
Google to Comply with EU Search Demands to Avoid More Fines - tareqak
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-29/google-faces-tuesday-deadline-as-clock-ticks-toward-new-eu-fines
======
readams
Ed Felten's article on this from a couple of months ago provides an excellent
analysis.

[https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/06/28/european-
authoritie...](https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/06/28/european-authorities-
fine-google-for-search-tactics/)

"At this point, I need to put some of my cards on the table and admit that I
know more about this topic, having worked on the FTC’s investigation which
asked some of the same questions. But that investigation was confidential, for
good reasons, and I will not violate that confidentiality. All I’ll say is
that the FTC had the legal power to compel answers to factual questions about
Google’s practices (and an obligation to keep the answers confidential) and,
having conducted a thorough investigation, the FTC decided not to bring a case
against Google."

~~~
flexie
So 'Trust me, I can't say why, but they are okay'.

FTC applies US rules, the EU Commission applies EU law. You can stay clear of
one while still violating the other.

~~~
sametmax
And given that Google is an American companies, there is a strong possibility
that they got helped for the FTC that they will not have with the EUC.

------
avar
NPR's Planet Money had a great recent episode summarizing the whole situation.
It includes an interview with one of the people whose complaint led to the
EU's initial investigation:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/04/541643346/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/04/541643346/episode-787-google-
is-big-is-that-bad)

------
amelius
Isn't the search bar at Amazon.com doing essentially the same thing?

~~~
IBM
I don't understand how tech people continue to misunderstand the logic of the
EU's argument or antitrust law in general, even with the benefit of the
history of the Microsoft case.

~~~
chii
Because Google appologists. Because Google technically isn't a monopoly. And
that lessons learnt from Microsoft has began to fade away in the zeitgeist.

~~~
MarkMc
Also because people like typing "weather tomorrow", pressing Enter, then
immediately seeing what the weather will be like tomorrow.

~~~
dx034
Just because one company offers a superior solution, doesn't mean that it
cannot be harmful. I also find Google the best search engine for complicated
queries (while I use duckduckgo.com for everything else) but I'm still
concerned about their market power.

Every monopoly (or quasi-monopoly which Google is in Europe) should have
intense scrutiny by regulators and governments. That doesn't mean
nationalisation but it means that these companies will have less freedom to
further extend their market power.

If Google has an issue with that they could just do what other conglomerates
have done before and split up. The same applies to Amazon where synergies
between AWS and the core business are not really clear to me. Only facebook
really has only one product, the other companies have a collection of loosely
related products.

~~~
briandear
Why doesn’t someone build a competing search engine for Europe? Serious
question. Seems like the EU prefers to tax and harm the incumbent but do
little in the way of improving tax policy that would encourage US style
venture investment and the resulting innovation. It’s very difficult for
investors in Europe to make any money — in a place like France, capital gains
are punitively taxed and apparently there isn’t a French Google competitor. Go
figure.

~~~
dx034
Microsoft has spent billions trying to beat Google, without much success. They
now get a lot of traffic because it's the standard engine in Win10 (basically
doing what they did with IE a decade back) but not because of superior
quality.

I try to get away from Google and try Bing regularly (directly or through
duckduckgo). For complicated queries, results on Google are clearly superior.
Google knows that the whole company indirectly depends on this so that they
constantly improve their algorithms. I doubt anyone could reach their quality,
even with a few billion € to spend.

------
Animats
No, Google is merely talking about complying. They haven't actually done
anything yet. They have until September 28 to do something, if they can't
stall further.

------
Teknoman117
kinda interesting that EU law requires you to reduce the usefulness of your
products if you have too much success...

~~~
elpool2
All of the useful little tools that google shows you based on your search
could now be subject the same treatment. If I search for "Seattle weather"
google shows me a nice weather forecast at the top of the results (courtesy of
weather.com). Could Google be forced to stop showing this because it unfairly
disadvantages other weather websites?

~~~
kuschku
This is actually an ongoing process, too.

The opinion of the EU is that Google should be forced to either allow the user
to choose the provider of these widgets (maps, weather, etc), or to require
Google to rank these widgets at the same position that they would show up in
regular search.

For example, in a search for a product, Google returns first a Shopping
widget, then the Amazon result (and in it, an amazon widget), then several
competitors, and only then Google Shopping.

Google should rank the widgets of each provider the same way as search
results, without any bias.

~~~
dlubarov
It sounds good in theory, but since Google's ranking algorithm ranks pages,
how is Google supposed to apply it to widgets?

Most widgets do have _associated_ pages, such as shopping search result pages,
but they're not the same. They have different interfaces and contain different
information, and often they have low PageRank because there's little point in
linking to them. If I search "My name is Daniel in Spanish", I would probably
like to see a Google Translate widget (or at least some kind of widget), even
though the associated page
[https://translate.google.com/#en/es/My%20name%20is%20Daniel](https://translate.google.com/#en/es/My%20name%20is%20Daniel)
isn't ranked highly.

And some widgets have no associated pages -- if a user searches "96
tablespoons in cups", Google simply shows the answer (6), with no associated
page. Should that not be allowed? It would be unfortunate if Google was forced
to send users to some conversion website for that.

~~~
kuschku
The problem is that Google has a monopoly on search (>96% in EU), and is using
that to gain a monopoly in other areas.

For example, where I live, Google maps hasn’t updated map data since 2009.
They have no transit in it, no integration with taxi or ridesharing companies,
nothing.

Here maps has up-to-date maps, with all that in it.

Yet, people use Google maps, and not even consider that there might be a
better competitor – because Google maps is the default, and shows up first in
search.

A significantly worse product is winning here, and doesn’t even have a market
pressure to improve, just because of anticompetitive powers.

You surely can see how that’d be problematic if you’d ever try to disrupt an
existing market as startup.

~~~
dlubarov
I don't see why Google's market share matters. If it was 60% instead of 96%,
couldn't you make the same argument that Google Maps was receiving an unfair
advantage, just of a somewhat different magnitude?

I also don't see why it matters whether there are different business
categories involved. If you typed "best search engine" into Bing, and Bing
artificially ensured that bing.com was the first result, wouldn't the same
criticism apply?

It seems to me that the arguments being made apply to all cross-promotions.
You could say that Yahoo is giving Yahoo Mail an unfair advantage by promoting
it on their portal. I don't see a meaningful difference.

~~~
IanCal
Having more market share means you have more power. The level of overall harm
you can cause is greater.

If you're a minor player, and you cut out a particular competitor from your
results, they're not hurt that much and people are less likely to come and use
your service.

If you are the main entry point for the vast majority of people, then limiting
your results can easily kill whole groups of businesses.

Yahoo only linking to yahoo mail when people search for email providers isn't
going to kill off other providers. Google (if almost all results are found
through it) doing the same could.

That's ok if Google treat their own services like they treat other people's,
and let them compete on merit. But if they use it to just kill competition
then that's not good for consumers.

~~~
dlubarov
But in general, we consider things right or wrong (both morally and legally)
irrespective of scale. Why should this be different?

In utilitarian terms, the ratio of benefits and costs to society is the same
whether it's Google or Bing that's showing a search widget, so we should allow
both or neither.

If Google and Bing had 50/50 market share, then do you think the widgets would
be acceptable? Bing also shows shopping widgets, so unaffiliated sellers
wouldn't be any better off in that scenario.

~~~
IanCal
> But in general, we consider things right or wrong (both morally and legally)
> irrespective of scale. Why should this be different?

We do see things differently based on scale or level of power though, both
morally and legally.

We have different standards for people like doctors being in relationships
with patients than two regular people, for example.

Thefts will also be treated differently based on scale.

Killing more people is typically seen as worse than killing fewer.

I'm not really sure what you mean about considering things the same
irrespective of scale.

> In utilitarian terms, the ratio of benefits and costs to society is the same
> whether it's Google or Bing that's showing a search widget, so we should
> allow both or neither.

I don't see how the costs and benefits are the same. The problem is that so
many people use Google that having them promote their own product can be
enough to completely kill off competition. If they were smaller they'd not
have that power.

There's no point stopping Bobs Search Engine with 20 users from not listing
Google because he wants to beat them. Google aren't really harmed much by
this. Maybe 20 fewer customers come through. Google not listing Bobs search
engine because they don't link to him (deliberately because they want to beat
him) could mean the difference between being in business and not.

------
ilaksh
Google _is_ a monopoly and so are Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, Walmart, and
several others. I think we will eventually replace these oversized companies
with something like sophisticated semantic protocols.

------
rasz
In related news Intel still hasnt paid its fine for directly bribing retailers
and computer manufacturers in exchange for refusing to sell AMD processors.

------
ocdtrekkie
It is kinda surreal that a company obeying the law is headline news.

Note that they appear to have responded on the final day allowed. Throughout
this process, Google has repeatedly asked for extensions to review the claims
or come up with a response for all of these cases. It seems like, knowing the
result, Google has attempted to draw out this process as long as legally
possible. The PR damage from keeping this case ongoing presumably pales in
comparison to the profit from their unlawful conduct.

~~~
ars
It's headline news when the law is not only ridiculous, but protectionist, and
inconsistently followed.

It's pretty obvious that the EU is only doing this because Google is a US
company.

I am quite sure that google considered simply pulling entirely out of Europe.
It wouldn't affect them as much as you think - it's the internet, you can run
a website from anywhere.

And it's not like the EU would prevent their citizens from buying ads from
Google, so their revenues would not be affected all that much. Their EU sales
force could be through a third party (so that Google would not have any assets
in the EU).

All that Google would lose is EU employees.

The bare fact this this plan I am outlining is even worth considering rather
than bow to the EU demands tells you a lot.

~~~
Oletros
> It's pretty obvious that the EU is only doing this because Google is a US
> company.

If it is obvious, it will be easy to explain the reasons for it

> I am quite sure that google considered simply pulling entirely out of
> Europe. It wouldn't affect them as much as you think - it's the internet,
> you can run a website from anywhere.

I'm quite sure that Google is glad to not have people like you as CEO.

> And it's not like the EU would prevent their citizens from buying ads from
> Google

Tell me how a company like Google, or Apple or Microsoft can do business with
the EU without being there. And please, no't give nonsensical reasons like
internet is everywhere, that just shows that you don't know much about
economy.

~~~
thejynxed
They did it quite easily prior to when certain EU nations decided to give them
massive tax breaks (up to and including zero tax) if they located offices and
production facilities in their nations, so your last point is moot. Until
then, they didn't have offices in the EU because there was no point in sinking
that kind of money into countries that would just tax you to death for little
in return.

~~~
Oletros
Please, can you give any information of any of those companies working for EU
customers without having any presence in the EU?

------
tareqak
Techmeme summary: _Google says it 's sharing a plan to comply with EU shopping
search demands today; the search giant had initially said it “respectfully
disagreed” with the ruling_

~~~
tareqak
What's wrong with my posting of this summary?

~~~
pjschlic
I imagine that a company can present a plan for complying with a ruling which
they also disagree with. Maybe you seemed to be implying they were
contradictory?

~~~
tareqak
I just post the summary from
[http://techmeme.com/river](http://techmeme.com/river) verbatim as a sort of
TL;DR.

