
EU Formally Accuses Google of Antitrust Violations - simas
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/eu-google/
======
BinaryIdiot
Now this is interesting

> At issue is whether the company uses its position as the dominant search
> engine company to muscle out competition from specialized search services,
> specifically comparison shopping sites, by prioritizing its own Google
> Shopping search results.

Google Shopping results suck but when I search for products almost always is
an Amazon, Walmart, Target and others linked at the top of the results
sometimes higher than the actual company that produces the product. As far as
I can tell you can only get their shopping search results by clicking on
"Shopping" (at least I can't seem to trigger it without that).

I don't understand the issue here. foundem is behind the initial lawsuit and
kinda kicked off this whole thing but they're a search engine. If I owned a
search company I certainly wouldn't want to be federating queries and indexing
them doesn't make sense; why would I index an index when I can just index the
source?

Am I missing something here?

> The European Commission also confirmed that it is opening an investigation
> into Android as well. Although the operating system is open source, meaning
> that any manufacturer can install it on the phones and tablets they sell,
> many core applications, including the Google Play store, are proprietary.
> Manufacturers must enter into special agreements with Google to include
> these proprietary apps. The investigation will attempt to determine whether
> Google is using its position to discourage the inclusion of rival
> applications on Android-based phones.

I don't understand this one as well. These applications require the use of
Google's infrastructure so if you want to use them why shouldn't you agree to
handle them as they want? Besides I think Barnes and Noble's nook and Amazon's
Fire platforms show this is a non issue.

~~~
rhino369
The issue is that Google by being the default search engine could slowly
subsume all the profitable markets that run on the internet.

Once they kill off potential competitors then there is no reason to be
competitive on price or quality.

Think of it as sort of a net neutrality for the search engine. People here are
totally okay with telling Comcast they can't leverage their ISP near-monopoly
to win the video streaming market.

Why should we allow Google to leverage their search monopoly into capturing
other internet markets.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Except they're not. The default search engine for Firefox is Yahoo, for IE
it's Bing. It's just for Chrome and maybe Safari. They are in no way stopping
or even hindering you from using other search engines. Your example of
Comcast, however? They actually got several local governments to sign
contracts saying no one else could run copper to your home. HUGE difference.

~~~
rhino369
It's been illegal to get an exclusive cable franchise since the early 1990s.

Google probably has more marketshare than Comcast does (even if you only
include areas where Comcast operates).

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> It's been illegal to get an exclusive cable franchise since the early 1990s.

You're conflating issues here. A cable franchise is using the cable in the
ground to deliver television and the fees are paid to the local government
yearly. These are regulated differently than internet access AND installing
new utilities into communities.

> Google probably has more marketshare than Comcast does (even if you only
> include areas where Comcast operates).

Marketshare isn't comparable here. You're trying to compare an (arguable)
utility versus an online service. The entire analogy if flawed; stop trying to
force it.

~~~
rhino369
The initial franchise agreement will cover the costs and fees associated with
the initial installation of getting the wires in the ground. It's illegal for
municipalities to grant any sort of exclusive telecommunication franchise.

I'm not sure what your point is, but nowhere[1] in America is Comcast legally
protected from competition. You can build a new cable network, a new fiber
network, or even wireless.

[1]maybe some super old franchise agreement that has been in tact since 1992
still exists but I doubt it. They are usually about 10 years.

>Marketshare isn't comparable here. You're trying to compare an (arguable)
utility versus an online service. The entire analogy if flawed; stop trying to
force it.

I don't see why categorizing the company as a utility really has anything to
do with it. If you want to get technical, ISPs haven't been treated as
utilities (and despite what journalists say that really isn't what Title II is
about).

I don't see why providing internet access and internet search results are so
wildly different that a comparison can't be made.

------
soxpopuli
What is a Search Engine? Is this some kind of legally regulated category that
says you a) must only return Web results and b) in the form of 10 blue links?

Should a search which a search engine knows the direct answer to (word
definitions, the current weather or time, etc) send you to another site for
the answer. Why are "search engines" prohibited from direct answers, but voice
agents like Siri allowed? Is there something fundamentally different between a
text box and a voice input?

Likewise, if a search engine has indexed data and can return deep links to
other sites formatted differently, why is that different? For example, if you
search for "Playstation 4" and Google simply returned the first 10 hits
(Amazon.com, eBay, Walmart, etc) as a page of 10 blue links like it did in
2006, instead of formatting them in a nice box at the top of the screen with
summary price extracted, would this still be illegal? Why is it legal to
display organic search results as blue links, but if you display them in a box
and call it "Product Search", it's suddenly illegal? This makes no sense to
me. The only difference between the Google Product Search box at the top, and
displaying the links is simply better visual presentation.

The world has moved on from ten blue links. Mobile devices have even more
constrained real estate and network latency pushing the need for summarization
and smart presentation even further. A new class of consumer expects these
devices to almost act like intelligent agents when answering queries.

Is the European Commission saying it will be illegal to build JARVIS or the
Star Trek computer, because a smarter search that doesn't delegate to other
niche search engines, and instead returns direct answers, is unfair
competition?

At the heart of this seems to be the idea that Google search should return
links to other shopping comparison engines instead of direct links to Amazon,
et al. That frankly seems like a good way to hurt customer experience. If you
have a good product comparison engine these days, you're probably going to end
up as a native app anyway.

By the time this EU case winds down (Microsoft's took a decade), the
traditional web search engine might not even exist anymore.

~~~
pjc50
There is the rather delicate issue of copyright here. If you google for
something and the answer is on another page, lifting it from that page is (a)
making a copy and (b) potentially depriving the linked page of revenue.

There is also the question of using the threat to ban people from your search
results (which is calamitous for most businesses) to resolve your disputes
with them.

~~~
soxpopuli
But the linked page is there. Google is indexing Amazon, extracting the photo,
description, and price of the product, displaying it in a box, and making it a
link back to Amazon where it got the data from, what's the problem?

Product Search is just another form of summarization/snippeting that just
presents the data in more digestable format.

Remember Google Fusion Tables? That was an attempt to extract facts from pages
and put them into tables, so if you ask "What's the masses of the planets of
the solar system", you could get a table of 8 planets and masses, with the
results coming from 8 different sites. But the links could still be there to
the original site, it's just formatted as a table instead of as 8 blue links
with summary paragraphs, which is harder for humans to process.

Where do we draw the line? You've seen how Google has a new system that can
automatically caption images with deep neural networks.
([http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/18/new-google-research-
project...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/18/new-google-research-project-can-
auto-caption-complex-images/))

Now what if this same system eventually allows the search engine to summarize
your web page by 'reading it', and then auto-generating a paragraph that
explains what it thought it was about?

There'd be no actual direct copying of text (like there is with search
snippets), instead it would be more like a human going to a library, reading a
book, and writing a review

Would this also violate copyright?

------
hodder
As a user of Google search and Android, I want Google to bundle services.
Android would, in my opinion, be impaired if it didn't include Google play,
gmail, chrome, and Google Maps.

Similarly, Google search would be worse for me if it didn't present me with
instantly relevant results like shopping, wikipedia responses, imdb style
results, or quick answers to unit conversions and equations.

Yes Google leverages its dominance in search and mobile to bundle services,
but is this something that the EU should fine Google for? As a consumer, I
don't think so.

~~~
azakai
Microsoft said the same back in the day. And it is true - in the _immediate_
term, consumers benefit from a single vendor integrating all their products
and limiting competition.

The problem happens when you look a little farther ahead. Anti-competitive
measures prevent _other_ companies from offering something even better. Those
products might not exist now, but without an open and competitive environment,
they won't show up. And consumers are very much hurt if that is the case.

~~~
euyyn
What Microsoft did was completely different: They coerced OEMs to not include
Netscape Navigator or they wouldn't license Windows to them. They prevented
users from uninstalling IE claiming technical reasons that were proven false.
And the reason they did those things was, as proven from internal
communications, to protect Windows' monopoly from the threat of portable Java
applications delivered via Netscape Navigator, by asphyxiating Netscape to
death.

~~~
probably_wrong
For comparison, here's what Google did in Germany: After a law was passed
requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for using "small sections of
text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google
perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed
from search results.

Given how much of their traffic and online revenue comes from Google they all
agreed, rendering the law moot.

That strikes me as a very similar situation.

~~~
Oletros
> After a law was passed requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for
> using "small sections of text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives:
> Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content,
> or they would be removed from search results

Source for that?

~~~
amatriain
It's been widely discussed

[http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-
google/a-18030444](http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-google/a-18030444)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-
spr...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-sprngr-
idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105)

In the end german newspapers gave Google permission to use snippets of content
without paying any royalties. They needed Google News traffic more than Google
needed them.

Which is the reason why spanish lawmakers made a similar law but with a
mandatory royalties clause. Spanish newspapers cannot give an exemption to any
company, under the law paying royalties for using snippets is mandatory
regardless of the content owner wishes. This law is not currently being
enforced, but the consequences are dramatic all the same: Google has shut down
Google News Spain, and other content aggregators are under threat of being hit
with fines at any moment.

And that's why I'm not currently allowing feedbunch.com users to subscribe to
RSS feeds from spanish newspaper publishers, until the situation changes.
Anti-monopoly legislation is fine, but sometimes it can be a hammer that the
big players use to hit each other instead of a tool to help new players get in
the market.

~~~
Oletros
Yes, I know that the law was passed. What I asked for was about the claim
about the ultimatum Google offered to publishers

~~~
amatriain
This is the best link I've found with a quick search

[http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-c...](http://the-
digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-cave-grant-google-free-
permission-use-snippets-search-results/)

~~~
Oletros
But is still the same, this link doesn't talk about Google given any ultimatum
to publishers.

~~~
amatriain
Germany passed a law intending to make Google pay for using news snippets.

Google simply stopped including snippets from german newspapers.

German newspapers reluctantly gave an exemption to Google so that it would
publish snippets from their websites again.

What more evidence do you need? Perhaps only a letter written in blood and
signed "give us an exemption or else" accompanied with a horse head would
convince you about Google's negotiation tactics here?

~~~
Oletros
> What more evidence do you need?

What evidence? An evidence that it is not a law that forbids putting
snippets,.

The ones doping ultimatum were the German government and the publishers

> Perhaps only a letter written in blood and signed "give us an exemption or
> else" accompanied with a horse head would convince you about Google's
> negotiation tactics here?

Perhaps not the bend of reality that you're doing

I suppose that you also think that in the Spanish case the one doing an
ultimatum is also google.

------
mark_l_watson
While I am in general a fan of Google (like AppEngine, Android, etc.
contracted at Google in 2013), it is important to prevent harming markets due
to effective monopolies. One problem is that anti-competitive practices may
cause long term harm to markets while making consumers happy short term.
Really a tough issue to deal with fairly.

I did notice something odd today in Google search results: I searched for
"surface 3" and the link I wanted was a top paid for ad link. In the past, I
could look down the page and see similar unpaid links, but not today.

------
outside1234
Let the EU shakedown for money begin!

This has nothing to do with anti-trust and everything to do with extracting a
kilo of flesh from a successful non-EU company.

~~~
matt4077
Check page 3 on this list:
[http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistic...](http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistics.pdf).
Of the ten highest cartel fines, only one was levelled against a non-European
company (LG Electronics).

~~~
dublinclontarf
This is because European companies aren't good enough to get to "monopoly"
status, much to the commissions chagrin.

~~~
Oletros
> This is because European companies aren't good enough to get to "monopoly"
> status, much to the commissions chagrin.

I think you misunderstood what the OP said

------
lkbm
What would be a viable way for Google to fix this that doesn't hurt users?

Sure, have Google Chrome installs start with "What do you want as your default
search provider?" But can you do that with Android? How much will it affect
Google Now to have it be connecting to a different search provider, and what
does that mean? If I enter "1+1", or "weather", or "call Bob" or "navigate
home", should it go to my search provider, or to Google Now? (I know the first
two currently go to GWS anyway, but why should they?)

And if integration of services like shopping on GWS are a problem, does that
mean they should be removing the "Shopping" tab and make it just another
result? That would suck. (For me, as a user.) I dunno, maybe long-term it
allows for more competition and innovation, but short term I don't see
solutions that aren't "make your product worse". Even allowing me to choose
plug-in search tabs from other services seems iffy.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Android is very simple: Google needs to be banned from mandating OEMs install
the whole Google Apps package. Leave it on OEMs to decide what browser,
search, etc. apps to package on their devices. The market, and consumers, will
decide what works.

The Open Handset Alliance is a blatant example of an illegal trust. A large
group of supposed competitors agreeing not to compete.

~~~
soxpopuli
Android gets raked over the coals for years for bad customer experience.

Google attempts to reign in fragmentation and divergent and inconsistent UI
experience, and move more of firmware to Play store so it can issue security
updates to customers without carriers and OEMs blocking.

Google raked over the coals for anti-competition.

Meanwhile, Apple ships iTunes and App Store, which can only be used with their
own cloud stores. They ship iMessage which only works with their Cloud. Apple
Maps. A fitness app. A wallet. A payment system. etc All in a proprietary,
single vendor system, closed source.

If every Android phone's out of box experience was a random collection of OEM
apps that had no common standard, the consumer experience would be terrible.
Switch from a Samsung to an LG device and you might be hit by the fact that
the device has none of the apps you were using on your previous phone, you
have to delete all of the current apps, and reinstall all of your previous
ones, enter all the settings again, all of the login credentials, etc. The
switching cost would be huge and it would cause OEM lock in.

The setup process is a factor in consumer choice. If you are faced with an
onerous gauntlet of selection dialogs for 10+ apps when you start (it's not
just app store, browser, maps, but email, music, video, camera, photos, etc),
consumers are going to be very annoyed. I don't want to spend 30 minutes to an
hour unboxing my phone and "installing", that's what used to happen on PCs.

And what happens when things go wrong. If the user installs a third party app
store, and gets malware, do you think they're going to be blamed, or Google's
Android brand will be blamed? Most consumers aren't aware enough to narrow
down who to blame.

So in the end, you'd be asking Google to assume all the brand risk, all of the
complaints over fragmentation and failure to patch older phones, and making
consumer experience worse.

Apple has none of these problems. Say what you will about their locked down
platform, the one thing you don't have to worry about is inconsistent getting
starting experience or malware from the App Store.

The 'choice' being presented here is the kind of choice hackers and engineers
love, but it's not the kind of choice one's parents and relatives may love.
It's just hobbling attempts to improve the Android experience.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
"User experience" should never be chosen at the expense of "user freedom".

~~~
cromwellian
Spoken like Richard Stallman, which is why GNU/Linux desktop took over the
world right?

If you're so interested in freedom, why aren't you picketing Apple Campus too?

The practical effect of your viewpoint is hundreds of millions of unpatchable
Android ROMs, exposing vast quantities of devices to viruses, and HARMING
actual people.

~~~
anon1385
>If you're so interested in freedom, why aren't you picketing Apple Campus
too?

FSF activists do literally picket Apple events:
[http://cdn.arstechnica.net/01-27-2010/apple-ipad-
protest.jpg](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/01-27-2010/apple-ipad-protest.jpg)

As far as I know they haven't done this at any Google events, but maybe I just
missed it. Either way, the idea that Google is being specially singled out for
criticism by the FSF is pretty laughable and you probably need to leave your
filter bubble if you genuinely believe it to be the case.

------
thrownaway2424
In which we see a difference between EU and US law. US antitrust law exists to
protect the consumer. EU antitrust law, evidently, exists to protect other
competitors.

~~~
AJ007
Thankfully we have leaked documents from the US case.

Excerpt from Ben Edelman, whose done a damn good job over the years not only
watching Google but also companies involved in abusive adware and spyware
practices:

'At the same time, Google systematically applied lesser standards to its own
services. Examining Google's launch report for a 2008 algorithm change, FTC
staff said that Google elected to show its product search OneBox "regardless
of the quality" of that result (footnote 119, citing GOOGLR-00330279-80) and
despite "pretty terribly embarrassing failures" in returning low-quality
results (footnote 170, citing GOOGWRIG-000041022). Indeed, Google's product
search service apparently failed Google's standard criteria for being indexed
by Google search (p.80 and footnote 461), yet Google nonetheless put the
service in top positions (p.30 and footnote 170, citing GOOG-
Texas-0199877-906).'

[http://www.benedelman.org/news/040115-1.html](http://www.benedelman.org/news/040115-1.html)

Were consumers hurt if Google de-ranked content which by even Google's own
standards were better than its own? May be not, but it certainly peels away
any idea of the integrity of algorithmic search.

Google's business is under attack from all fronts today. As business owners
and those employed by internet businesses we are so fortunate as to not have
to rely on Google anymore for our audiences. We have have search from two
major app stores, and more if you are international. Social can deliver new
users at a greater rate than search. There was a day where Google penalized
your company, and the next day you fired everyone.

In the next year or so we may start seeing ultra-cheap Chinese smartphones
flood the market with Google free Android. Interesting thing commenters here
seem to not know, device manufacturers are not allowed to sell any non-Google
Android devices if they sell Google Android.

Idealy some lines are drawn so Facebook doesn't engage in similar abusive
behavior against its users and customers. I don't have high hopes. If
anything, the ability to avoid US penalties and the EU's late reaction time
probably emboldens behavior by market leaders everywhere.

~~~
thrownaway2424
I don't understand what you're getting at. The "product search onebox" does
not drive traffic to Google, it drives traffic away from it. For instance if I
search for "bicycle helmet" the thing at the top of the page is the product
search onebox, it contains five prominent links to sites where I can buy a
bicycle helmet.

So I don't see what you are getting at. If anything, the product search onebox
is the opposite of what the EU seems to be complaining about.

~~~
jdmichal
The question would be, how did those links in the OneBox get there? Is there
harm in being the #1 search result, but not the first "result" on the page,
because there's a OneBox above you with links from a different source?

~~~
thrownaway2424
I don't know. Apparently the merchants provide the information to Google
directly in spreadsheets.

[https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/160637?hl=en](https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/160637?hl=en)

As for your other question about being the #1 result but being ranked below
paying advertisers, I'm not sure. Nobody deserves the #1 spot, it's not a
natural right granted by your creator. In fact "the #1 search result" varies
from query to query and from one user to the next based on their own Google
account, if they have one.

------
baldfat
> At issue is whether the company uses its position as the dominant search
> engine company to muscle out competition from specialized search services,
> specifically comparison shopping sites, by prioritizing its own Google
> Shopping search results.

Anyone else find shopping with Google Search is almost useless and I always
follow up with a search on amazon.com and get a better result?

~~~
dragonwriter
No, but then I don't use either Google Search or Amazon for much online
shopping -- mostly, I go directly to an appropriate (more focused than Amazon)
retailer, though sometimes I use Google Search to _find_ a retailer if I'm
searching for something where I don't already know a set of retailers to
check.

~~~
baldfat
I still find better prices from Amazon than NewEgg or other sites. Makes me
feel guilty though.

~~~
qiaorui
+1

------
Goronmon
I never understood the antitrust angle towards Google search. Is there some
kind of browser or app out there that is forcing people to use Google as their
search engine on all their devices?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The fact that most people use the default, and that Google mandates the
browser be Chrome and the search be Google for all Chrome web browsers
(largest desktop market share) and Android devices (largest mobile market
share). And that they then prioritize their own products and services in
Search as well.

The issue isn't "everyone is forced to use Google Search" as much as "Google
creates a monopoly through connected use of it's various products and
services".

~~~
mirashii
> and that Google mandates the browser be Chrome and the search be Google for
> all Chrome web browsers (largest desktop market share) and Android devices
> (largest mobile market share)

No, they don't. You're free to use any browser on your desktop. You're free to
use any browser on your Android device. And you're free to go into Chrome
settings and use any search engine in Chrome on any of these devices.

~~~
digi_owl
And much the same could be argued about Microsoft and IE. Yet everyone but
Google Chrome failed to overtake IE.

Defaults are powerful things, as so very few take the time to change them.

~~~
twrkit
Chrome overtook IE because it is (or at least at the time, was) a superior
product.

~~~
digi_owl
And the same could be said about Firefox, yet it never happened.

Damn it, since Firefox canceled their deal with Google the latter has taken to
pitching Chrome whenever a Firefox user visits Google.com.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Are you even remotely surprised, digi_owl?

------
manulp
>The investigation will attempt to determine whether Google is using its
position to discourage the inclusion of rival applications on Android-based
phones.

Shouldn't this also apply to iOS?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Shouldn't this also apply to iOS?

Perhaps, but the set of entities behind the complaints that triggered the
investigations directed at Google are _specifically_ targeting Google.

If a similar group targets Apple, then maybe we'll see a similar
investigation.

~~~
soxpopuli
By entities, you mean the Microsoft funded astroturf organization FairSearch
and the hydra connected to it.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's not really "astroturf"ing when FairSearch prominently displays that it's
an organization owned by Microsoft on their about page:
[http://www.fairsearch.org/about/](http://www.fairsearch.org/about/)

(Meanwhile, Google goes out of their way to hide their ownership of the Open
Handset Alliance, burying the first mention of their name on like the third
page of members.)

~~~
cromwellian
Jake, is that you? (Jake Weisz made an almost identical assertion on G+) Do
you not understand the concept of alphabetic ordering?

Do you really believe Google is trying to hide their relationship to the OHA?
The OHA was announced and formed on Day 1 of the Android release
([http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html](http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html))

No one out there is under any illusion that Google didn't put together and
lead this consortium. What else would they do? You make an OS, one that is
free of charge and open, and you need hardware and software partners onboard,
the only way to do that is to adopt some venue for collaboration.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Also, I would hardly consider the OHA's MADA a "venue for collaboration". A
venue for control, sure. Collaboration, no.

~~~
cromwellian
Have you attended any OHA meetings? You're making quite a lot of unbacked up
assertions.

Microsoft for years ran many working groups for hardware partners, for
example, the Microsoft groups for DirectX which allowed NVidia, AMD, et al, to
influence and collborate on common specs. Microsoft "led" the discussion, but
NVidia and AMD were clearly able to influence the specs because the API had to
be rationalized around real, existing, and upcoming hardware designs in the
pipeline.

You have a habit to attributing negative and conspiratorial agendas to
everything.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I'd love to attend an OHA meeting! I'm sure Google's going to open that up.
Oh, wait, the OHA is somewhere around as secretive as the NSA. Although at
least the NSA can claim it's trying to protect people. Google's just trying to
cover their dirty laundry.

That's actually one of the things I'm really hoping for out of these cases. A
judge that won't care about your non-disclosure crud and will post that stuff
in open court.

------
father_of_two
As an EU citizen and consumer, here's my message to European Commission: SCREW
YOU!

I would like to know why is it so hard (and expensive) to buy a car on a
foreign EU country and legalize it on other, I don't know why am I still
paying robbery-like roaming "costs", I don't how is it possible to be
considered fiscal resident simultaneous on 2 different countries and why
citizens has still to resort to individual country-to-country specific deals
to avoid double taxation _within_ EU.

And I could just keep going on... BUT they are worried with a freaking search
engine! Piss off.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> I don't know why am I still paying robbery-like roaming "costs"

The EU has brought down roaming every year, and it'll be soon abolished.

> why citizens has still to resort to individual country-to-country specific
> deals to avoid double taxation within EU

because we don't have a federal Europe

------
1971genocide
I wouldn't be suspicious until I read ".. fine of 6.4 billion .."

What ?

Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic
Ocean.

I don't understand what EU's problem is. If they don't like google and android
please ask your tech graduates to create their own.

The EU is an funny organization. they are not democratically elected. Their
policies is the reason half of EU is bankrupt. The EU should be fined for
bankrupting entire generations of young people in Greece and promoting the
largest transfer of wealth from poor European nations to rich European
nations.

Even assuming Google did participate in behaviour that is anti-competitive
that market that google dominates was created by google !

I like china's approach to this where they forced their countrymen to create
powerful competitor to google. The emphasis should be promotion of wealth
creation and not redistribution. Why doesn't Europe have its own homegrown
search giant ? An EU company would clearly have massive advantage due to the
language barrier. The EU should be paying people to create companies to
compete with google. Or atleast make it a priority to do so. What happens when
google refuses to pay the fine and starts backtracing or treating the EU
market as "not worth it", has the EU though about how it will effect consumers
?

~~~
Crito
> _" Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the
> Atlantic Ocean."_

BP was not fined as much as they should have been, therefore the EU should go
easy on all other companies from now on? How does that make any sense?

~~~
1971genocide
No,

Everyone should be fined based on how much damage they have caused on the
environment,civilization, etc

Do you seriously think google has done damage worth 6.4 BILLION ?

BP,Shell,Nestle have caused real damage to real humans and the environment and
there seems no outrage or investigation towards them.

Banks in germany have clearly destroyed lives of people financially and no one
is asking any questions ?

Google allegedly tweaked its algorithm to make it slightly inconvenient for
people to use alternative services and now we need to fine google 6.4 BILLION
?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Google has absolutely done more than $6.4 billion worth of damage to society.
Google's arbitrary automatic penalty systems put people out of business on a
daily basis.

~~~
lamuerteflaca
Of course, what you do not include is that google has enabled businesses to
make trillions of dollars. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

------
Aoyagi
This might help

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/15/what_did_google_do_w...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/15/what_did_google_do_wrong/)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Writing in their PhD paper in 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin described paid
advertising as “insidious”, because it “often provides an incentive to provide
poor quality search results”.

Absolutely hilarious.

------
undefined0
In addition to this, Google currently deprioritizes other video search engines
over YouTube because of the recent DMCA algorithm change, as Google forwards
DMCA's to YouTube and doesn't impact the search ranking for YouTube per
notice. It's completely unfair.

------
wstrange
Google's competitors should spend more time improving their products and less
time complaining to the EU.

As an example, google flight search is just hands down better than the
alternatives. It is ultra fast (a killer feature) and has a simple but
intuitive UI.

~~~
1971genocide
I agree.

I am someone who constantly tries out alternative google services. consumers
are always looking for better deals. If there were better search engines,
email clients, etc than google people will be switching in droves.

The reality is there isn't and the solution is not to fine these companies but
to promote the creation of competitors. Given that there is 60% youth
unemployment in may europeans countries I do not see why this is so hard.

This lawsuit just seems like a nice way for lawyers to pocket some money from
the wealth that was created by google at the expense of google and the
consumers.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Honestly, if you constantly tried out alternative services, you'd probably
have left Google already. I did, and I found many competitors' services
faster, smoother, higher performance, and more configurable. Unfortunately,
they have terrible market share because of Google's anticompetitive business
practices.

~~~
wstrange
Can you give me some examples for flight search?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I actually can't. My response to the above comment was pretty generic. I don't
fly often, and when I do, it's generally airline specific because of mileage
programs.

------
ocdtrekkie
Very excited to see this happen. The US surely wasn't going to do it, but it's
well past due.

~~~
baldfat
Can you elaborate on your reasons why? I like to hear both sides of an
argument.

I see Google not as a monopoly but as a majority holder where people have
control of what services they use. Are they abusing this position to the
detriment of users and market?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The problem is that people don't have control of what services they use. The
vertical integration model, used quite successfully by both Google and Apple,
is specifically designed to make it unfavorable or impossible to use
competitors.

At least under the US definition, the practice of "tying" is illegal when you
use your monopoly position in one market to try to monopolize another market.
By using Search to prioritize promoting their other services, they are trying
to capture other markets through their dominance in Search. This is what the
law was written to prevent. Most of my issues stem with how they do this in
Android though, which is a separate investigation the EU is conducting.

Google's Search behavior hurts consumers in a lot of ways. Since Google is the
front door to the Internet, effectively, particularly in Europe where their
market share is nearly uncontested, being an unfavorable result in Google
prevents you from adequately competing. Being "penalized" by Google Search for
any reason can put you out of business.

And Google is now trying to exact their will on the entire Internet through
penalizing sites in Search as a means of activism. For example, choosing to
penalize sites for not using HTTPS, or penalizing sites for not using "mobile
responsive" design, which has at best, subjective appeal.

~~~
fixermark
I'm failing to see an issue with penalizing sites for not using HTTPS.

Google has incentive to maintain the quality of their search results by being
able to make some guarantees that the sites they send visitors to are what
they say they are. It's reasonable to extend that to prioritizing sites that
can be verified over sites that are easily MITM'd.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The quality of a local business cannot be determined by whether or not they
cough up $70 a year for HTTPS. The quality of content cannot be determined by
whether or not they cough up $70 a year for HTTPS.

Penalizing sites for not using it raises the cost of having an opinion or
trying to run a business on a nearly arbitrary restriction defined by a
monopoly with conflicting business interests who sells web hosting services.

