Google Says India Anti-Trust Ruling Could Cause 'Irreparable Harm' and Reputational Loss to the Company (reuters.com) 53
Google has said an Indian antitrust ruling that found it was guilty of search bias could cause "irreparable" harm and reputational loss to the company, Reuters reported Thursday, citing a legal document. From the report: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) in February fined Google $20 million for abusing its position in online web search and also slammed the company for preventing its partners from using competing search services. After the ruling, Google had said the verdict raised only "narrow concerns," but in its plea challenging the CCI's ruling the search giant signaled the impact could be far greater. The order, the company said, "requires Google to change the way it conducts business in India on a lasting basis and the way it designs its search results page in India," according to a copy of its plea which was seen exclusively by Reuters. The CCI, among other things, had ordered Google to stop imposing restrictions on its direct search agreements with other publishers.
Google should leave (Score:1)
Translation (Score:5, Interesting)
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More specific translation:
"Preventing us from exercising our monopoly and skewing search results to that it benefits our or our partner's business will hurt out Business."
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Pretty sure it was "Preventing us from fucking consumers, and then lying to them about what we're doing." -- Google
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Re:simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
If a company's freedom would require "extortion," that tells the whole story right there.
You seem to think that India has some sort of Right to have foreign companies provide services there, even if the Indian Government doesn't like the services. But both sides of that might be bullshit; the company has to continually agree to provide the service, withdrawing it would never be "extortion" because they're not withholding something that belongs to somebody else or that somebody has a right to. And if their Government claims that the service isn't legal there as provided, then the most obvious, natural, and neutral answer is to simply not offer the service in that place.
Maybe India is making a wise choice, but still, the obvious answer for Google is to withdraw the service because India isn't as important as China and if you alter your service for small fish, then every country is going to completely run your business; and in conflicting ways.
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Great that you're proud of your excessive population, but I was talking about economic importance to advertisers like google.
Income per capita is very important for advertisers.
India is not a very interesting market for advertisers.
China has lots of people who buy two smart watches... for their dog.
Mexico is largely irrelevant to advertisers, other than on Mexican television. That much is true.
India has a GDP per capita of $1709. Spain has a GDP per capita of $36,340.
China is only around $8000, same as Mexi
Market share... (Score:5, Insightful)
Turn off all google services for india. wait a few weeks and when the citizens complain enough to their politicians they will likely beg google to come back under the current system.
Or competitors will move in gobble up Googles market share when Google goes back to California to sulk and then lobby for Google not to be let back on the market. After a while with a number of competitors, some of them probably local, who cater to the Indian market better than Google can nobody will miss Google. This is probably what Google is afraid of too because this is also one of the biggest reason why Google has trouble penetrating the few bastions of resistance like Russia where a local competitor (Yandex) simply does a better job. Google is a company that gained a dominant market share here in the west and many other places like India (where their search market share hovers between 95 and 100%) thanks to a set of fortuitous circumstances and it knows that losing market share is an awful lot easier than clawing it back. So I think it is pretty unlikely that Google will ever voluntarily exclude themselves from a market and leave their 95% plus market share to the competition since a 95% market share constitutes every businessman's nirvana, a monopoly, and Google ain't letting go of that without a fight.
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Your analysis depends on if they only have people who care about market share, or if they also hired a few MBAs to think about making money.
It seems Google is the quasi-world's monopoly. (Score:1)
America First.
Google does from the search engine its own results's generator based in a controlled measure of what things should show their first rows.
And it does sort their priorities by U.S. interests.
For instance, when an Internet user wants to search products, Google will show 1st the U.S. products before than the national products.
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Google does from the search engine its own results's generator based in a controlled measure of what things should show their first rows.
Um, what? If you didn't have a stroke while typing that, I think I just had one trying to understand that... :(
WTF?
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You do realize there are a lot of Americans who are disgusted with Google's manipulation of SE results; or demonetizing YouTube videos of people who don't pass their ideological filter.
Google is quickly getting to the point that it has no friends anywhere. Their "Do No Evil" slogan will come back to haunt them.
Oh no (Score:2)
I'm sorry (Score:2)
Re: Irreparable harm to Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is irreparable harm, they should exit India and move on. If they're lying they will bargain and stay.
Wouldn't Google's actions be the cause? (Score:4, Informative)
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No. Secret actions, by definition, don't cause reputation damage. Similarly, it's arrests and convictions, not committing criminal acts, that puts you in jail.
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...Secret actions, by definition, don't cause reputation damage. Similarly, it's arrests and convictions, not committing criminal acts, that puts you in jail. ...
I see (and somewhat agree with) what you're saying. But if the acts were not committed in the first place...
Natural consequences of actions aren't the cause (Score:2)
No, I would disagree with your statement, although it is technically correct.
When we look for the cause of something, we are looking for an event or action that is the least reasonably expected, and/or one that was by least coerced choice.
For example, if some sniper shoots a car driver and the car swerves into a deep ravine, we don't say that the crash was caused by the driver slumping over the wheel as s/he died, or by the presence of the ravine, because slumping is what a dead body naturally does, and the
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they should be forced to offer a choice... (Score:1)
Whenever you setup Android or install Chrome, you should be offered a choice of search engine
Penalties and peanuts are same in India (Score:1)
Luckily for google and others, the penalty in India is nominal. Had they done the same in US or Europe, the million would have changed to billion.
hmm, one question (Score:1)
if Google is guilty of allowing bias in search, those harmed have a valid civil case for reimbursment, and if that bias is systemic, those harmed have the valid right to order those services terminated until the failure is repaired.
it's costing someones LARGE money losses in lost opportunity costs.