French Court Calls Free Google Maps Unfair Competition 238
jfruh writes "A French court has ruled that Google is unfairly subsidizing its free mapping products, making for unfair competition with paid services. This might seem ridiculous, but keep in mind that Google started charging for use of its mapping API once the free version had come to dominate the market."
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.
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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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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> 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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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.
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)
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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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
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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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.
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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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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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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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].
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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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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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!
Airbus (Score:2, Insightful)
Just sayin. France is being hypocritical.
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Not so much hypocritical, as keenly protective of its local industries. France is big on the concept of national industrial champions, and will protect them at great cost to the treasury. This is par for the coruse.
Re:Airbus (Score:5, Funny)
Airbuses are free? I'll take two
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They're free alright, but have you seen how much the shipment costs? ~
Loss Leader (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they going to make all loss leaders illegal? Seems to me it works the same for everyone, regardless of the industry.
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No it wont make loss leaders illegal. This is just typical punishment against anti-competitive tactics of using a near monopoly in one segment to finance pushing your competitors out of another segment. You know like what Microsoft was punished for with IE?
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-GiH
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And Microsoft used IE to drive traffic to msn.com (default home page), which also showed ads, thereby making money... right?
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That certainly would be nice, wouldn't it?
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Loss leaders are not illegal. Using a loss leader to drive out competition, and then once you have a dominant marketshare, raising the price of that loss leader is.
Re:Loss Leader (Score:4, Insightful)
A loss-leader is where the long term strategy is to have one product/service always being sold at a loss (or anyway "not enough" profit), in order to attract custom to a profitable product. An example for a manufacturer is razors (money's in the blades), an example of an outlet is milk (money is in the other stuff the customer picks up).
The argument is more that Google is using penetrative pricing. This is where you have a short term strategy to introduce a product/service at a loss in order to gain a foothold in the market, whereupon you can raise the pricing to competitive levels.
Penetrative pricing pricing becomes uncompetitive when the objective isn't to gain just a foothold, but to dominate the market. Regular penetrative pricing increases competition in the market over the long term while monopoly abuse decreases it. One indicator, not definitive, that the line has been crossed is when the amount of losses being racked up is so disproportionate that monopoly rents would be required to obtain a reasonable return on all that financing.
This is also why the charge tends to apply to existing companies moving into a new market and not a new up-start. If an up-start can obtain that kind of financing then the incumbents and other up-starts should be able to find it too - it's all just an action of a free and competitive market. Google on the other hand can throw so much resource at something that economic principles of "free" or "competitive" market forces do not apply.
When was the api free? (Score:3)
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-CF
Is network TV, or Radio, free? (Score:4, Insightful)
If something is supported by advertisements, is it "free?"
True depending how you consider the whole issue (Score:5, Informative)
As somebody working on the remote sensing/mapping/gis field for 10+ years. I tend to agree.
It's a long debate, but clearly the new concept of "paid api" it's confusing.
I perceived gmaps as a free tool in the beginning, but now, as they charge, it's no longer a tool, but a competitor.
Many hi definition data available "freely" on google maps/google earth, it's the result of a private customer paying for that data, and the by some weird agreement between the companies that run the satellites and google, the information ended up "FREE" on google maps.
A real life story:
I paid 250+K for 1 meter imagery (ikonos) for a project that was covered in google maps using old 30m imagery (90's landsat). Months later google has the 1m coverage i ordered and paid for, available for FREE to anyone else.
So i'm not only competing against google, but against people who no longer needs to order a quality work, since now it's there FREE.
Duh! That's certainly UNFAIR.
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Annnd... why haven't you sued?
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I found myself a more specialized line of work, some line of work google won't move into. High precision mapping won't be the case for google maps in the next 10 years. Unless my work starts appearing for free on google maps.... get my point?
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So
Is everything you wish were different unfair? (Score:3, Insightful)
Duh! That's certainly UNFAIR.
If you meant that a huge publicly traded company under enormous scrutiny somehow directly or through arrangements with other people violeted contracts to which you were a party, then, sure. But you don't seem to be saying that. You seem to be saying that the marketplace has changed, and that you wish it hadn't.
Re: (Score:2)
The marketplace haven't really changed, it's the same marketplace but now there's a new player offering things for free for some years, wiping out some competitors or pushing them away from the marketplace. And now....when their product it's a heavyweight champion...well...now they start to charge. That's unfair.
The fairness of including someone else's information in their product it's another story.
I'm a big supporter of the idea that information and knowledge should be free. But if that "freedom" has a pr
Re: (Score:2)
So i'm not only competing against google, but against people who no longer needs to order a quality work, since now it's there FREE.
- good.
Duh! That's certainly UNFAIR.
- nonsense. It's completely fair and it's good, and it's progress and it's what free market is about, and government meddling with it is evil and bad for the economy and the free market.
Re: (Score:2)
Duh! That's certainly UNFAIR.
... and the great logic fail is that "Unfair" should also be "Illegal"? What about when you buy a new TV on a Wednesday and miss out on the Black Friday deal? Was that fair to you? Shouldn't one assume that prices change, volume matters, etc? This is a perfect example of a "free", but not "perfect" market. Taking your specific case, you can no longer differentiate yourself via access to special data (say, airline routing and pricing data?), but rather have to supply an additional service. Welcome to the rea
OpenStreetMap (Score:5, Informative)
If you want a really free map source, try openstreetmap.org & some of the apps which use their maps. Still a work in progress, but much improved over even a year ago. If every geek on /. cleaned up their neighborhood map it would be better than the paid maps - I've certainly added features like weird one way streets and things around me which don't show up on commercial maps.
Re: (Score:3)
Same maps that were altered/changed/wasted by google's IP range "contributors"?
Google Maps is not a product, it is bait. (Score:2)
I'm not seeing the issue (Score:2)
... keep in mind that Google started charging for use of its mapping API once the free version had come to dominate the market.
I'm not really seeing the problem here.
Easy fix... (Score:2)
Is CBS unfairly subsidizing their shows? (Score:2)
After all, they're undercutting pay-to-view outlets like HBO, Cinemax, etc.
This seems to me the real analogy. The traditional broadcast networks get their revenue from advertising, like Google, and their product available to the end-user free-of-charge. HBO gets its revenue from the end-user directly.
I don't think anyone would make the argument CBS is unfairly subsidizing their product and I don't think Google is either even if the temporary market condition is such that Google is most popular.
replace "but" with "because" (Score:2)
>This might seem ridiculous, but keep in mind
replace "but" with "because"
Maporama (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot smears google practically every day (Score:2)
Seriously, search for yourself. Many of the google smears, that slashdot loves so much, come from extremely dubioius sources (anti-google bloggers); but slashdot publishes them anyway, as if they were real news.
Sorry if slashdot does not smear google enough for you, but really I think enough is enough.
Re:Slashdot is dead (Score:4, Informative)
Where I to still have mod points I'd try to get rid of the troll score. You make some valid points. I do wish folks would stop with the "I know I'll be modded down" statements though, it is self serving. Modded up or down, speak your peace and don't tell the world what it may do.
I've been with /. since the mid 90's (skulker at first, joined later) and I do see a trend of less open discourse, more childish rantings, and news that does seem skewed. With that said, it still has good comments I can learn from, it still tends to have more thoughtful comments then other places, and generally the mod system works (see point above).
As to the topic on hand, I agree fully that Google's actions are not in line with their original foundation. This is what happens in the life cycle of business. A great book I read years ago was Titled "From barbarian to Bureaucracy", which talked about the process of business from innovation to fossilized monolith. Once Finance becomes the controlling interest of a company the origins are swept away.
What's started to concern me is that within the tech realm, three companies have reached a point where they are the controlling factor for information access and dissemination. Google, Twitter, and Facebook. While they may be minor offshoots, these three control a massive majority of personal data, communication, and information. We now see Google and Twitter complying with countries to limit access to information. Was there a point they might have said "go suck it"? Now its about money and since governments are all about money, control, and power, can we trust one company to search, to twit, or to organize?
The argument may be that the market will adjust. If Google gets to evil, if it gets to chummy with governments people will go to another search engine or map function....yet where are they? The one attempt to Open Source Facebook is a failure due to social inertia and I would suspect that Google's recent now you pay approach is based on the basic fact that they hit market saturation. So let me go one step further and consider that the World Wide Web (www) is no longer what was originally imagined, but has become a tool for manipulation of societies by government and corporate interests and not the other way around. Innovation, that which created Google, Facebook, and twitter is either dead or dying. Smothered by patent law, IP overkill, and simple greed.
Well, have a good day.
Re: (Score:2)
bonch is mad that his submissions were not accepted.
The fact that ACs are posting those same submissions in stories with a bonch first post are, of course, entirely coincidental.