EU Offers Google Chance To Settle Prior To Anti-Trust Enquiry

Fluffeh writes "The EU has accused Google of abusing its dominant position in advertising to benefit its own advertising services at the expense of competitors. In a twist however, rather than initiating formal proceedings, the EU has given Google a chance to settle the whole matter without much fuss. They outlined four changes that Google can make that will put it firmly back in the good graces of the EU. Google has been given 'a matter of weeks' to propose remedies to the four issues — which all tie in with how search results are displayed, their format and their portability to other platforms. This matter has come before the EU based on complaints by a few small companies and Microsoft." The four issues: Displaying results to their own services specially, use of user reviews from other sites in search results, Advertising "...agreements result in de facto exclusivity requiring them to obtain all or most of their requirements of search advertisements from Google," and concerns that Google is imposing "...contractual restrictions on software developers which prevent them from offering tools that allow the seamless transfer of search advertising campaigns across AdWords and other platforms..."

Google

[hudsonwalls]

This is actually what most people commenting on Google's antitrust issues miss. The comments about how easy it is for people to change search engines is not relevant because it isn't even the issue. They cannot see forest from the trees.

Google's antitrust issues are not about the everyday user. Remember, you are not their customer. You are their product. The antitrust issues are about abuse towards other companies, ad networks and services. You may not care about this if you're selfish and just think about yourself, but the issue is very real.

Google is intentionally abusing their position to promote their own products and hide competitors. Yes, this thing matters. And not only are they promoting their own services over competitors, much of the data they use is scraped off those services. Great example is hotel, restaurant etc reviews on Google Maps. They are all taken from competitors services, and promoted way higher than those services in google search results. Google prohibits these things for other websites and penalizes them, but yet seem perfectly fine to do it themselves.

Another case in point is the exclusivity agreement in AdWords. If you want to use AdWords (and you often have to because it's the prominent player and they also own Doubleclick since long time ago), you cannot run your ads on competitors services. It is prohibited in the terms. That is just monopoly abuse.

Detailed review of competition

[Mattygfunk1]

The European Commission appears to be quite specific and detailed in it's requests. It's encouraging that a body has enough resources to protect even slight issues regarding competition.

That said, "slight" might be worth millions to Google / its competitors, especially as smaller firms have complained as well as Microsoft.

Re:Google

[neokushan]

I can easily be described as a google fanboy - I have (and love) my Android Phone (a Galaxy Nexus, in fact). I signed up to Gmail back when it was invite-only and people only had about 6 invites to give out (or sell/trade, as was the case back then) and I even use Google+. However, I completely agree with what the above poster is saying. Fanboyism aside, no company should be able to abuse its position in the marketplace. Even if Google isn't entirely guilty or found to not be doing anything deliberately that harms competition, its still absolutely appropriate that they're investigated and regulated accordingly.
The same should apply to any and all businesses with a large hold on the market, be they software companies, banks, pharmaceuticals, governments and so on.

I like Google on the whole and I genuinely believe that the founders were genuine in their model of "Do no Evil", but its a huge company now with a lot of power - I find it hard to believe that every single employee, every manager, every executive is entirely altruistic and doing what's best for everyone rather than what's just best for them/Google.

Re:Google

[chrb]

If you're going to shill against Google, you should make sure your points are valid; there are some valid things that they could be criticised for, but just making stuff up isn't going to work.

Great example is hotel, restaurant etc reviews on Google Maps. They are all taken from competitors services

No. The reviews on Google maps are submitted by users directly to Google. Non-Google sourced reviews are linked at the bottom ("Reviews from around the web:"), not embedded.

If you want to use AdWords, you cannot run your ads on competitors services. It is prohibited in the terms.

[citationneeded]

Prepare for a worse experience...

[brunes69]

Google is intentionally abusing their position to promote their own products and hide competitors. Yes, this thing matters.

LMFTFY:

Google is intentionally abusing their position to improve the overall user experience. Yes, this thing matters.

There, that's better.

When I do a search from JFK to LAX, guess what - it is NICE that Google immediately knows that I am interested in a flight and shows me prices. It is NICE that they will show me a map and photos of my destination. It reduces the number of clicks and get gets me what I want faster. The same can be said for all of Google's optimized in-line services. Furthermore, I have never in my life ever heard of evidence showing that Google actually hides the result of a competitor... do you have any evidence to back that up (that is not already refuted)?

Google is very upfront about everything they do, and there are ample other search engines you can use as a user, and that people can advertise on as well.

Re:Google

[smwny]

I am not sure if I am a google fanboy or not. I just use the best product which is often Google. I use GMail, Chromium, and Google Search. I have android on my phone/laptop and contributed to the Go Programming Language. What makes me probably not a google fanboy is I would drop any one of their products in a heartbeat if I found something better. Looking at the changes the EU wants, my answer to all but one is that I would personally be upset if they did what the EU wanted.

Displaying results to their own services specially

None of the EU's business. I like to see results from other services. It is useful.

use of user reviews from other sites in search results, Advertising

I like to see user reviews in my search results. I find it useful.

"...agreements result in de facto exclusivity requiring them to obtain all or most of their requirements of search advertisements from Google," and concerns that Google is imposing "...contractual restrictions on software developers which prevent them from offering tools that allow the seamless transfer of search advertising campaigns across AdWords and other platforms..."

This I agree with. It is wrong for Google to do these types of things. I would probably still not want the government to stop them... but that is because I lean libertarian. As much as I dislike anti-trust laws, this is what they are supposed to stop. I will save arguments over anti-trust laws for another day. But the other changes the EU wants are for Google to make their product less useful out of fairness to other companies. I don't care if the fact that Google has the money and power to make a better product makes it harder for others to compete. That is no reason to regulate them into removing features.

Re:Google

[Xest]

The problem is the double standards being applied. Whilst yes Google does abuse it's position in some cases, the things it doesn't aren't in any way as bad as the things other tech companies are guilty of. Microsoft's abuse of the standards process with OOXML, Apple's abuse of it's vertical integration, monopoly on music to lock people into it's platform, and it's strong market share in digital content to distort for example, the ebooks market, Facebook's constant illegal breaches of various data protection acts across the globe, Oracle's pretending it's a good little company to take over Sun, only to completely fuck previous commitments to openness etc.

All of these other companies are guilty of things that have been far more harmful to consumers, developers, and companies, yet only Google is the one being properly investigated. Is there something I'm unaware of that makes the advertising agency a magical gift to mankind that means it needs extra additional protections beyond the fact Microsoft was behind this original complaint and targetted ads because they know it's Google's lifeblood?

Re:Google

[Xest]

Completely false.

The EU has initiated anti-trust action against just as many European companies as foreign companies. Look at the mobile phone market for example, European companies like Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile etc. have been under a constant barrage of regulation from the EU for years over roaming fees etc.

Also your first example doesn't even make any sense whatsoever, AMD isn't even a European company, it's American.

Part the reason for Europe being quite good in this respect is because it is not one country, there's a lot of inter-country rivalry in the EU itself - you can guarantee a British judge wont rule in a French company's favour against a US company for example because of some feeling he must protect a European company because the Brits generally love the French about as much as they love the Germans - i.e. not very much. Similarly you'll get the same sentiment to various other countries in Europe, from their own neighbours. There just isn't some feeling of a European superstate that must trounce outsiders at all costs. Successive British and Czech governments for example have aligned far more closely with Washington than they have Brussels. There just isn't some grand European patriotism for your theory to work out.

The fact you've no idea whatsoever about the topic you're conversing about doesn't make you right, it just makes you a tit. Please, do Slashdot a favour, don't jump into conversations you don't have the foggiest about and assert that you're right and no other suggestion could possibly have any validity.

The biggest irony of it all is that the only reason you're complaining about it is because you yourself feel it's your patriotic American duty to stand up for American companies.

If only you knew which companies were actually American. That would be a start.

Re:Prepare for a worse experience...

[fwoop]

This is similar to how costco works. They have control over the retail space, and their goal is to make the shopping experience great for consumers.. That means dirt cheap, at the expense of suppliers. Suppliers go out of business, that's the point. So costco offers cheap ink refills, potentially putting companies like HP out of business. HP hates Costco. Lots of suppliers hate Costco, lots of company hates Costco, but consumers love Costco. Because only consumers matter. The difference here is competitors are using regulators instead of the market place to compete.