Google To Comply With EU Search Demands To Avoid More Fines (bloomberg.com) 50
Google will comply with Europe's demands to change the way it runs its shopping search service, a rare instance of the internet giant bowing to regulatory pressure to avoid more fines. From a report: The Alphabet unit faced a Tuesday deadline to tell the European Union how it planned to follow an order to stop discriminating against rival shopping search services in the region. A Google spokeswoman said it is sharing that plan with regulators before the deadline expires, but declined to comment further. The EU fined Google a record 2.4 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in late June for breaking antitrust rules by skewing its general search results to unfairly favor its own shopping service over rival sites. The company had 60 days to propose how it would "stop its illegal content" and 90 days to make changes to how the company displays shopping results when users search for a product. Those changes need to be put in place by Sept. 28 to stave off a risk that the EU could fine the company 5 percent of daily revenue for each day it fails to comply. "The obligation to comply is fully Google's responsibility," the European Commission said in an emailed statement, without elaborating on what the company must do to comply.
Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
A corporation obeys laws. The way it should be.
Re:Not always as easy as it sounds. (Score:1, Insightful)
Obeying the law is much harder when they make the law as vague as possible, then just tell the company they are in violation and have to fix it - without telling them what "fixed" looks like.
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2.7B fine to ensure that Google will route your shopping click to search vendors making millions off from affiliate kickbacks. That's why these shopping search vendors are mad, it isn't the advertising revenue, it the up to 10% affiliate kickbacks they want. And you're a fool if you think stores paying large affiliate kickbacks have the lowest prices.
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Gee, it sucks that big successful corporations have to obey the laws
Re: Socialism stifling innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
Disturbingly, a company deciding to obey the law is considered news. Let that sink in...
Sooo (Score:1)
You can't use the service you own to advertise your products over others? Huh?
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Can they extend this to Comcast so that I don't have to watch hundreds of self serving ads tell me what a great and innovation company (uh monopoly) they are?
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And on top of that comes that Google isn't even all that relevant for product searches, Amazon and eBay are way more useful when you want to actually find stuff you can buy. Google product search on the other side has been a complete disappointment ever since it's inception.
Re:Extortion pure and simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike, say, MS-Office or Adobe Acrobat, no one is forced to use the Google search engine, for compatibility or any other reason. .
Nobody was forced to use Microsoft Windows either, never was. There always were competitive products out there. Same for Acrobat. However when Microsoft used their market power in OSes to gain a market in Browsers, the Antitrust lawyers closed in for a kill. Imho for the right reasons, even when it was unsuccessful in the end.
Same with Google: it doesn't matter how many other competitors there are or not are (and they exist, Bing being the biggest), Google has around 90%+ marketshare in general search engines. So if they use this to gain an advantage in a specialized search engine field, like price search, then they violate the law, just like MSFT did with their browser. All that matters, is Google a monopoly in the eye of the law, and it certainly is. Why or how they are a monopoly is totally irrelevant.
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Unlike, say, MS-Office or Adobe Acrobat, no one is forced to use the Google search engine, for compatibility or any other reason. .
Nobody was forced to use Microsoft Windows either, never was. There always were competitive products out there. Same for Acrobat. However when Microsoft used their market power in OSes to gain a market in Browsers, the Antitrust lawyers closed in for a kill. Imho for the right reasons, even when it was unsuccessful in the end.
Same with Google: it doesn't matter how many other competitors there are or not are (and they exist, Bing being the biggest), Google has around 90%+ marketshare in general search engines. So if they use this to gain an advantage in a specialized search engine field, like price search, then they violate the law, just like MSFT did with their browser. All that matters, is Google a monopoly in the eye of the law, and it certainly is. Why or how they are a monopoly is totally irrelevant.
Don't so quick about MS Windows. For a period of about 10 years in the early 1990's it was impossible to by a PC that did not include a MS Windows license. So you weren't forced to use Windows, you were only forced to buy it. At one point I had 28 copies of Windows in my office that I had been forced to buy and did not want.
Even if you refused to agree to the EULA upon purchasing your PC the was no way to get a refund from MS other than to go to small claims court. Something several hundred people did to Mi
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For a period of about 10 years in the early 1990's it was impossible to by a PC that did not include a MS Windows license.
That "ten years" is still ongoing today, unless you know something I don't know.
I can't walk into Staples and buy a computer without Windows. I might be able to get a desktop from a computer specialty store as a custom build. I certainly can't buy a new laptop in any retail store (that I'm aware of) without Windows.
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It is still somewhat difficult to get a PC today without Windows but it can be done. In the ten year monopoly period it was impossible. If MS found any OEM that was not shipping Windows with every PC they would yank their Windows license. OEMs were so afraid that they would buy more Windows licenses than units shipped just to be 100% certain they did not violate their OEM agreement of shipping 100% Windows.
There is a good clip of a Senator (Orin Hatch?) on the floor explaining how he personally spent a week
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It's not extortion if it's legal. Feel free to keep carrying water for a multi-billion dollar corporation that doesn't need your help, though!
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Re: Extortion pure and simple (Score:2)
> gives the best search results
Not anymore!
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Perhaps you only see these big cases because these are the ones that are big in US news. If a bunch of EU companies are fined in EU, that is rarely news here.
Also, companies with insane profits tend to get insane fines, hence the very large ones against Google and Facebook.
Instead of speculating I would recommend you to go directly to the source and search for yourself (note, there might be more but I only searched for the obvious search terms):
http://europa.eu/rapid/search-result.htm?text=antitrust+fines
Re:Would this happen to a EU company? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent down.
It's just bullshit. The EU fines plenty of local companies, but you only hear the endless whining on slashdot when an American company gets fined. American companies are not special in the EU. They have the choice of sticking to the laws, or taking their business elsewhere.
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If you were worth a shit you'd be running Risc OS, but it, like you, sucks.
And yet descendants the processors that were co-designed with it are now in every smartphone, every tablet, and most embedded devices.
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Re:Would this happen to a EU company? (Score:5, Insightful)
We often see the EU drag Google and Microsoft on to the carpet for another kangaroo court session, but does the EU actually do anything more than just be an instrument of xenophobic anti-Americanism? They need to clean their own house.
A good example: If VW were an American company and was discovered breaking the diesel emissions requirements, how long would they exist in Europe before being fined out of existence?
Getting a kick out of feeling like the perpetual victim are we? This only looks unfair to US corporations if you limit your field of view to subset of American companies that get fined and conveniently ignore the fact that European companies get monster fines from the EU too. The question you should be asking is why the EU is fining these guys while the US govt. sits happily by and does nothing while they screw US consumers in the same exact way? One of the things I like about the EU is that once in a while it actually kicks abusive mega corporations in the nuts with monster fines that actually get these assholes to pay attention and modify their behaviour. Meanwhile US politicians are still peddling re-packaged and re-branded versions of the old bullshit about 'voluntary self regulation by industry' and that a soulless corporation is a person with a sound set of christian moral values whose chief concern is the well being of the consumer.
Re:Would this happen to a EU company? (Score:5, Insightful)
The overwhelming majority of EU cases for anti-competitive behaviour involve European companies. That they aren't mentioned doesn't mean they don't happen. Unlike the US, the European Union does not use regulatory agencies as weapons of protectionism.
A good example: If VW were an American company and was discovered breaking the diesel emissions requirements, how long would they exist in Europe before being fined out of existence?
Considering that Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler haven't paid a cent for their cheating with diesel emissions in Europe, the answer is evident: indefinitely.
It is also interesting to note that GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler and its predecessors have never received fines in the US anywhere near to what the Americans slapped on VW despite all three having very long histories of all kinds of unlawful behaviour.
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Small steps on the way to 100% positive EU news.
Happy government news.
Happy movie reviews.
Good news from all local community reporters.
Communist nations tried to really push positive spin on their failing nations in the 1980's. Their closed populations craved US freedoms.
The more the EU now tries to reshape the internet the more the internet move on to become more fun and free.
The EU can regulate social media, news and ads a