EU To Hit Google With Antitrust Charges 247
Bruce66423 sends news that the European Union has decided to hit Google with antitrust charges that could lead to fines of over $6 billion. The EU has been investigating Google for five years now. "The European Commission has highlighted four main areas of concern in its investigation: potential bias in Google’s search results, scraping content from rival websites, agreements with advertisers that may exclude rival search-advertising services and contracts that limit marketers from using other platforms." They're also keeping an eye on Android-related business practices.
from the don't-be-too-good-at-what-you-do dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty much captures it. You can also go, with Politicians: They don't care why they'll take your shit anyway, Or "Google didn't bribe enough people in the EU"
Re:from the don't-be-too-good-at-what-you-do dept. (Score:4, Interesting)
In Europe we already tried allowing a winner-takes-it-all strategy where a very good leader keeps the monopoly over a (market/region/population), it was called an absolute monarchy.
It looks good for as long as the original manager (who reached the position as the best in a meritocracy) stays in place. It lasts for a generation, when the competent leader legates the role to their heirs, who may or may not be prepared to maintain the same level of quality service.
By that time, it is too late to displace the incompetent newcomers - all the network effects that entrenched the original leader as a monopoly are still in place and are too strong to overcome even when there are better alternatives, except by a disruptive process that redefines the rules of the game in full. I heard you Americans didn't like absolute monarchies? You should then understand the EU's position.
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In Europe we already tried allowing a winner-takes-it-all strategy where a very good leader keeps the monopoly over a (market/region/population), it was called an absolute monarchy.
Google is not winner take all, nor is it a monopoly. I can't comment on it being monarchy. I suspect you are in no position to do so either. If you want a "European Tradition" that's in play here I would go with either the Mafia or just the general shakedown.
How to monopolize (Score:2)
Step 1: Offer a compelling product.
Step 2: Offer it in a cheaper *and* more open way that the competition.
Step 3: Repeat step 2 over and over while network effects kick in. As trust and network effects continue to escalate, you become the "default choice".
Step 4: Only go here when you want to be evil. Stop offering such a good price. Don't be as open as you used to be. Structure your prices around keeping competition out rather than simply being "better". Hire lobbyists and start offering regulatory officia
Singled out? (Score:2)
For all of the problems they listed, isn't Apple far bigger and far worse with said problems? Why do I need Apple hardware to merely develop iOS?
Isn't Android something of a problem? At least I can change search engines no-cost, who cares if they show a map with their search results (that's kind of what I'd want if I'm searching for a location or business, isn't it?). But Android has become progressively more closed-source, Google-specific, and if I want to adopt a different app store, that's going to cost
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For all of the problems they listed, isn't Apple far bigger and far worse with said problems? Why do I need Apple hardware to merely develop iOS?
I assume it's because Apple isn't in a monopoly or market-dominant position.
Re:Singled out? (Score:5, Insightful)
You wouldn't say Apple has as strong or a stronger hold on the music and mobile phone markets? There's plenty of adequate competition for search engines.
If nobody else even knows about alternative search engines, you can't really hold Google liable for that, can you?
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You wouldn't say Apple has as strong or a stronger hold on the music and mobile phone markets?
On mobile phone markets, definitely not - last I checked Android was dominant there.
I can't say about the digital music market - if I had to guess, Apple is probably #1 there with iTunes, but not to the extent where they can control it.
There's plenty of adequate competition for search engines. If nobody else even knows about alternative search engines, you can't really hold Google liable for that, can you?
You can if they are shown to have abused their dominance position, e.g. by using tie-in to promote their other products, or by excluding their competitors. It doesn't really matter how they've gotten into that position in the first place, the damage is the same.
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You can if they are shown to have abused their dominance position, e.g. by using tie-in to promote their other products,
It's not illegal to use successful products to promote other products. otherwise we'd have already done Microsoft for antitrust again. That's half their business model, literally.
or by excluding their competitors.
Yeah, Google doesn't do that either. You can use google to find other search engines.
Re: Singled out? (Score:2)
So Google should get off scot free with breaking the law because "Apple do it too"?
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You don't need Apple hardware to develop for iOS. It happens that Apple won't support any of the tools which enable such development, but then, why should they? You realise that MS doesn't support developing Windows applications on non-Windows OSs too, right? Same goes for Windows Phone.
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The problems they are listing are violations of anti-trust not your annoyances with how you have to develop. Apple isn't a monopoly. The costs associated with the lockin (even if one wanted to grant that) for iOS development are trivial.
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MS should be investigated too. Pushing a phone UI on their monopoly desktop OS to sell phones and tablets sucks for everyone.
Seriously, MS's attempts to push things have done more to advance linux on the desktop than anything else. Look at Vista and Win 8
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MS should be investigated too. Pushing a phone UI on their monopoly desktop OS to sell phones and tablets sucks for everyone.
Seriously, MS's attempts to push things have done more to advance linux on the desktop than anything else. Look at Vista and Win 8
Which doesn't add up since XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 are still all more popular as a desktop/laptop OS than all variants of Linux combined.
People are tribal even when they don't realize it. (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as I read the headline, I hoped that Google would beat the EU. It took effort to remember the Microsoft anti-trust case of 25 years ago, and how -- for many of the same issues -- I wanted the DOJ to grind MS into the dust.
Re:People are tribal even when they don't realize (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly! Looks like we need to have all the antitrust discussions again - how it's ok to have a monopoly but not ok to use that to grab market share on other markets, how monopoly power does not mean 100% market share etc. Too many are too young to remember from the MS antitrust days or maybe they have forgotten all that.
And if you think that it's wrong of EU to investigate an American company, think about it this way: with EU and US doing these investigations, we can have more faith in that all monopoly abusing companies will be investigated somewhere - even if their home country is turning a blind eye. This is good on both sides - it's not like this will really have a huge effect on Google anyway.
Re:People are tribal even when they don't realize (Score:5, Informative)
And if you think that it's wrong of EU to investigate an American company, think about it this way:
Google is a European company.
Actually, many European companies.
http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/locations/ [google.com]
Google's European headquarter is in Ireland... well, actually, it's an Irish company that is headquartered in Bermuda.
Google USA licenses its IP to Google Ireland Holdings (headquartered in Bermuda).
In turn, Google Ireland Holdings sub-licenses the IP to its wholly owned subsidiary in the Netherlands: Google Netherlands Holdings B.V.
Then Google Netherlands Holdings B.V. sub-sub-licenses the IP to another Google Ireland Holdings subsidiary: Google Ireland Ltd.
To coordinate all this, Google has a network of corporations in individual EU States, usually just "sales support" staff who run the ad-sales and ad-placements.
TLDR: The EU can't break up Google USA, but they can force Google Ireland Holdings to GTFO or change the way it offers services in the EU.
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TLDR: The EU can't break up Google USA, but they can force Google Ireland Holdings to GTFO or change the way it offers services in the EU.
But aren't they just holding companies for the IP (as you explained) and the actual services are provided by a completly different entity? Your search request may run on servers not owned by Google Ireland or Google Netherlands.
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Google is not a European company. Google has subsidiary companies that are registered in many countries, but they are mostly just sales offices. From your link: "We moved into our headquarters in Mountain View, California—better known as the Googleplex—in 2004.". Most international companies have subsidiaries where necessary -- either for tax purposes, or because the local governments require it.
Same thing for McDonalds, IBM, or any other multinational company.
Personally, I'd like to see Goog
Re:People are tribal even when they don't realize (Score:5, Insightful)
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What Google should be investigated for is linking their search service to their failed social media service - in order for Google to establish canonical authorship on content, you have to link the page to a Google+ account, no other well known public profile (Twitter, Facebook etc) will do, you have to have an account on Google+.
That's something worth looking hard at.
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You couldn't buy a computer (and still can't) without Windows.
But with a computer you could always buy the parts and build your own. Slashdot will regularly feature posts from companies selling non-Windows computers. Just because IE is installed doesn't force you to use it.
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Re:People are tribal even when they don't realize (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the reason you feel different is that Google isn't forcing people to use Google. This is a little bit different than Internet Exploder, which MS was forcing people to keep installed when using the OS. But one could just as easily type www.yahoo.com into the URL, or even www.bing.com into the URL. Heck those are easier, less characters. Perhaps people don't want to do this because Google is a better search engine?
Google isn't a Monopoly by any means. At the time of its Anti-Trust case, Microsoft was effectively a monopoly on all PCs, and was acting like a monopolist dickwad. Microsoft well deserved the Anti-Trust treatment. The unfortunate fallout from the Microsoft cases were that governments got the bright idea to bring Anti-Trust lawsuits any tech market leader. Google just happens to be in line this week.
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Google isn't a Monopoly by any means. At the time of its Anti-Trust case, Microsoft was effectively a monopoly on all PCs,
Actually, if you look at the EU anti-trust case against Microsoft you can see that it wasn't the fact that Windows was installed on 99% of PCs that they objected to. It was the fact that they used that position to then lock others out of other markets, such as media players and web browsers. The fix was to require the creation of Windows N, which is just Windows without Microsoft's media player pre-installed (thanks EU for cutting out some bloatware), and to implement the browser choice window.
Google is now
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Yep. Got all those things when I created a google account. Don't use any of them. And they've never tried to force me to use them, nor forbidden me from using somethin
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You can enter www.yahoo.com any time and use yahoo instead of google. For a while now. Since Yahoo Search used to be powered by Google.
But anyway. You could also download and install ANY OTHER BROWSER, even using IE. Microsoft DID NOT force you to use IE to browse the web.
And Google is in a dominant position, and, while it doesn't force anyone to use their products or services, they showcase them in a very special way. Go to www.google.com. Do you see any ads? YES, ONE: An ad for CHROME, which, guess what?
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This is a little bit different than Internet Exploder, which MS was forcing people to keep installed when using the OS. But one could just as easily type www.yahoo.com into the URL, or even www.bing.com into the URL.
But could just as easily launch Netscape from their desktop as they could IE from their desktop.
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"a company is property of an individual"
No, it isn'. It is the commonal property of its shareholders (whose count may sometimes get down to one), whose interests are represented by the Board of Directors.
But then, (democratic) countries are the commonal property of their citizens, whose interests are represented by the Government.
This means that whatever rationalization you want to come with in order to preserve companies can and should, ipso facto, be applied just the same to countries.
Like they'll really be fined enough to care. (Score:2)
Even the highest fines anyone's given out so far are still marginal enough to be considered the cost of doing business for the penalized corporation.
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Discarding the very idea of software patents would be better, but I don't see a lot of EU acceptance of that idea.
I searched for "advertisement" on Google (Score:3)
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Regulation is ok, but the EU can't be a bad actor (Score:2)
Google does have an effective monopoly in search, and it's not a bad idea to have some degree of regulation in place to make sure that it doesn't harm consumers. (Though nonsense like a 'right to be forgotten' is going too far, and should be dropped)
The problem is that that very well may not be the EU's only motive here. At about the same time that the charges were announced, Gunther Oettinger, the EU's Digital Commissioner gave a speech where he said:
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Google is not a monopoly. (Score:3, Insightful)
All one has to do to use another search engine is google "search engine".
Google doesn't even return Google when you google "search engine". It does return half a dozen other search engines, including Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo. A market leader perhaps, but not a monopoly.
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Good post. When I read the summary, I thought it would have been snarky but somewhat truthful to revise the summary to reflect the true situation:
The European Commission has highlighted five main areas of concern in its investigation: potential bias in Google’s search results, scraping content from rival websites, agreements with advertisers that may exclude rival search-advertising services, being a US company, and contracts that limit marketers from using other platforms."
The EU selectively targets these large fines only at non-EU based companies, which I don't think is coincidence. I agree it was smart to investigate, but they haven't really produced much in terms of evidence to substantiate a $6bn fine. This isn't nearly as egregious as what MS pulled in the past, but its being treated as such.
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Wow! speed... (Score:2, Funny)
Product/Consumer/Provider (Score:5, Insightful)
Such an antitrust case is about protecting Google's consumers/customers from Google's de-facto monopoly in the market.
You (the product) switching from google to another search provider only means that Google has 0.00000001% less product to sell, and is unlikely to impact anyone.
However a business (the customer) switching to another provider, could (and would) cut that business off from over 90% of its potential customers (you). Something that is likely to impact them greatly (if not kill the business).
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It's been said before, but bares repeating: If you're using Google's "services" for free, then you are the product and not the consumer/customer.
it was wrong then and it's still wrong now. Such a simplistic definition doesn't properly describe the situation. Clearly you are Google's customer, because they require your custom in order to sell advertising. You are both customer and product.
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But they do seem to be abusing their power (Score:3)
I have found Google is now setting up Google Plus accounts for local businesses. Without their knowledge or permission. If you're a small business you had better start filling in your G+ profile, because it looks bad if the contact details are wrong or incomplete. If you have a website is irrelevant - the G+ profile appears first.
Has Google decided to create a G+ account for me?
Re:This sh*t again? (Score:5, Insightful)
The bigger problem is not for people who use the engine to find things, it's for owners of things to be found. When a single search engine has 90% of all traffic, whether your business shows up in its search results or not, and if it does, then how high relative to its competitors, can easily become the single biggest determinant of your success. If such placement is not fair (whatever that means), there is an issue.
You sound like a laissez-faire unregulated market proponent, so let me put it this way. Such markets, presumably, work fine when all actors are rational and base their decisions on facts. When a single company becomes in charge of delivering those facts, to the extent that most people implicitly trust them, it becomes trivial for it to skew the market by selectively withholding facts or downplaying their relevance.
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Actually the problem is that Google was telling businesses "You must give us all your advertising business or we won't show you in our search results" (or some variation of that statement. Which is to say, they were using their near-monopoly position to blackmail people into giving them their business. Preventing that sort of extortion is exactly why anti-monopoly laws were passed in the first place.
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Google has changed from their original "don't be evil" attitude to a "grow, grow, grow" attitude. And it's showing up in court. From their 0 year lawsuit with Skyhook Wireless, ;documented at http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com... [gpsbusinessnews.com]:
> Later on, while Skyhook had signed a contract with Motorola where the device maker was to use Skyhook XPS technology, but shortly after the deal was publicly announced (April 2010) Google forced Motorola to used its own ge
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At what point is that abusive versus just good business. What if Google had two prices where one was for customers that used their android services (store, geo-location, etc.) and the other was for those that didn't want the geo-location service. It makes sense for Google to offer the clients getting everything a lower price as they can make it up with their geo-location service.
Is that considered abusive? If so then most companies would have to be considered abusive.
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So Europeans need to be forced to use Bing and Yahoo.
No, but Google needs to be forced to not abuse its position of dominance.
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Exactly how are they abusing their dominant position?
I don't know, you'll have to ask the EU commission about that. TFA says that they have found "potential bias in Google’s search results, ..., agreements with advertisers that may exclude rival search-advertising services, and contracts that limit marketers from using other platforms". I assume the details are in their report.
It is so easy to change search engines that the end user lock in is just not a problem.
It doesn't matter how easy it is or not if people aren't doing it, and Google is taking advantage of that. You can achieve a position of market dominance entirely by fair means -
Re:This sh*t again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Antitrust isn't really about consumers (although arguable it is ultimately) but about making sure the free market is both a market and free.
When the entire industry is subject to a single companies whim, then its a bad thing. Microsofts anticompetitive practices in the 90s and early 2000s held the IT industry back years, because web browsers stop being competitive and for the web industry that meant we where stuck with a bloody awful lowest common denominator (ie6) for nearly a decade. At least until EU sanctions gave firefox a fighting chance, and web browsers had to compete again and we saw real innovation finally.
Wheres the innovation in searching, when the only engine one needs to care about is google. Wheres the innovation in content, when the only rule in web presence is "does googles algorithm like it". One company holds millions of IT workers fates in their hands, and thats not safe and its not a free market, just a market.
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Antitrust isn't really about consumers (although arguable it is ultimately) but about making sure the free market is both a market and free.
You should have prepended that sentence with the qualifier "American"
In Europe, anti-trust philosophy and regulation is most definitely focused around consumer welfare.
If you re-read the reporting a bit more carefully, the problem with Google's actions is not that it is bad for competition, but that it is bad for consumer welfare.
This is a major difference in thinking between Europe and the USA.
There are other large differences, particularly as a result of the EU's need to integrate markets across its membe
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You should have prepended that sentence with the qualifier "American"
In Europe, anti-trust philosophy and regulation is most definitely focused around consumer welfare.
Effectively the two are one and the same thing. A non-free non-market is bad for consumer welfare.
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If you are going to make the claim that the EU Microsoft Anti-Trust penalties were responsible for the popularity of other browsers, your going to need to support it. The EU ruling / measures had almost no impact on the use of Mozilla/Opera. What I remember from the time was that the only real result was to help curtail the bullying of system builders, and of course a nice influx of cash for the EU.
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And yet, we didn't learn a single thing about the IE "incident". Chrome is the "dominant" browser now, and many websites are designing around chrome ("ugh, no one uses that SlowFox anymore!").
I had a security camera application (Ubiquiti's AirVision) running fine. It kept nagging me for an update. The update now only works with Chrome. Fuck me, right?
No they can't ignore consumer protections (Score:5, Insightful)
No they can't. I know it's hard for Americans with company worship to understand, but companies are held to account for their actions in the EU, and EU consumer laws have the express purpose of limiting the abuse of consumers by sociopathic profit-seekers. Anti-trust is part of that, because anti-competitive behavior screws other companies that are behaving responsibly. The relevant example here is consumer data protection which Google despises.
Sorry, but that's not how it works here. If companies don't want to be a part of EU consumer-friendly civilization, they can go wreak their havoc elsewhere. Here companies are expected to serve the public good, not just seek profit without rules nor accountability.
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It's very easy to go to a different search engine. We all know who they are, there's no discovery cost. There's no physical cost, and it's not time consuming. There's no captive audience. It's not possible to force users to use google for search. What Google is being criticized for here is linking to Google maps, shopping and other search products without also providing links to competitors. wtf? If I want to read Yelp, I'll go to yelp.com
I know many don't bother to read the articles before posting, but didn't you read the summary either? Not a single thing of what you write here is relevant to what this EU case is about (hint: the case is about Google business practices).
Article vs summary (Score:2)
The article is about increased scrutiny from Europe for a range of tech companies on a variety of issues. In terms of Google it mentions there is no specific list of charges yet. The summary indicates there is a specific list of charges and names a dollar figure. So for example when talking about hypothetical charges the articles says, "If Google fails to rebut any formal charges, Ms. Vestager could levy a fine that could exceed 6 billion euros, or $6.4 billion" which is very different from the summary.
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Their business practices in an industry where you are not required to use their product, there is no physical cost and no time lost.
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Their business practices in an industry where you are not required to use their product, there is no physical cost and no time lost.
However because of Google's dominance in search it has got to the point that if you don't appear in their results its as if you don't exist on the internet.
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The buisness would be harmed, but that does not show the customers are harmed. Under the same logic a business choosing not to sell their product to another buisness harms the second buisness and should be charged with the anti-trust laws.
Companies can dictate what search engines people use to find them, they can opt out of letting google index them, they just cant force the people to use those search engine.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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>Block them and 20% of websites instantly stop working.
You're talking about google hosted javascript libraries which is a FREE service google offers that speeds up site loading because the files are most likely already cached. They are common libraries used by many independent creators. They aren't "Google Scripts" and you're ignorance leads you to make incorrect assumptions.
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Why do you have to convince others to switch in order for you to use ddg or some other search engine? Could it be because googles business practices made it the engine that everyone uses?
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There are more people in the world then consumers, 'we' are not the end all and be all of markets.
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This is consumer protection laws, not business protection laws.. Anti-trust laws are written how how business harm customers focusing on how they interact with businesses int he same general field and how it works on the market for that product.
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now you are adding in more subjective and asking why it is hard to understand.
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As a consumer you can control which search engine you use.
As a business owner, you can choose which engine you work through, but you either play by Google's rules OR face potentially crippling reductions in your ability to reach consumers. If a company chooses the later, they run a real risk of going out of business.
When that company goes under, consumer choice beyond search engine are decreased. Individual consumers, even if they utilize other search engines to look for less visibl
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So you are saying if a company is successful they cease being able to operate in a manner that made them successful and now much be run by politicians whose job it is to protect other businesses, while destroying yours?
Re:No they can't ignore consumer protections (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the sociopathic profit-seekers who work for companies whose customers can go elsewhere. The sociopathic profit-seekers in government get to abuse to their heart's content. And lest there be any doubt about the latter, the regulator in question was yesterday specifically calling for abuse of "antitrust" action against American companies [techdirt.com].
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You misunderstand his motives, because you are projecting your own onto other people.
The EU is mainly concerned with two things. Firstly, it wants a competitive market. It seems that the market is pretty much sewn up at the moment - Google for search, YouTube for video, Facebook for collecting personal data, Twitter for microblogging. The market doesn't have much competition, and markets don't work without competition. The fact that the current incumbents are American is irrelevant - if you look at EU, ther
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First you claim the EU wants to be competitive, then you say it wants to be self sufficient and basically "block everyone out".
Yes. I know this. I live in Argentina, and we're constantly being hostigated by EU and USA. Americans want "free trade agreements" (where they reserve to refuse products from us selectively), and EU demands we "allow importing of their products" (while agreeing they won't be doing the same in return). At least the EU is a bit more honest about it.
I don't mind countries (or "economic
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You misunderstand. EU grain isn't all that competitive, which is why there is a lot of it wasted. The EU still pays farmers to produce that wasted grain so that the countries which supply cheaper grain can't cut us off and make us starve. No matter what happens the EU will have enough food, but at the same time isn't distorting markets or blocking cheaper imports.
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Good luck with that
Actually, hell would not exactly freeze over if you block Google. In fact, if they did, people would just use another search engine (IXquick, DuckDuckGo or others) and almost every web site would load a lot faster without the cross-site scripting attack from Google. As a second advantage, people might start to think twice before handing their entire life to some evil company when it comes to documents or agendas.
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Good luck with that
Actually, hell would not exactly freeze over if you block Google. In fact, if they did, people would just use another search engine (IXquick, DuckDuckGo or others)
If it's that easy for consumers to use another search engine, then what is the reason for the antitrust charges?
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No, DuckDuckGo is not a meta search engine. The entire point of it's service is that the details of what you searched for do not go to bing/yahoo/google/..., and do not get used for tracking you. Being a meta engine would defeat the entire point.
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Actually it does go to bing and yahoo, just not google.
http://arstechnica.com/busines... [arstechnica.com]
So what does DuckDuckGo do differently, besides putting up cheeky billboards in San Francisco? DuckDuckGo works by using both its own Web crawler and data from other search engines, including Yahoo, Bing, and Blekko—but not Google. The company claims not to log IP addresses or user agents, and “no cookies are used by default." It also uses default encryption modeled after HTTPS Everywhere.
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lol. "Dear Google, we realise you have decided to pull out of business with the EU member states so we write to you to regretfully inform you that all your companies in Ireland and the Netherlands that you created for some reason or other will also be pulling out of doing business with the EU. We have communicated this information to the US treasury department as we believe the cash held by those companies will be sent back to the USA and we're all wondering whether you'll be paying the tax bill by money tr
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"Dear Google, we realise you have decided to pull out of business with the EU member states so we write to you to regretfully inform you that all your companies in Ireland and the Netherlands..."
Will get their assets and bank accounts frozen till the end of this antitrust trial. Once the trial reaches a firm dictum, assets will be seized if/as needed in order to fulfill the penalties. Remaining funds and assets' ownership, if any, will be moved to Google's USA main headquarters with notification to USA tr
Re:No they can't ignore consumer protections (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately (for you) Google is in a position to play hardball, unlike Microsoft who needed to sell stuff to the EU. What's the EU going to do, block Google? Good luck with that.
The EU is the richest market in the world. [wikipedia.org] Its GDP is more than that of the USA by more than $1Trillion, its population almost double. Google will not want to be blocked in the richest trading bloc in the world.
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Re:This sh*t again? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's their product, they can do whatever they want with it. Don't like it? Use something else. It's not like you are forced to use Google services.
It's the EUs market, they can do whatever they want with it. Don't like it? Go somewhere else.
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Yes, it's the EU market... For the moment. The transatlantic treaty will take care of that. How cute for the euro-peons to believe they have some measure of leverage and then cut off their own throat by siding with the US against Russia. :)
The GDP of the EU is the highest of any market in the world, [wikipedia.org] $1trillion more than the USA. The EU has absolutely tons of leverage.
So you want to abolish anti-trust laws? (Score:2)
Your point of view essentially says: "All and any anti-trust laws should be abolished because 'It's their product and they can do with it whatever they want'".
That bit about "backdoor deals" is just an ad-hoc argument not to apply anti-trust law in this case. Right? Abuse is abuse, back-door or front-door.
I'm curious what other laws you'd want to see abolished for reasons like that. Sarbanes-Oxley? FDA regulation of new drugs? Wildlife preserves? A lot of legislation is there for a very good reason:
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I'm actually in favor of lowering the US drinking age, at least to allow consumption with family at home. College drinking was much less of a _surprise_ when I went to college, and the binge drinking I see among college students unaware or rebelling against their parents is appalling. A "small beer" with dinner in places where the water was untrustworthy, or a sip of champagne to toast with on New Year's Eve with family, was part of growing up.
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Where in America is tapwater untrustworthy?
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They did. N900, one of the most functional smartphones that have existed. They were poised to come to market with an OS better than iOS or Android, then brought in a Microsoft CEO, who abandoned it, to go with Microsoft's sub-par phone OS.
Then the stock tanks, and Microsoft buys them. Almost like it was planned when Elop was brought in.
Really because Microsoft didn't want its phone OS to gain market share ? So it needed a giant FUSTERCLUCK to make sure that worked out that way ?
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You seem to be under the impression that everyone is as well-informed as you are. Unless you are calling for a centralised education system where everyone is forced to know the ins-and-outs of every company they do business with, some oversight from the people who know as much of that stuff as humanly possible is needed. This is a particularly tricky situation, as a company whose rank is lowered by Google will suffer, whereas the users of Google might not notice, and so keep on using it thinking everythin
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