone. Customers who used to pay companies like Bottin Cartographes for their map service switch to Google Maps since it's free. After stealing marketshare and customers, in October 2011 Google begins charging for its service. How is this not textbook antitrust?
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Are you seriously not getting this? Google Maps API was introduced into the market free of charge to everyone. Customers who used to pay companies like Bottin Cartographes for their map service switch to Google Maps since it's free. After stealing marketshare and customers, in October 2011 Google begins charging for its service. How is this not textbook antitrust?
Stealing market share? Really? Providing an exceptional products and services to gain customers is stealing?"
I guess you are entitled to free health care, the Government owes you a house and a job, and people that work for a living are idiots right?
And we wonder why the US is so F%^&Uked up right now.
Need an analogy? Here ya go. The Church gives away wrapped sandwiches to people every day. Do you have the right to demand that they give you as many Ziplock bags as you want for free? I mean, wh
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Stealing market share? Really? Providing an exceptional products and services to gain customers is stealing?"
No, keeping a product free by using revenues from a different market (in which you are a dominant player) in order to gain customers and destroy competition only to then turn around and start charging for said free product is clearly antitrust. What is not clear about that?
When they start charging for you to use Google Maps, then start complaining. Until then, don't bitch about getting hand outs from them.
Ah, I see why you don't understand. You just came here to spout your ideology based off a perceived slight without even attempting to understand the discussion at hand. Before you run your mouth off, why don't you pay a little bit of atte
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Do you understand what a Monopoly is? I believe that you have something wrong in your concept.
Did Google stop anyone at Mapquest from updating their product to be as good or better than Google's products? No
Did Google stop vendors from using APIs and Hooks from other vendor codes? No
Did Google say "Anything we ever do will be free of charge."? No
Did Google stop any company from using Mapquests products? No
Did Google tell the Internet that no other vendor could put products out there? No
You are ranting ab
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Did Google stop anyone at Mapquest from updating their product to be as good or better than Google's products? No
Yes. Google supplemented their product running at a loss from other products for the sole purpose of taking marketshare. This is fine if they kept it like this but then to suddenly turn and charge for the service they have:
a) abused their market position, and
b) created barriers to entry for competitors (customers now have an expense if they wish to revert back to mapquest)
You may not think this is right. It doesn't matter. The fact is other companies have done the same and have lost lengthy court battles ov
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Do you understand what a Monopoly is? I believe that you have something wrong in your concept.
I didn't say anything about a monopoly. Nowhere did I mention anything about a monopoly. Don't put words in my mouth. You don't have to be a monopoly to exhibit anticompetitive behavior.
Did Google stop anyone at Mapquest from updating their product to be as good or better than Google's products? No Did Google stop vendors from using APIs and Hooks from other vendor codes? No Did Google say "Anything we ever do will be free of charge."? No Did Google stop any company from using Mapquests products? No Did Google tell the Internet that no other vendor could put products out there? No
This isn't about a better product. This is about taking a product that it would costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce, giving it away for free to destroy your competition, then turning around and charging for it once the competition is gone. It's caled dumping and it's one example of an anticompetitive practice [wikipedia.org].
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Microsoft was punished for pumping a market with a free product, with its development supported by revenues from a monopoly product, so that they could afford to give it away where competitors could not.
Wrong. Microsoft was convicted of tying [wikipedia.org] (among other things). Bundling two products in the same shrinkwrap is tying. Offering two services on two separate websites is not tying.
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Even the headline in the linked article is absurd: "French court protectionism fines Google Maps for succeeding". No, that's not what they were fined for. They were fined for what French competitor Bottin claimed would happen two years ago--Google would offer Maps for free, make their competitors go bankrupt, and then start charging for Maps once they controlled the market. That's precisely what ended up happening!
So instead of France doing something back then, when the competitors could have made money, they waited until those competitors went bankrupt and levied a fine for their *own* profit?
I like their business strategy.
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Microsoft was punished for pumping a market with a free product, with its development supported by revenues from a monopoly product, so that they could afford to give it away where competitors could not.
Can we at least try to have a less tenuous relationship with facts? Microsoft wasn't charged with dumping (which is what you're accusing Google of), they were charged with tying, which means refusing to allow someone who wants to buy Windows to get it without Internet Explorer (ostensibly discounted for the value of Internet Explorer). They're totally different things.
Incidentally, the reason Microsoft wasn't charged with dumping -- and the reason that isn't what Google is doing now -- is that software and
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Bogus. Google's big competition in the States is ESRI, with their ArcGIS products. ESRI also has a free version that provides users limited functionality, and they also have a version that users pay a boat load of money for... for a LOT more functionality.
As another user pointed out, Google is not alone in this space. If Bottin has a better product, they will be able to make money with it. If all they have is a bare bones, basic map service, they are going to have a hard time to convince me.
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I should say that ESRI is Google's big competitor in the MAPS field. Don't do much in Google's other areas.
Map Quest (Score:2)
Pretty sure Map Quest predates Google... I recall using their "free" service years ago.
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Linux unfair competition for Windows because it's given away for free?
There's no danger that everyone using Linux will have to pay Linus Torvalds to keep using it after it gains market ascendancy.
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Funny)
There's no danger of Linux gaining market ascendancy.
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There's no danger of Linux gaining market ascendancy.
Except in the mobile market.
Microsoft holds patents covering Android (Score:3)
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Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Funny)
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Yep, that's exactly the difference there. The code is out there and freely available, and it can't be taken away. The main kernel devs could, in theory, band together and start a new company, and only release new versions under a proprietary license, but that'd be pretty infeasible since there's literally thousands of contributors and many of them can't be contacted (it's part of why the kernel can't be changed to GPLv3; they have to get permission from all contributors; good luck with that). But even if
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slightly off topic:
there's literally thousands of contributors and many of them can't be contacted (it's part of why the kernel can't be changed to GPLv3;
this bothers me, not that i think the linux kernel should move to gplv3 today but who knows what the copyright regime will be in a few decades.
i don't realistically expect mickey mouse to suffer any great reverses and instead i think it has to be assumed (without giving up the good fight) that things will only get worse. in fact i'd expect to see proposed
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The other thing they could do is just not bother to ask, if the situation becomes such that it'd really be that advantageous to switch. All they have to do is put out a big public announcement announcing their intentions, saying "contact us if you have a problem with your contribution's license being changed". Then, deal with the ones who disagree, and for the rest, forget them. If they pop up later, then deal with them, but otherwise if they never complain then there's nothing to worry about. After all
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You really
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You're confusing crimes and torts, a common mistake.
Go back and re-read what I wrote: I said they should make a public notice of their intentions, and give all contributors plenty of time to respond, rather than trying to contact each one directly. If some of them aren't paying attention, then too bad; a year of notices in the Linux press isn't enough? If after that time, they have a problem, then they can try to resolve it then, but I suspect very, very few contributors would be complaining after a year
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It doesn't matter that what you proposed is a reasonable-sounding way to deal with the issue. It's against the law.
This is the thing holding up a lot of really interesting things, like Google Books. Hell, even the big multinationals can't do t
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What are you talking about? The Linux kernel is already being redistributed, apparently with their permission, because they agreed to the GPLv2 license when they contributed. The only difference is we're proposing changing the license to another one that also allows redistribution, so there's no change there, just some slightly different terms, mainly about patents.
Also, I don't see what's so bad about saying, "well, we tried to contact you all, but your email addresses were invalid and you never said any
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
Is Linux unfair competition for Windows because it's given away for free? It's a stupid argument. If a group wants to give something away for free, let them. You can compete with free.
That's not necessarily true. If a company is generating massive revenues from a dominant product (in this case web search advertising), using that revenue to fund development of a free product in another market can be viewed as an anticompetitive abuse of monopoly position. Competitors who don't have a source of monopoly revenues have to offset their costs by charging for their product. To make your comparison more accurate, imagine if Ubuntu supplanted Windows as the dominant desktop OS by giving away a free product, and then once all competitors were completely marginalized, began charging for Ubuntu Linux. People would have little choice but to pay because it would be the dominant OS that everything ran on.
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Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company is generating massive revenues from a dominant product (in this case web search advertising), using that revenue to fund development of a free product in another market can be viewed as an anticompetitive abuse of monopoly position.
No, it can't. The source of the money isn't the thing that matters. If Warren Buffet is preposterously wealth, but has no dominant market position in anything (just a lot of money), and he decides he wants to start giving away eyeglasses for free (i.e. below cost) until all competing eyeglass makers go out of business so that he can subsequently monopolize the market, he's going to be in trouble. It has nothing to do with the source of the money used to sell things below cost.
By contrast, Google, who wasn't selling below cost (because free + ads is profitable and therefore not below cost), wasn't doing anything wrong. They were doing exactly what competitors in a free market are supposed to do: Providing a competitive product for a low price while still making a profit. The fact that some of their competitors couldn't hack it in a market with aggressive competition is not the fault of the company offering the best product for the lowest price.
This is made blatantly obvious by the fact that they raised their prices before they had anything close to a monopoly in the market in question. They still compete with Microsoft, OSM and others. If customers don't want to use Google Maps or decide that the higher rates are too high, they still have multiple alternatives.
France is just butthurt that the French competitors were among those who couldn't compete.
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
That's horseshit and you know it. Google was the dominant player in that space, period. To deny it is to stick your head in the sand and go "LALALALALALALALALA".
And yes, Google was giving away use of Google Maps FOR FREE. Not Free+Ads, but FREE. If you were a developer, you were allowed to use the Maps API for free. And now that they have achieved a dominant market position, mainly because their API was free, they are charging for its use. That is the very definition of anticompetitive: Artificially lower your rates through subsidies from your other departments, then once you've achieved dominance, raise your rates.
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Google was the dominant player in that space, period.
Because they're offering the best product for the lowest price while still making a profit, right? You do know that it's not illegal to a have a large market share as a result of all your competition sucking.
And yes, Google was giving away use of Google Maps FOR FREE. Not Free+Ads, but FREE. If you were a developer, you were allowed to use the Maps API for free.
If you go to maps.google.com, you see ads. If you click on the "Google" logo in the corner of a map on a site that uses the Google Maps API, it takes you to maps.google.com, where you see ads.
On top of that, the antitrust problem comes when someone sells below cost. Google's cost for providing an additi
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:4, Informative)
I'm don't know the specifics of French competition law, but if it's harmonised with EU competition law (like the UK is) then the point of law under which Google will have been caught out is on *abuse* of a dominant position. It's absolutely correct to say that having a large market share isn't illegal in its own right, but your behaviour once you're in a dominant position (for whatever reason) can be. Yes, this does mean that (for example) the same behaviour that you've been doing for years is perfectly legal one day and then anti-competitive the next through no fault of your own.
Using profits gained in one market to force out competition in another definitely is illegal under EU competition law (which, as said above, I'm applying by analogy, which may be incorrect). Using it to enter a market is fine - more undertakings in a given market should ultimately be pro-competitive, to the benefit of consumers - but continuing to cross-subsidise to force out competitors can very much be illegal.
It should also be noted that the test(s) used for establishing predatory pricing isn't set in stone as "below cost", but crudely speaking being very close to that point will create the rebuttable presumption of abuse of dominance.
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IIRC Google is only charging for the API for massive for profit use.
First 25,000 loads a day are free after that I do not remember the price but I remember thinking it was fairly cheap.
Good product and free to cheap on price.
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-CF
What about Mapquest, and others? (Score:4, Insightful)
Other free map services were around for years before google maps. Why weren't they monopolies?
Google may be dominate, but that does tie anybody to google. I can easily switch to another free map service.
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Anyone who builds a company or a product that is critically dependent on another company providing data FREELY out of the goodness of their hearts who doesn't expect that the day may come when they pay for that data is an idiot. No different than if I had a plot of land on a street and wasn't doing anything with it and allowed the local farmers to set up stands there on the weekend to sell fruit and veg. Over time the wear and tear on the land might require me to have some maintenance done so when that co
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I don't disagree that the price isn't excessive, but that is not what this is about. Google used outside revenue (from search) to build a product and give it away for free. They even leveraged their search monopoly to make it more popular. The effect of this was to drive other map companies out of business. Once they obtained a dominant position with maps, they began charging for them. This looks to me like a clear example of anti-competitive behavior. Google is allowed to enter new markets, allowed t
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
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I should have included this in my post: Not only can I now see my own house in .5M resolution, but to a greater or lesser scale Google has given me a view of the entire fucking planet. I can see Red Square. I can see the Sahale. If I want, I can explore overhead views of North Korea, Iraq or Madagascar.
None of this was ever, or would ever have been, possible before. When I was in school these places were abstract theoretical things and if the map geeks had their way they would be still. Now I can see
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By contrast, Google, who wasn't selling below cost (because free + ads is profitable and therefore not below cost), wasn't doing anything wrong.
What ads? This is about the mapping enterprise API. Did you even read TFS?
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Informative)
What the hell are you talking about? What ads? There's no ads in Google maps that I'm aware of. I use Google Maps' API on my own little website on one page plus "geoxml" to show some data; there certainly aren't any ads shown. I'm only required to show the copyright notices at the bottom of the map, saying who has the copyright for the map data or images.
Google does use ads for their search engine product, and their Gmail product, but those are separate products and irrelevant to the maps API.
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There's no ads in Google maps that I'm aware of.
Have you ever noticed the Google logo in the corner? That's them getting their name in front of your customers (an advertisement), which is worth more to them than the near-zero it costs to actually serve the maps. Now try clicking on it -- you end up at maps.google.com on a page that contains more ads, this time the kind Google gets paid cash for.
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a pretty big stretch to call a company logo an "advertisement". If that were the case, then why do TV networks carry ads for other companies? Why don't they just put their own logo everywhere, and advertise themselves only?
Expecting tons of people to click on a Google logo on a website's embedded map is a bit silly.
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It's a pretty big stretch to call a company logo an "advertisement". If that were the case, then why do TV networks carry ads for other companies? Why don't they just put their own logo everywhere, and advertise themselves only?
Obviously because there comes a saturation point past which the value of selling the ad space is more than the value of further advertising of one product to the same prospective customers: It's the same reason that GM buys one or two ad slots on each network rather than 100% of the ad slots on a single network.
In addition to that, the context is different. If you're already watching CNN, an ad for CNN isn't very effective: Anybody who sees the ad is already watching CNN; there is little prospect to convert
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No, it can't. The source of the money isn't the thing that matters.
I tend to agree, for example if a startup enters a market and offers their product for free because they have enough VC to do so until their competitors drop out of the market that is the same thing, the only difference here is that those funds didn't come from a VC firm, they came from a monopolist. So if google set up a VC firm and did this with Maps as a separate entity would that be illegal just because google has a monopoly on search? And what does this mean for all the Android software they give away
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Can't even count the number of young, promising startups Google has bought and subsequently buried.
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The problem with your analogy is that it's trivial for someone else to make a complete clone of Ubuntu and give that away for free or dirt-cheap, undercutting Ubuntu, thanks to the fact that nearly all the software Ubuntu distributes is free and open-source. In fact, someone is already doing exactly this; it's called "Linux Mint". Lots of people are pissed at Ubuntu because of the Unity fiasco, so they're switching over to Mint, which is almost exactly the same thing (uses Ubuntu repositories even), excep
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That's not necessarily true. If a company is generating massive revenues from a dominant product (in this case web search advertising), using that revenue to fund development of a free product in another market can be viewed as an anticompetitive abuse of monopoly position.
What does that say for Android then?
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In the United States, antitrust laws were established to combat business practices very similar to this. Standard Oil would open an oil shop in a new town, sell their oil for extremely cheap until all the other shops had closed, then raise the price when they were the only player left (this was their business model). While I am not claiming that Google is being as nefarious as Standard Oil, but what they did is effectively the same. The problem is not having too much money, but using that money to give p
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In the United States, antitrust laws were established to combat business practices very similar to this. Standard Oil would open an oil shop in a new town, sell their oil for extremely cheap until all the other shops had closed, then raise the price when they were the only player left (this was their business model). While I am not claiming that Google is being as nefarious as Standard Oil, but what they did is effectively the same.
The problem then becomes deciding what google are allowed to charge for their product and how flexible that can be. As well as if you have only one competitor in the market does google have to match that competitor's price no matter what they do or charge more and why can't they charge less? Google has a monopoly in search which funds Android so should they be forced to charge for Android because of the existence of OSes like Symbian, webOS, WP7, etc?
The problem is not having too much money, but using that money to give products away, driving competitors from the market, then charging for it once they are in the dominant position.
The issue with that is in this case they began charging b
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The point isn't that Google were giving it away free, which as you say is really the same as any other price. It is that the were selling it a huge loss to corner the market.
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False: Linux is not windows, you can give it for free, people wanting windows will have to pay for windows. Linux it's a fair competition, not a free giveaway of the same product.
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Yes, if Linux was a monopoly [wikipedia.org] and it didn't follow the rules [wikipedia.org].
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I agree.
Also, MSIE was a proprietary product given away for free.
Maps are "Open" content, anyone can enhance a maps utility for viewing a/o navigating ... with colors a/o algorithms ..., and then copyright or patent the enhancements for profit. You can't say that for Closed Source Software (CSS) like MSIE.
Bonch might be a noob, T-bag plant, or MS-marketeer on /.
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, certainly Linux is not anywhere near making Apple or Microsoft worry but Google is. And every day on Slashdot, it seems, there's another story where Google is behaving in ways we'd expect from the nefarious Microsoft but not from our loving friends at Google.
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Even if it were, people could still fork it. At this moment all distributors for Linux do what the Linux people want (broadly) but if they so desire, they could fork it and do whatever they like.
Companies do not get convicted of being a monopoly. They get convicted of abusing the power that comes with it. Don't like what Linux is doing? Fork your own.
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see how that's fine-worthy. That's the market working. If the consumers of those products are not smart enough to read between the lines, and recognize that building products on top of free services is a bad idea, then Google deserves the win in my book - they bought into a system where they're beholden to someone, and that someone ought to be able to monetize that situation at some point or another.
If people get fed up with Google, and there is a demand for another service, then one will come along and fight them for it - it's not like Google didn't unseat the original kings of search by simply creating a better product.
One of the principles of a free market is that people have perfect information and act rationally on it. If people lack information then it isn't an example of a free market working properly. So no, taking advantage of people who aren't smart enough to read between the lines is not a good example of the market working. It may be profitable, but it isn't a "free market".
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Informative)
You are confused.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market [wikipedia.org]
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
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I disagree, it is pretty obvious that free markets will not be perfect. The issue is whether they function better than regulated markets or not. What gave you the idea that people think free=perfect? Maybe it is a cultural difference, or maybe it is just people say perfect when they mean "most perfect", or "better than the alternatives."
Re:This was predicted to happen two years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
What gave you the idea that people think free=perfect?
Because an imperfect free market is what we saw during the industrial revolution. When most people say they want a free market, they don't have child labor, unsafe working condition, rampant and unfettered pollution in mind. Profit-seeking entities actively try to move away from the equilibrium price predicted by perfect market economics by violating the tenants of a perfect market economy. They collude with each other, price fix, employ unsafe labor practices, pollute the environment, etc. The only reason they can do these things is because of information imbalances.
Here's how the argument usually goes. I say "In a free market unregulated by government, companies create unsafe products. This is why we need the FDA." The free market proponent in turn says "In a free market, a competitor will enter the marketplace that does not create unsafe products, and people will buy that product instead. Thus, through the miracles of the free market, the irresponsible company will go out of business and the economy will regulate itself." But again, this does NOT happen in an imperfect free market because of barriers of entry, imperfect information, geographic conditions, etc.
So I still maintain that when people talk about the "free market" they're talking about this ideal economy that can regulate itself without the need for government intervention. The perfect market exists on this very unstable equilibrium where if any of the assumptions are violated, you slide in the direction of a monopolistic, oligopolistic, monopsonistic, etc. market. It's not always that bad, but in the worst cases you need government intervention and thus no such thing as a "free market" without a perfect market.
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I also don't see why you think there was a "free market" during the 1700-1900s, please provide some evidence for this. Maybe we are still using two different definitions.
I don't think there ever has been a market truly free from external regulation. What you call a "free market." The industrial revolution wasn't a free market due to things like the patent office and post office. But it was heavily deregulated, and I think that the effects of are readily apparent. Companies seek to maximize profits. Fair wages, environmental concerns, worker safety etc. work to undermine profits. As a seller, why would I ever put safety rails around my vat of molten iron?
The real argument is whether or not you think an organization would arise to play the same role the FDA does.
I'm assuming you sub
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It wouldn't regulate, it would inform consumers of what is trusted and what is not trusted and offer expert opinion in court. It would be like the FDA without teeth.
Also, keep in mind I am not talking about anything being perfect. I am comparing a theoretical concept to the way it works today. Does the FDA have perfect information? How common are errors in approving drugs? How many contaminated foodstuffs get through? How many false positives are there? If you have enough money can you get around FDA bans?A
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Only communists like free markets. In a perfectly free market, profits are zero. The job of the government is a balancing act. Not enough freedom to eliminate profits, but not enough regulation and laws to stifle the markets either. Pick any large company and ask them if they would like to be in a free market (no regulations; patent, copyright, trademark monopolies, government support against nefarious companies doing things like dumping). Capitalist love government regulation (just only when it works
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One of the principles of a free market is that people have perfect information and act rationally on it.
No, it's not. The concept of perfect information is a straw-man anti-free-market theorists use to easily dismiss actual free market theories without the need to actually engage them. On the contrary, contemporaneous free market theorist such as Mises, Hayek and others have written extensively on how one of the main characteristics of the free market is the lack of perfect information (and many times of any information at all) and the fact that people act non-rationally most of the time, then explaining why,
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The key is in the free market's lack of centralization, which results in, to use a modern analogy, a strongly optimized neural network in which each node (each individual or, more precisely, each individual at each atomic economic transaction in which he engages) is doing the best it can, input-output-wise, given the constraints under which it operates.
That's the problem - different individuals are operating under different constraints. In particular, there's an interesting economic idea called rational ignorance [wikipedia.org] - basically, at some point the cost of gathering more information in order to make a decision exceeds the expected benefits, so that it's rational to just go ahead and decide without that information. There are three problems. Firstly, this threshold is much lower for individual consumers than for corporations or corporate executives making corpo
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That's the problem - different individuals are operating under different constraints.
True enough. But then, that's also why free market advocates defend a state/judicial system which deals only with preserving order by preventing one individual from interfering into another's liberty, so that each one can do whatever they like as long as it isn't damaging to 3rd parties, and with enforcing contracts. Anything else is conducive to all kinds of distortions, including those you mention. For instance, large corporation can become so large to the point of tilting the knowledge factor precisely b
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The problem is that the consumer will have no competitor to run to. The provider forces the competition out of the market by subsidizing their new product with profits from an existing product.
I understand that it's possible for a competitor to then come to market, but then Google has enough money to pull a similar strategy: charge less than the competitor needs to charge to stay in business, and raise prices again once the competition dies.
MS case is entirely different than Google's case (Score:2)
I think you know that. But you are clearly an MS shill, so I won't try to argue with you.
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but apparently standards change when it's a Linux-based company
Or, and I know this is a crazy suggestion, maybe Slashdot actually has more than one user!