New EU Antitrust Frontier Emerges for Microsoft and Google: Spam Ads (politico.eu) 15
A new claim that Microsoft and Google are gaming the online advertising market to the detriment of smaller rivals threatens to set up a new antitrust clash in Europe, according to previously unseen data. Politico: The two U.S. giants appear to be flooding smaller search engine partners with spam ads and keeping some of the most valuable ads for themselves, according to data reviewed by POLITICO, in a move that draws parallels with the infamous $2.7 billion Google Shopping case. While EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager's 2015 offensive against Google's abuses in the search market got the backing of the EU General Court in November, there are some who say that blind spots in the case have allowed for certain violations to continue -- illustrated by Swedish price-comparison site PriceRunner's decision earlier this month to sue Google for $2.4 billion in damages. And now, according to the same data, both Google and its closest rival in the search engine space, Microsoft, are siphoning off so-called spam ads to smaller search engines that use their search results, as well as limiting the quantity of higher-value ads that appear on these partner search engines.
Seems redundant (Score:5, Insightful)
What other kind of web ads are there? They are ALL spam!
Re: (Score:2)
That's very generous of you, but nope, not buying it.
Re:Seems redundant (Score:5, Funny)
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Re:Seems redundant [around here] (Score:2)
Yes, but if you accept the "free" services then you have to eat the "lunch"? Ye olde TANSTAAFL, you know.
Re:Seems redundant [around here] (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah that's what they said about Cable TV. They said it wouldn't have commercials because you are paying for the service. We all see how well that worked out!
So no, don't just accept it because "free."
Re: Seems redundant [around here] (Score:3)
That wouldn't make sense for anybody to ever claim that, cable TV started as a community antenna that expanded the range of local channels to areas that had no line of sight, (CATV means Community Antenna Television) and you paid what was essentially a lease fee to use it. Even when cable exclusive channels began to appear, they still had ads. The only channels that never did have ads were the ones you specifically paid for, like HBO.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not following the reasoning here. Is this another #ReaganRINO joke?
Re: Seems redundant [around here] (Score:2)
He's saying "they" said that, only I don't think anybody actually said that, nor would it have made sense for them to. The cable industry has never tried to hide the fact that they've always been trying to find new ways to fuck you. They have regional monopolies so they can be rather open about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Okay... Still doesn't seem like much of a business plan now.
He who has the money makes the rules (Score:3)
Today's version of the Golden Rule to justify abuses of power by sufficiently large and profitable corporations. However it's kind of hard to argue against when they have created the specific forms of power they are abusing. Any company that actually depends on advertising for its profitability cannot afford to complain too loudly where the google or Facebook might hear.
DuckDuckGo? (Score:2)
Oh, and everybody should stop yelling at Alphabet, Inc. They never clicked on a TOS without reading it first to the best of my knowledge. I'm sure that somewhere in Google's TOS, there's a line essentially reading 'All your base are belong to us', or words to that effect.
As to the rest - well, let me put on my surprised face . . .
8^O
duck duck go is just Bing (Score:1)