Alleged Secret Google Antitrust Proposals Leaked 116
itwbennett writes "Google's latest proposals aimed at avoiding an antitrust fine from European authorities have been leaked amid growing anger over the secrecy surrounding the case. The documents, which have been verified by sources in possession of the originals, revealed the full remedies put forward by Google, the questionnaire that rivals have been asked to fill in giving their response to the remedies and a comparison document showing the changes in Google's remedies since the last proposals. Unlike the first round of so-called 'market testing,' Google's revised proposals have not been made public and were only sent to 125 interested parties who were warned that they were not to be made public."
Hmmm .... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, how exactly is it that Google gets to dictate that these stay private?
It's Google who committed the offenses, and they're being punished by the European regulators.
Why does this seem like Google is the one dictating how this plays out? That makes no sense to me.
These back room deals don't help any but Google -- who is no doubt proposing things which don't actually limit or change how they do things, but just a few token gestures.
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The information in the documents could be considered trade secrets. Google has a right to keep them sectret.
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no, they don't, as being proposal "to interested parties" to keep the company from being fined big ass sum of money.
furthermore, they're a publicly traded company and all the investors have the right to know... in fact it would have been only just if they had given the info out as press release due to that..
and no company should ever be allowed to bri... negotiate plea deals behind closed doors. it's a fucking travesty whenever it happens.
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When the EU took action against Microsoft, IE had about a 60% share in Europe... and falling.
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Or, alternately, we conclude Google is just trying to cover their own asses and drag this on for as long as possible while still doing the exact same thing.
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Actually the whole idea is to keep capitalism working as it is intended, as a self-organising system of commerce and employment, while buttressing against pathological states that such a system can fall into. It's a way to - in principle - get the best of both worlds.
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If that's capitalism working as it is intended, then the goal of every capitalist is to destroy capitalism.
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This isn't a tautology contest.
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Bad as the NSA are, I don't want to blame them for everything bad in this world; but Snowden-based news stories have clearly shown that they use their broad power not just to spy for the military but to maintain US economic advantage, and I would not be shocked at all if the EU was given a warm and courteous* NSL or similar nastygram to scare them into both being soft on US-based Google and giving them a de facto speedy but non-public trial.
The proposed changes to search results seem reasonable to me, but t
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The whole investigation was done by a group controoled by Microsoft, so Bing is unlikely to be a target.
Re:They built the best search engine, so punish th (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps instead of modding this as flameait, you should ue a search engine, perhaps even Bing, where you can find Reuters articles and other with information like the following:
"Lobby group FairSearch, whose members include complainants Microsoft, online travel agency Expedia and British price comparison site Foundem, expressed doubts over the effectiveness of Google's proposal.
"It seems that no genuinely significant changes have been made to the initial proposal, so it is difficult to see how the new package can hope to solve the competition concerns Mr Almunia (the EU Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia) has declared must be addressed," FairSearch lawyer Thomas Vinje said.
ICOMP, another lobby group that that counts Microsoft and four other complainants among its members, agreed."
I see Microsoft is putting those Android patent dollars to good use.
Run MS Windows video games with Wine! (Score:2)
I just hope that Steam Box & OS take off, esp. OS as it would mean finally that I could probably dump using Windows altogether as I primarily only use it for gaming.
Have you tried using Wine [wikipedia.org] to run MS Windows video games? I started doing that about 6 months ago & have had very good results.
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For the purposes of comparing search engines, Bing and Yahoo are the same.
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Yes, but Yahoo uses Bing under the hood, so there's no real point in suing Yahoo. It'd be like suing Dell or HP over a Windows antitrust issue. There might be some legal basis for it, but they're just reselling someone else's product.
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Really, is it a crime to be better than your competitors?
The case isn't about the search engine, but using a dominant position in search to create unfair competition in other areas. Like someone with dominant position in operating systems using it to promote their own browser over rivals.
Re:They built the best search engine, so punish th (Score:5, Insightful)
Search engines? At the time they came out there was a crowded market in Internet search. There are still competitors that come and go, and Google does not appear to be interested in buying them out.
Advertising? Last time I checked, Doubleclick was not the only ad-delivery that's blocked by my adblocker...
Mail? Gmail is certainly not the only e-mail provider, by a longshot, and most of us who've migrated to it have done so because it's proven to be long-term reliable so our e-mail addresses haven't had to change.
Calendaring, collaboration, productivity suites, file storage? No, lots of companies do those things.
Web Browsers? Given that I'm typing this using a Mozilla browser...
Operating Systems? Android has competition with iOS, and to a lesser extent with Windows Phone and Blackberry. Chrome is in its relative infancy, competing with MacOS, Windows, GNU/Linux, and even Android.
Maps? I can get maps from several providers.
I won't deny, Google does one hell of a good job integrating their various services, and they're also willing to modify their services at-will. They provide platforms for which others can develop things to either use features of Google's services or can integrate their own services, but they are willing to yank the floor out from under someone's creation with little or no notice. But, they're not usually charging the developer or user of this third-party addon either, so it's hard to claim that they're not in their rights to do this.
If the issue is the very nature of the tight integration, where a user will go from using Google's search engine to using their maps, calendar, e-mail, etc, again I point out that they've made the entire process of using these systems very smooth, and that when a Google service has proven to be clunky people don't use it. They also don't stop competitors like Microsoft or even Yahoo from developing their own integrated suites.
I'd really like to know what's considered antitrust...
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If you had to completely obliterate all competition before you could be prosecuted for anticompetitive action, it would completely defeat the purpose of the legislation.
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You have just completely not read my post, have you? I mean literally the only thing it says is that you don't have to be a monopoly to be engaged in actionable anticompetitive behaviour.
You do have to engage in anticompetitive behaviour (Score:1)
You do have to engage in anticompetitive behaviour, though.
And that behaviour must be able to push people there, which is why it's under "Monopoly abuse" that this law appears.
If you decide that everyone who buys your new web browser must delete Windows off their machine, it may damage Microsoft ONLY IF people have hobson's choice in the matter.
If they don't have the ability to make it so, then all they've damaged is their own sales because people will leave.
I can preclude anyone shopping at my store I like
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Antitrust law disagrees.
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If you had to completely obliterate all competition before you could be prosecuted for anticompetitive action, it would completely defeat the purpose of the legislation.
Possession of a monopoly position is a pre-requisite to being able to engage in anti-competitive action, as least per my non-lawyerly understanding. Up until you possess a monopoly position anything you do that isn't otherwise illegal is just competition. Antitrust legislation comes into play when a competitor that has achieved monopoly power in one market abuses that position to maintain that position or -- even worse -- leverage an advantage in other markets.
Keep in mind that it is not illegal to becom
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I think that the EU antitrust prosecutors are trying to call Google a vertical monopoly, citing how various Google services tie into other Google services tightly. Thing is, they d
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So... whether or not there is a monopoly is irrelevant to an antitrust investigation?
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If you had to completely obliterate all competition before you could be prosecuted for anticompetitive action, it would completely defeat the purpose of the legislation.
Microsoft kept Apple's heartbeat alive for a decade, including infusing tons of cash, so they could dodge monopoly charges by pointing to them as a competitor.
In the 1950s, Alcoa execs went to jail because they kept prices low, making it difficult for competitors to arise, not for killing them off.
It's all a stupid game for politicians to act like kings demanding kickbacks. Don't play right? Release the surface argument the hoi polloi buys, and bring them back in line.
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You're thinking of the American antitrust case against Microsoft.
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Nope, the integration issues that prompted the US case were already dealt with: the browser ballot issue came down to MS' decision to preinstall IE.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/02/microsofts-eu-browser-ballot-approved-arrives-march-1/ [arstechnica.com]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case [wikipedia.org]
The ballot was one of the ways to remedy the situation.
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The American case wound up requiring that Microsoft share APIs and generally make it less of a pain in the ass to provide a competing, compatible browser in Windows, but allowed it to continue to bundle IE. The EU case dealt with the issue of whether including IE at all constituted an anticompetitive action against other browsers. My point being that the EU is stricter about what constitutes anticompetitive promotion of one's own products in the software space.
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Actually it was mainly because they tied IE directly into the OS making it a necessity.
No. This was never argued in the EU case. And isn't true for any modern version of Windows from long before the EU case. The EU case against IE was about Microsoft using bundling with the dominant Windows-platform as an unfair advantage to win in the browser market. Exactly similar to the case now, where EU is claiming Google is doing the same using its dominant position in search as an unfair advantage to win in other markets. The rules are different for companies that have a product with a dominant positi
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By contr
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To address your first question, the European settlement with MS required that they offer a screen when the PC first boots, with a choice of browsers in random order. The user clicks on one and their browser is downloaded and installed. No hoops.
Freechoice (Score:2)
And above all, in all these fields, Google doesn't restrict the free choice.
Users are freely allowed to go to google or any other provider.
Google doesn't follow any lock-in strategy.
In fact, with their "data libreration campaign" they even make their users aware that google follows open-desings making it easier to move personnal data in and out of the various google services. (GMail uses standard protocols like IMAP, SMTP, etc. GTalk is based on standard XMPP protocol, etc.)
Only for their phone is the choic
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The case isn't about restricting alternatives, but about promoting oneself and one's partners. The US tends to only concern itself with the former while the EU tends to make sure that the latter isn't allowed to go too far.
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It's not about whether Google dominates search (it's literally not part of the case). It's about whether they use that position to obtain (for themselves or their paying clients) leadership in other areas in which they do not have the best product. For example, Google Shopping is no longer an organic Search function, you need to pay to be featured there. Yet Google Shopping results appear ahead of organic search results, meaning people who pay Google get a leg up.
Competition law isn't about whether you domi
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Actually, yes, Intel and PC manufacturers were subject to a massive antitrust action for doing that. [engadget.com]
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Dell settled for $100m for taking those kickbacks from Intel.
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In the EU, for an American company - Yes. Google. Microsoft. Amazon.
In the EU, for a European company, they actively promote that. Airbus. RBS. BP.
In the US, for an American company - Only if they reach some completely arbitrary threshold of "too big", which at least since Standard Oil has apparently applies solely to technology companies, while the banking industry can snort blow off the asses of underage Filipino prostitutes with impuni
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It has nothing to do with size. AT&T and Microsoft were engaged in specific, targetted actions against their competitors, while Goldman Sachs and Fannie Mae were not. You should have taken the fact that you had to introduce arbitrary-looking exceptions to your hypothesis as a warning that because your hypothesis was wrong.
Re:They built the best search engine, so punish th (Score:4, Interesting)
You've missed a prerequisite here.
The things that AT&T and Microsoft got busted for, while specific and targeted, don't break the law when done by a "not too big" company.
If you wrote your own OS today, and bundled your own browser with it, specifically and targetedly intending to undercut Microsoft's sales - You have done absolutely nothing wrong. You could even brag about your attempts in your SEC filings, and comfortably remain on the legal side of the fence.
Microsoft's actions only crossed into antitrust territory because they exceed a magic (and completely arbitrary) threshold for size.
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don't break the law when done by a "not too big" company
Yes, because effects scale with the size of the actor and correspondingly different laws apply to a five-man operation in a basement than to a multinational with 90% market share. Would you be equally surprised if I told you that I'm allowed to fry food in my kitchen with impunity, but I'd need to install specialised ventilation equipment to open a fried chicken restaurant?
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[...]
"because effects scale with the size of the actor"
Oh-kaaay... Should I, um, just leave you to debate yourself on this one?
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In the EU, for a European company, they actively promote that. Airbus. RBS. BP.
Don't let the fact it's called British Petroleum fool you it hasn't been British for over 10 years.
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What? BP is headquartered in London. By most standards that still makes them a British company.
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Assclowns who modded him down, answer the question instead of behaving in a shameful way, trying to hide the question.
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He's begging the question so nobody is under any obligation to answer it. He might as well have said "Is it a crime for Google to save orphaned puppies?" because it would've had as much relevance to what Google is being prosecuted for.
What is Google alleged to have done wrong? (Score:5, Informative)
This information is completely missing from the summary and from the article it links to.
Re:What is Google alleged to have done wrong? (Score:5, Informative)
FTA: "[...]abused its dominant market position. [...] prioritizing its services in search results, scraping content from rival websites, tying advertisers in with exclusivity clauses [...] making it difficult to move advertising campaigns away from its sites."
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Various online services - advertisers, travel sites, online stores - object to the fact that Google prioritises itself and its partners over organic search results on the results page. They argue that it disadvantages anyone who's not paying to be one of Google's partners.
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Well I would've thought it was patently obvious that any action to prevent antitrust (even the existence of a Competition Commission) was contrary to laissez-faire principles, but the GP did ask what the objection was.
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Holy misnegation Batman.
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Well the EU knows how expensive it is to build a search engine. Jacques Chirac felt that french pride was offended because an American company named Google was getting lots of love from around the world and no french ones were (not joking, he was constantly making public comments disparaging US companies for somehow invading french culture as if it were a precious commodity) so he wanted to build a france centric search engine called Quaero. After spending millions of dollars on it, and eventually realizing
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I have a hard time seeing that as wrong. Why should paid links not be at the top of their search results? Do they sue the billboard companies for only putting ads from paying customers on their billboards?
Golden Goose (Score:2)
Look, kill it, quick! Just like they did with AT&T
Cant have those pesky companies making a profit in this socialist 'state'. I still want to know who Google pissed off to bring the wrath of the feds down on them.
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You talk about fair markets and your example is AT&T, a company that had a government-enforced monopoly? You must be a real threat on the debate circuit.
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And if you don't agree with every single law of the country in which you maintain citizenship? Or should we keep all the laws in our country (whichever country that happens to be) the same and if we come to disagree with one find another country to move to?
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If you're a corporation, yes. Free-market globalisation implies that companies should weigh restrictive markets like they would weigh any other aspect of doing business with a nation, and conversely a nation should view the restrictiveness of its markets in line with the penalties in lost business from multinationals.
If you're not a corporation, then you have this thing called a "vote" instead.
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And the thread was started by somebody who is presumably an individual criticizing the apparent pattern of governments discouraging profitable organizations. Agree or not, I feel like it is reasonable, as individuals, to debate the merits of various laws and whether we feel they produce a desirable outcome.
It also seems perfectly reasonable to me for a corporation to criticize the laws of a particular jurisdiction and even lobby to have them changed. The challenge is obviously trying to achieve a system w
The only way to keep a secret... (Score:3)
Google's revised proposals have not been made public and were only sent to 125 interested parties who were warned that they were not to be made public.
Apparently they never heard the maxim that the only way to keep a secret is if just two people know and one of them is dead.
Apple browser bundling (Score:2)
I'm still waiting for them to go after Apple for browser bundling. Until then their crusades will ring hollow.
For one thing (Score:1)
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Odd. I was able to log in with an apple icloud account on my android to read email. And I'm pretty sure you never need to log in with a google account if you don't want to use google services.
What are you trying to do, and what is happening such that you cannot do it?
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Sure, so you pick no account at all, then add other accounts as desired. Just like my iPad needs an iTunes account or none at all, and the Windows phone I used a years ago needed a MS account or none. It's not much of a shackle if you can say "nah, no thanks" and still have a perfectly usable device.
Unless your goal is to use google personalized services (mail, storage, phone backup, etc) without creating a google account, which seems unlikely to end well for anyone involved.
trust europe union? seriously? (Score:2)
How is it that Google doesn't violate the GPL? (Score:1)
And no, I'm not talking about the Android-related controversy. I'm talking about all the GPL'd code that they use internally.
According to the GPL, if you modify some GPL code and then make your modified version available to others, you also have to make the code available.
Google isn't releasing desktop apps with most of their products, but they are making it possible for people to use the GPL code they modified through their web services and whatnot.
It seems to me that just because they let the public m
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Thanks for the clarification on that! I'm amazed that the GPL has such a big loophole in it. I'll no doubt review the current state of open-source licenses. (I have a lot of reading to do.)