
A British couple who took on Google and cost it £2.1B - rbanffy
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/fine-google-competition-eu-shivaun-adam-raff
======
effingwewt
Here is the money quote for myself: 'To the Raffs, this is Google’s real
crime: its inaccessibility and unwillingness to respond, even to legitimate
complaints. “We’ve never said that the fault was being penalised,” says Adam.
“Collateral damage in complex algorithms is inevitable. The fault was not
having a procedure by which we could appeal and get timely relief.” '

I've been dealing with exactly this myself recently. I had an old gmail hacked
and stolen. Well the idiot didnt remove my main acct as the forwading address,
so I began receiving emails for everything from his uber account to his
facebook account.

No matter what answers I gave google about account creation, old passwords, no
matter that I provided whatever they asked, that they sent a verification code
that didn't even work, NOTHING restored my access. I even still have the
forwarded emails! The emails themselves show how this kid took MY email.

Yet there is no way to get ahold of google other than their product forums,
posting and praying to not get a cheap canned response (which is what happened
to me).

It seems these companies, in trying to remove themselves from their users by
as many degrees of separation as possible are doing this to themselves. If
they simply interacted with their users and gave even the most rudimentary of
ways to speak with someone (livechat, helpdesk, whatever) most of their
problems would be handled at the first contact, instead of becoming huge
issues which can possibly affect many people (try searching for 'gmail
verification code wont work' or 'cant recover hacked gmail' it will be days of
fun reading).

I was infuriated over simply losing an old worthless email to their
shenanigans, I can't imagine seeing the startup I created stomped underfoot by
a megacorp like an ant.

I used to LOVE google back in the early gmail/android days. They were the good
guys. What happened?

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I'd ask that we consider a different spectrum than good and bad, but naive and
abused.

Look at LL Bean and their cancellation of their lifetime warranty [1]. That
linked article talks about abuse of the warranty, but I'm fairly sure people
were trolling through ebay + thrift shops and buying items to return and
resell as new. That's abuse and they had to make changes to it.

Or consider how widely reviled PayPal is for how they "take" their customer's
money and lock it up. I had a friend who worked there that described it as "a
fraud detection company that occasionally takes payments". You can't even
imagine the ingenious lengths people go to commit fraud and rip PayPal and
other people off. So they have by necessity become this draconian
organization.

When Google/Gmail was small it was easier, they were more naive. But now? I
imagine every scammer in the world is trying to corrupt and steal gmail
accounts as a stepping stone to greater fraud - and some significant portion
are trying to do so by claiming that someone else's account was hacked and
that ney need special access.

I don't think there's any easy answers to these thorny problems but forcing it
into a false good/bad dichotomy isn't helping.

1 - [https://slate.com/business/2018/02/l-l-bean-has-ended-
unlimi...](https://slate.com/business/2018/02/l-l-bean-has-ended-unlimited-
returns-and-i-am-fairly-certain-its-my-fault.html)

~~~
dhimes
Perhaps, but I think GP has a good first step:

 _gave even the most rudimentary of ways to speak with someone (livechat,
helpdesk, whatever)_

Otherwise, we are just guessing. Some will give them the benefit of the doubt.
Some will assume the worst. The truth is simply somewhere in between.

The opposite of the LL Bean anecdote is a company that gave a lifetime
warranty and made a name for itself in the nautical outerwear industry. People
bought in part because of the warranty. After a few years they started having
to make good on the warranty- not because of fraud, but because out wear
doesn't last forever.

~~~
dralley
That's reasonable, but also consider that the Apple iCloud "hacking" from a
few years back was largely social engineering Apple's tech support into
providing them with enough information to get access.

------
JasonFruit
I think I'm personally glad about this verdict, but it worries me nonetheless,
because it justifies thinking like this:

    
    
        "For the Raffs, this remains the burning issue, which 
        the technicalities of auctions and algorithms all too 
        often obscure. They see it simply: Google, or any other 
        search engine, should present only impartial results 
        that do not benefit it financially. It sounds 
        idealistic, but why should it? “After all,” says 
        Shivaun, “this is what people want, and what they 
        believe Google still delivers.”
    

Maybe Google _should_ act that way, and certainly the Raffs are right that
people _want_ that --- but is it something that should be enforced legally? I
could see saying that Google has too many opportunities to benefit anti-
competitively from its search dominance, and that it should be split up to
prevent that, but not that it should be forced to supply results in the way
"people want", counter to its financial interests.

~~~
outsideoflife
> forced to supply results in the way "people want", counter to its financial
> interests.

I get my water from a private company. Should they be forced to supply me with
clean drinking water, counter to it's financial interests? Presumably it would
be cheaper to just pump it out of the river into our homes?

And that is the problem, Google has risen to utility level dominance, and
utility level importance. Millions of peoples jobs rely on search and search
results, time for regulation.

~~~
jonas21
Water companies are usually granted a legal monopoly to serve an area because
it would be a logistical nightmare to have a bunch of companies all trying to
install and service their own pipes. In exchange, they're required to serve
everyone in the area and to charge regulated rates.

If another water company wanted to come in and install pipes to your house,
they would be prohibited from doing so.

Other search engines aren't prohibited from competing with Google -- in fact
many countries actively encourage and fund local competitors -- so I don't see
how this analogy makes sense.

~~~
scotty79
Some monopolies are granted, some occur naturally. Example of the likes of
Microsoft Bing shows that Google monopoly is even stronger than if it was
written into law.

Maybe monopolies should have their products strictly regulated regardless of
how they came to be monopolies?

Other way to deal with monopolies is just force them to split up into few
companies, but I don't think that users would benefit much from having 10
different search engines to choose from same way they don't need their browser
to have 10 different homepages. They need just one, but the one that provides
results that they need. Same way like they need one water provider that
provides the water of quality that they need.

If you allow Google just to show results from whoever pays the most, that only
shows that they are sitting on the bridge and let pass through only the ones
that pay the most, no matter how much value their passing brings to everybody
else. At some point nobody cares if they built this bridge or not. Their
bridge stands on and occupies optimal spot for a bridge so people on both
sides of the bridge should and have every right to fight for such agreement
that benefits them most, not just the bridge owner/constructor.

------
walshemj
Even though the case raises a good point about googles power the problem is
foundem was a very low quality ecommerce intermediary that objectively added
no value to the searcher.

Foundem also was set up by people with very rich friends in British society
:-)

~~~
mrarjen
After looking at Foundem I can see why this should not be displayed to
searchers. I feel like I'm back in the early days of the web!

And only the rich get richer in these cases. ;)

~~~
quickConclusion
it may be a bit unfair to judge them by looking at today's website, which is
not in service anymore, even if they have a home page.

"Today, Foundem’s website is the digital equivalent of a boarded-up house"

Their business is dead, because they were artificially demoted to 4th page in
search when Google Product Search was created.

~~~
walshemj
Yes but its a poor quality comparison site that added no value I know sites
also hit by penguin that where far more worthy.

Kellys Directory for example which had its roots in a company founded in the
1700's

------
userbinator
Google's ranking algorithms are notoriously secretive due to attempts to
resist SEO spamming, but the flipside is that pages can just disappear from
its (publicly available) index despite still containing content relevant to
your search:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840)

~~~
flexie
Google should be split up. It's wrong to have a company that controls search,
one of the major browsers, and one of the two major operating systems for
phones.

And then of course it should be made to pay tax where the search results are
shown. An ad shown in the EU should be taxed with an indirect EU tax on the ad
(30 percent of what is paid for the ad plus an EU VAT). That would once for
all make the large advertising companies such as Facebook and Google pay tax
in Europe. Every ad should include an ID number with information on the money
paid on the ad, who paid it and to whom. Then, consumers and EU tax
authorities could easily check if tax had been paid on the ad and who paid
what for the ad.

~~~
imglorp
Taxation philosophy aside, I really like the idea of traceable ads in general.
There are so many intentionally tangled and obscured intermediate steps
between the ad buyer and the ad viewer, a transparent record would benefit the
honest parties and the consumer. Prosecuting, or at least deterring, malware
served over sketchy ad networks comes immediately to mind.

Is there ever a case where untraceability is a good thing?

------
shawabawa3
This sentence jumped out at me: "The idea came to Adam one day as he smoked a
Silk Cut outside his office"

Is this how advertisers are getting around ad blockers these days? Or just
writing style...

~~~
Ftuuky
Or the journalist is like Bukowski and feels the need to describe all the
cigarette brands used by the characters.

------
peteretep
God I love the EU

~~~
blibble
it's easy to punish a foreign company, the litmus test should be how it deals
with a domestic company behaving badly, e.g. VW

it's not looking good thus far

~~~
jacquesm
The VW case is complicated further because the German government has a pretty
big stake in them.

------
amelius
> When Adam and Shivaun Raff's company was destroyed by Google, they didn't
> get mad, they got even.

They destroyed Google?

~~~
cyberferret
Well, I read "get even" in this case meaning that they recouped the financial
losses that Google's actions cost their business (plus legal costs on top of
that). In effect, they evened out their losses. Perhaps.

~~~
gnode
Unfortunately not; not yet at least. In the article it mentions that their
civil case against Google is dependent on this verdict, and due to Google's
pending appeal may not be resolved for several years.

------
muse900
Hmm interesting, I know that am going to get downvoted but what I want to find
out is how much it cost them and if going against someone on a European court
level can be achieved by someone without money.

What I mean is that those 2 people going against Google and winning, must have
cost so much money to achieve, that I don't believe its possible for someone
with a tiny business or someone with no money to do so.

I am intrigued to learn if justice is a privilege of the few, or everyone can
have justice.

In my specific case, I had my government which is within the European Union,
straight out stealing land from my family. We went to the country's court, we
went to a 2nd court and then a final 3rd. The justice system within my country
failed us so we looked at how we could engage in a higher level e.g EU court.
The fees for that were so great and the process seemed so unwelcome that we
can just not afford to receive justice. So thats why am asking, I'd prefer to
see an article that speak actual numbers and how much money foundem needed to
provide to lawyers etc and how didn't they go bankrupt at the same time.

~~~
manmal
Is "I know that I'm going to get downvoted" the new opening argument?
Forestalling criticism does usually work in discussions, but it should not be
necessary here. If you get downvoted, so be it. You are not your HN karma. (I
know I'm gonna be downvoted for this ;) )

~~~
Dolores12
Is fear of being downvoted a new kind of self-censorship?

~~~
jessaustin
It's not new. The whole point of a downvoting facility is to encourage site
users to conform their posts to what other users want to read. It isn't 100%
effective, since users may decide that they'd rather post what they want,
downvotes be damned. It probably isn't meant to be 100% effective. Users who
do this all the time will get banned, but more occasional anti-censorship
posters will broaden the scope of acceptable discourse, often in beneficial
directions.

------
JimKo
Google also lost a similar action in Italy. Interesting how the punishment is
always a fine paid to the government.

But the real problem is -- Google has to be broken up. Criminals that get
slaps just figure it in to the cost of business. It's meaningless. Ad prices
just went up a little, that's all.

------
nhylated
Planet Money episode on this:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/04/541643346/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/04/541643346/episode-787-google-
is-big-is-that-bad)

------
saagarjha
> From their tidy, white-brick home in the suburban village of Crowthorne,
> Berkshire, the Raffs pursued the most valuable company in the world all the
> way to Brussels and the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC – and
> won.

Since when was Google the most valuable company in the world?

------
wiradikusuma
Honest question: so if I want to start a niche/vertical search engine, is it
safe to say that I'm "safe" now? As in: I don't need to worry I'd be demoted
by Google due to unoriginal content (=extracted from original ecommerce)?

------
harryh
3 items worth mentioning that are relevant to this case:

1) Google is in the process of appealing this decision and could very well end
up winning (or having the fine significantly reduced) in the end.

2) At least to some degree, decisions like this are likely protectionism aimed
at US companies.

    
    
        "[Americans] have owned the Internet. Our companies have created it, 
        expanded it, perfected it in ways that [European companies] can’t 
        compete," Obama said in an interview with Recode in 2015. "And 
        oftentimes what is portrayed as high-minded positions on issues 
        sometimes is just designed to carve out some of their commercial 
        interests."
    

3) When people talk about how free speech has greater protections in the US
than in the EU, this is one of the things they are talking about.

~~~
scotty79
Do Americans have 3rd party product comparison websites, or do they just order
everything from amazon and are happy about it?

------
gowld
I wonder why regulators doesn't pay Google when companies make a profit from
being indexed by Google, and only fines Google when companies lose profit from
being deindex.

------
chappi42
Thank you 'British couple'! If I had it my way, Google would be split up (or
banned as in China).

------
dmayle
At this point in time, I am honestly surprised at the lack of balance in this
conversation. While I'm writing this, the entire discussion is a bunch of
pile-on for Google without any consideration of the actual facts in this case.

Today is a sad day for the internet.

In phone book terms, the business model of this couple was roughly equivalent
to plastering stickers with their phone number over all the other entries in
the phone book. Any end user wishing to get the information they wanted had to
go through an unnecessary step. Any destination, had to fight to prevent their
content from being overrun.

I am both a European and an American, and the fact of the matter is that the
European Commission is attempting to stifle American business. This ruling
does not protect users, and does not protect valid businesses, it protects
spammers.

Instead of trying to legislate our way into competitiveness, I would like to
see our countries focus on actually attempting to stimulate tech businesses,
because attempts like these just hurt technology companies overall. Sure, it
hurts American companies more than Europeans, but they're also in a better
position to shoulder the burden. This makes it tougher for smaller European
tech shops.

