Google Rejects EU Antitrust Charges, Says Evidence is Lacking (reuters.com) 75
Google said Thursday it is rejecting accusations made by European Union that it abuses its dominant position with its shopping and advertising services, ramping up its fight back against the bloc's regulators. "The Commission's revised case still rests on a theory that doesn't fit the reality of how most people shop online," said Kent Walker, Google's general counsel, in a blog post. From a report on Reuters: "We never compromised the quality or relevance of the information we received. On the contrary, we improved it. That isn't 'favoring' -- that's listening to our customers," Walker said. His comments came as the company formally replied to the two charges, one of which it received in April last year and the other in July this year, earlier on Thursday.The official blog post here. Further reporting on Bloomberg.
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We never compromised the quality or relevance of the information...
Is that why never get any shopping results when looking for 45ACP?
Yawn... (Score:4, Funny)
Google Rejects EU Antitrust Charges, Says Evidence is Lacking
They and everybody else ever accused of anti trust violations.
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OK, so if I rob a bank I can just reject the charges and everything will be alright? I don't get this.
Here'a a more accurate anaogy: You are rejecting a couple of guys in suits with sunglasses and cigarette in their mouths who demand payment or, you know, things might get broken, be a shame if that happened.
Fog of Google over EU (Score:2)
So in retaliation Google forgets the EU, erasing all the EU member countries from their database resulting in worldwide amnesia, plummeting EU markets and clever stitching of Google Maps that show Russia now on the Atlantic coastline... It's a smaller world after all.
Anyone expected Google to accept EU's assertions? (Score:2)
"We never compromised the quality or relevance of the information we received. On the contrary, we improved it. That isn't 'favoring' -- that's listening to our customers,"
Really! Is Google's response a surprise?
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* but I think Google has a good point in the subject (but I can be very wrong: I'm not from EU [I'm Brazillian])
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When searching for a specific branded product by name and model number, as I need to make am exact like for like replacement, and the first 6 results are for the competitors of the product I searched for, instead of stores selling the specific thing I want, I can't see how this is can be called anything even close to "improving" the results.
Re: Anyone expected Google to accept EU's assertio (Score:2)
What makes you say that's Google's doing? SEO tries to do exactly that, and Google has been sued a few times for squashing some SEO practices.
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The "sponsored" tags next to 3 of them.
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Google monopoly? (Score:3, Insightful)
If Google is a monopoly, what could it possibly have a monopoly on?
Search engines? There is Bing, DuckDuckGo, Amazon and whatever Apple has underpinning its search
Android? Yeah, there's Android, but there is also Cyanogen, and some other Linux based wannabe phone OSs, like FireFox OS, Tizen. And if one looks beyond that, there is Apple, and even Microsoft.
Phones? Yeah, you may have the Nexus and Pixel, but there is Samsung, LG, Sony and a few others, notably Chinese. And again, there are iPhones, Lumias, Blu, and so on.
And if they're talking shopping, as the above blurb suggests, I never use Google to search. It's almost always Amazon, and on a few occasions, I've ordered things online directly from store sites like BB&B, when the thing I wanted wasn't available in stores.
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Ant's are VERY trustworthy. I can predict their behavior reliably. Put food out, they eat it. Trust in it.
Re:Google monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Antitrust laws cover more than just monopolies. It covers collusion and price fixing as well (usually in the same charge since it is almost impossible to have price fixing without collusion). It isn't illegal to be a monopoly. What is illegal is abuse of that monopoly. Also, it isn't required for a business to have an absolute monopoly to be considered as a defacto monopoly. It is called "market dominance" and abuse of that dominance has the same effect as if they were a monopoly.
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It has a dominance of mobile operating systems and search engines. It uses those to create its ad dominance. IMO, that in itself isn't a problem. What is a problem is the terms manufacturer's have to agree to to bundle the Play Store with Android, terms that force manufacturers to take a bunch of other apps along with the Play Store, terms that also forbid creating a forked version of Android. So manufacturers can either have there own version of Android, or Google's version with the Play Store, as many peo
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You don't want to look up Google Pegs Market Niche.
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Apparently, Google has a monopoly on kicking the shit out of Apple and Microsoft by making things people want.
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As far as customers went, the Microsoft of the 90s was a dream company - just like Netscape, Google and Silicon Graphics once were. Every product of theirs was quality - at the time. Yeah, you had the issue of alternate OSs being crap, but everywhere that Microsoft had competition, they really exceled. Internet Explorer snatched market share from Netscape, Office pummelled Lotus and Word Perfect, VC++ ran rings around Borland, NT on Intel pretty much killed off Unix on Intel (before Linux came along), an
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Monopoly =/= anti-trust.
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Google said Thursday it is rejecting accusations made by European Union that it abuses its dominant position with its shopping and advertising services, ramping up its fight back against the bloc's regulators.
'Dominant position' implies that they are using their high visibility in their shopping and advertising to promote other products/services of theirs. This implies that they have a monopoly on something - which I refuted above. I'm not a big fan of Google, but let's not hype their influence here. As I pointed out above, I rarely depend on Google Ads or Services to find anything. I usually do a search on whatever I'm using. If it's my Android tablet, then it's Google, but if it is my iPhone or iPad, it
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I know the argument, but have been saying that the evidence is not there that the dominance has let to new things for them
Take the map example. Yeah, I have their maps. But they are by no means the only game in town: there is Bing Maps, MapQuest and a few others that I forget off the top of my head. If someone is using an Android phone or phablet, they'll probably use it just b'cos it's there, and it's so well known, but any iPhone user has Apple Maps, laptop users have Bing Maps (on Windows 8-10). Al
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I may use google to look things up about a given product, but I can't recall ever buying one from them. Usually I find some tech site reviews etc and then either buy it in-store, from Amazon, eBay, or a trusted retailer/eTailer.
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And in 1995, I could have said of Microsoft's monopoly - There is BSD Unix, Linux, Solaris, Sol, OS/2 and whatever Apple had.
Monopolies are not stupid absolute.
Oh (Score:2)
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Just did google search for evidence (Score:2)
Google Forgets the EU... (Score:1)
In retaliation Google erases the EU from their database resulting in worldwide amnesia, plummeting EU markets and clever stitching of Google Maps that show Russia now on the Atlantic coastline...
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That's because Google delisted the evidence (Score:3)
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Yeah, but they only delisted the evidence because an EU citizen demanded they forget it.
Evidence (Score:2)
"We googled it and we couldn't find any evidence of wrongdoing on our part, your honor"
Customers vs. cattle (Score:2)
"We never compromised the quality or relevance of the information we received. On the contrary, we improved it. That isn't 'favoring' -- that's listening to our customers."
Google is stating the truth. It's just that we have to keep in mind who Google's customers are. The vast majority of Google service users are cattle and not customers. We don't pay Google any money, and in return Google doesn't consider the impact of their actions on the general public. There are cases where Google interests coinciden
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You're only seeing part of the picture.
Android isn't the product Google sells. Google search isn't the product. Gmail, Youtube, and all the other services Google provides are not the products that Google sells.
YOU are the product Google sells. The reason Google search is so awesome is so that YOU will use it, and Google can then sell your viewing of their page to advertisers. Same with Android, Youtube, Gmail, Drive, all of it.
The happier Google can keep its product, and the more Google knows about its prod
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You're only seeing part of the picture.
Android isn't the product Google sells. Google search isn't the product. Gmail, Youtube, and all the other services Google provides are not the products that Google sells.
YOU are the product Google sells. The reason Google search is so awesome is so that YOU will use it, and Google can then sell your viewing of their page to advertisers. Same with Android, Youtube, Gmail, Drive, all of it.
I see this and completely agree. We are the cattle, to be fattened, slaughtered, and sold.