Are you suggesting the ruling is out of line with the regulations?
Previous anti-trust rulings seem pretty similar to me. If microsoft gets into trouble for making IE a default browser or bundling windows media player, I'm really not surprised with the way this went.
> It's absurd to think displaying relevant content in the context of what the User is searching for is illegal
It's not absurd to think that using your dominance in a market to heavily push people towards your own other services is illegal.
The Commission also note that it's not just the relevance of the link, but the position that makes a big difference.
> b) Furthermore, the effects cannot just be explained by the fact that the first result is more relevant because evidence also shows that moving the first result to the third rank leads to a reduction in the number of clicks by about 50%.
Since the introduction, it massively increased click-throughs to their already available service, with a corresponding huge decrease to competitors.
Was their own service good?
> Contemporary evidence from Google shows that the company was aware that Froogle's market performance was relatively poor (one internal document from 2006 stated "Froogle simply doesn't work").
So to be clear the problem is that they had a pretty naff service, which when treated similarly to other players lost out. They then promoted it far above other results, resulting in a huge shift towards them and away from their competitors. They did not compete by making the service better, but by using their huge dominance in one market to step into another and significantly harm the other players.
>Previous anti-trust rulings seem pretty similar to me. If microsoft gets into trouble for making IE a default browser or bundling windows media player, I'm really not surprised with the way this went.
Except this has created quite the slippery slope. What's stopping the EU from deciding it's unfair for a search engine to have it's own maps served prominently when searching an address? What's stopping the EU from deciding it's unfair for Google to provide reverse image search through it's webtool (you used to have to go to tineye if you wanted that)?
You can pretty much apply this ruling to every Google product that is not their basic, text, search engine. It seems like Google is on the edge of simply being classified a utility in the EU.
> Previous anti-trust rulings seem pretty similar to me. If microsoft gets into trouble for making IE a default browser or bundling windows media player, I'm really not surprised with the way this went.
What other Website do you know has been penalized for showing their own content and are being forced to give their competitors prominence? Microsoft had a 95%+ Monopoly on Desktop Operating Systems and wouldn't allow you to remove IE, anyone can easily go to amazon.com, bing.com, ebay.com or visit any other website to do their shopping if they prefer to.
Should Amazon be forced to show results for e-readers other than Kindle or audiobooks other than those on Audible? I don't think it's obvious at all where the line is.
Do amazon treat the kindle differently from other ebook readers on their site? If, for example, kobo fits my search better and they demote it while putting kindle content right at the top. Does that kind of thing happen?
In which case, quite possibly, if
* amazon can be argued to have a very large position, with the vast majority of searches going through it
* it can be shown that people tend to click almost exclusively on the first or first few links
* they are treating their own, different, service more favourably than competitors (and remember when in the context of google, it's how people would find the competitors in the first place)
* you can see them having hugely increased sales for their own product after the introduction, and massively decreased sales for other people
But then my understanding of the regulations comes largely from the links here.
Fundamentally though, if you're big enough to be concerned about this you should be able to afford the legal teams to figure this out or approach the commission to discuss what is and is not within the regulations.
To answer your first question, since I don't think it was rhetorical, I'm aware of at least 1 case where amazon stopped selling competing products (1).
I also just searched for "aaa batteries" and the first hit, after the AmazonBasics ad, were AmazonBasics batteries.
I'm not saying either of these are anti-competitive. I understand that more goes into it than just that. Just offering these little facts in case anyone else is curious.
(I do think that with both Amazon's increasing dominance and seemingly increasing aggressiveness, they're heading for legal issues).
Sounds about right. But first they'd have to establish that Amazon has market dominance in the entire EU. Which I don't think they have. So there's that.
Then they would investigate if they abuse this dominance to stifle competition. Which I think your batteries example would qualify for. They'd probably look a bit further though because I dunno, if it's just batteries :-p So they'd gather more evidence and if they find enough, they too will get an antitrust case.
Just that, market dominance in itself is not illegal, so if Amazon, unlike Google (knowingly!!) did, uses that dominance responsibly, no problem.
What I got from the article, the investigation has been very reasonable and it's beyond doubt that Google went way over the line.
People may question whether this EU regulation is right (but I believe it is), but from the looks of it, at least it's fair: With great market dominance comes great responsibility.
Previous anti-trust rulings seem pretty similar to me. If microsoft gets into trouble for making IE a default browser or bundling windows media player, I'm really not surprised with the way this went.
> It's absurd to think displaying relevant content in the context of what the User is searching for is illegal
It's not absurd to think that using your dominance in a market to heavily push people towards your own other services is illegal.
The Commission also note that it's not just the relevance of the link, but the position that makes a big difference.
> b) Furthermore, the effects cannot just be explained by the fact that the first result is more relevant because evidence also shows that moving the first result to the third rank leads to a reduction in the number of clicks by about 50%.
Since the introduction, it massively increased click-throughs to their already available service, with a corresponding huge decrease to competitors.
Was their own service good?
> Contemporary evidence from Google shows that the company was aware that Froogle's market performance was relatively poor (one internal document from 2006 stated "Froogle simply doesn't work").
So to be clear the problem is that they had a pretty naff service, which when treated similarly to other players lost out. They then promoted it far above other results, resulting in a huge shift towards them and away from their competitors. They did not compete by making the service better, but by using their huge dominance in one market to step into another and significantly harm the other players.