European parliament set to call for break-up of Google in antitrust case

[NobleSavage]

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/21/european-parliament-break-up-of-google

Tomorrows headline: Europe disappears from the World Wide Web.

Seriously, I don't think it's time to pull that stunt yet. Can't they do something useful like fix Syria?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And where are the anti-competitive actions? Google is #1 in search because they do a good job and don't load tons of other stuff when you simply want to look for something. Anti-trust actions are warranted when a company gets a lot of power and uses that to force you to work with them but where is Google doing that? There's nothing wrong with winning market share by doing a good job.

 

[Juma]

There's nothing wrong with winning market share by doing a good job.

If that market share is almost 100% in a market vital for our information society there is.

 

[barbos]

Yeah, they want to break up Russia, now Google, yet they themselves feel the need to be in European Union.

 

[Juma]

Yeah, they want to break up Russia, now Google, yet they themselves feel the need to be in European Union.

TDL: Totally Devoid of Logic.

 

[barbos]

Yeah, they want to break up Russia, now Google, yet they themselves feel the need to be in European Union.

TDL: Totally Devoid of Logic.

So you say.

 

[Jayjay]

Didn't EU recently fine Microsoft for bundling their browser with Windows 98 or something? Whatever measures come out of this will certainly be completely anachronistic when they roll out, and won't change a thing because Google isn't a German or an EU company - at best they can force it to split to multiple subsidiaries which wouldn't make a lick of difference.

And upon reading the article, it turns out this isn't about "breaking up Google" at all, but just forcing them to unbundle their search engine from other services.

 

[barbos]

They can't legally break google up. They can just recommend it.
They can fine them and since google use Ireland (EU country) for tax evasion that fine could be astronomical.
...
I thought about it, EU should probably fine google, it will be better for US, because Google may think twice about tax evasion.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There's nothing wrong with winning market share by doing a good job.

If that market share is almost 100% in a market vital for our information society there is.

But this won't have any effect on their search engine dominance. They're trying to split off the search business from their other businesses. That will hurt their other businesses for no benefit to their competition.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Didn't EU recently fine Microsoft for bundling their browser with Windows 98 or something? Whatever measures come out of this will certainly be completely anachronistic when they roll out, and won't change a thing because Google isn't a German or an EU company - at best they can force it to split to multiple subsidiaries which wouldn't make a lick of difference.

And upon reading the article, it turns out this isn't about "breaking up Google" at all, but just forcing them to unbundle their search engine from other services.

The Microsoft case was different--Microsoft's sin was using their position to force the distribution of IE in an effort to destroy paid competition. I don't see anything like that from Google.

 

[Togo]

Didn't EU recently fine Microsoft for bundling their browser with Windows 98 or something? Whatever measures come out of this will certainly be completely anachronistic when they roll out, and won't change a thing because Google isn't a German or an EU company - at best they can force it to split to multiple subsidiaries which wouldn't make a lick of difference.

And upon reading the article, it turns out this isn't about "breaking up Google" at all, but just forcing them to unbundle their search engine from other services.

The Microsoft case was different--Microsoft's sin was using their position to force the distribution of IE in an effort to destroy paid competition. I don't see anything like that from Google.

They do some of that. If you're a start-up that does specialist searches, say a restaurant review site, Google will simply replicate the information from your site in a search summary, without paying you a dime. Several Google services compete with smaller companies, who find that their content appears on their rivals site, and when searching for their content, their sites appear below Google's in their searches. This quite effectively acts to restrain their business.

A breakup would prevent this. By stripping the search engine business out from the rest, Google would then need to account for information sharing between the two, and such measures would fall under existing anti-trust and competition legislation.

Moreover a breakup could be a prelude to a more comprehensive measure, forcing Google to locate its servers in Europe, thus making it much harder for Google to be used by US security organisations for industrial espionage in Europe, and to spy on European governments. The main obstacle to that is that Google is a large business with most of it's interests in the US, but if the search engine business is split off, then it becomes a much more achievable goal.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I like to Google Google. Does that make me part of the problem?

 

[Jarhyn]

The Microsoft case was different--Microsoft's sin was using their position to force the distribution of IE in an effort to destroy paid competition. I don't see anything like that from Google.

They do some of that. If you're a start-up that does specialist searches, say a restaurant review site, Google will simply replicate the information from your site in a search summary, without paying you a dime. Several Google services compete with smaller companies, who find that their content appears on their rivals site, and when searching for their content, their sites appear below Google's in their searches. This quite effectively acts to restrain their business.

A breakup would prevent this. By stripping the search engine business out from the rest, Google would then need to account for information sharing between the two, and such measures would fall under existing anti-trust and competition legislation.

Moreover a breakup could be a prelude to a more comprehensive measure, forcing Google to locate its servers in Europe, thus making it much harder for Google to be used by US security organisations for industrial espionage in Europe, and to spy on European governments. The main obstacle to that is that Google is a large business with most of it's interests in the US, but if the search engine business is split off, then it becomes a much more achievable goal.

Arguably, if someone doesn't want the body of their results showing up in google, they can set their robots.txt file. Then they shoot themselves in a different way: their site gets no hits at all. There are good and bad things associated with having one giant with such a natural monopoly. One is that Google, as a progressive company with a flexible strategy, tends to buy many of the startups with better ideas and no 'in' and incorporates those search heuristics.

The best path here is to decide to break up Google, but also to only do that when it starts being evil. Right now, that isn't the case. In the mean time we can go after actual companies with actual monopolies, of actual corporations, that are actually being evil.

 

[Togo]

They do some of that. If you're a start-up that does specialist searches, say a restaurant review site, Google will simply replicate the information from your site in a search summary, without paying you a dime. Several Google services compete with smaller companies, who find that their content appears on their rivals site, and when searching for their content, their sites appear below Google's in their searches. This quite effectively acts to restrain their business.

A breakup would prevent this. By stripping the search engine business out from the rest, Google would then need to account for information sharing between the two, and such measures would fall under existing anti-trust and competition legislation.

Moreover a breakup could be a prelude to a more comprehensive measure, forcing Google to locate its servers in Europe, thus making it much harder for Google to be used by US security organisations for industrial espionage in Europe, and to spy on European governments. The main obstacle to that is that Google is a large business with most of it's interests in the US, but if the search engine business is split off, then it becomes a much more achievable goal.

Arguably, if someone doesn't want the body of their results showing up in google, they can set their robots.txt file. Then they shoot themselves in a different way: their site gets no hits at all.

Precisely. So because the search engine is the same company as the one providing a restaurant review service, you can't both be found by the search engine and have a site with unique content. Instead your site's content will show up on Google's own site, and they get preferential listing on searches. Your start-up gets crushed, because the monopoly service provider for searches also owns a rival site.

There are good and bad things associated with having one giant with such a natural monopoly. One is that Google, as a progressive company with a flexible strategy, tends to buy many of the startups with better ideas and no 'in' and incorporates those search heuristics.

That's almost word for word the same excuse Microsoft came up with for why they should be allowed to dominate browser searches. People who don't want to sell their company can't develop it at all, and those businesses which Google doesn't want to buy simply fail.

The best path here is to decide to break up Google, but also to only do that when it starts being evil. Right now, that isn't the case.

I've just given you an example of Google being evil. This wasn't a hypothetical example, it's a real company that got crushed by Google about 20 months ago. It's not the only one. The fact is that it's almost impossible to start a company providing an internet service that competes with a service Google provides, because Google can and does simply steal the content and deprioritise rivals on searches. It's a classic monopoly situation, and an obvious target for anti-trust action.

Google are an actual monopoly actually exploiting their actual market position in an actually 'evil' way. What's the confusion here?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Has Google engaged in any anti-competitive actions to enforce its dominance or is it simply a better search engine than the rest? I don't think that there's anything that prevents or hampers people from using Bing or Yahoo or AltaVista other than a lack of desire. Calling that sort of thing "anti-trust" would be like penalizing the Denver Broncos because their having both Peyton Manning and a couple of awesome wide receivers isn't fair to the Buffalo Bills. It's not really what the term means.

 

[Bronzeage]

The solution is simple. An international convention will be called to divide the alphabet among Bing, Google, and Yahoo. This could take years but for the past 70 years, Europeans have managed to avoid slaughtering millions of their fellow Europeans with the desire of owning the other side of a river. Even though Europe is an oldish continent, 70 decades without a marching an army through someone else's country is beginning show a strain. There was that nasty Balkan business, but no one ever really considered them Europeans, in the first place, if not for like a geological accident, all of them would be Turks, anyway.

This google thing could be just what the Europeans need to get it all out of their system.

 

[Togo]

Has Google engaged in any anti-competitive actions to enforce its dominance or is it simply a better search engine than the rest? I don't think that there's anything that prevents or hampers people from using Bing or Yahoo or AltaVista other than a lack of desire. Calling that sort of thing "anti-trust" would be like penalizing the Denver Broncos because their having both Peyton Manning and a couple of awesome wide receivers isn't fair to the Buffalo Bills. It's not really what the term means.

Which is probably why that isn't how it is being used.

The case isn't about Google's dominance of the search engine market. It's about Google using their dominance of the search engine market to support their other business interests. That's why the suggested course of action is not to stop them having dominance of the search engine market, but to split that business apart from their other business interests.

There's nothing wrong with them having a search engine. There's nothing wrong with them having a restaurant review site. There is something wrong with them altering their search results so that their businesses come up before their rivals, or taking data harvested from other companies for search results and copying the content of that company's business onto their own competing business' website.

If your post is talking about Bing and Yahoo, you've missed the point. Google will continue to kick their ass. What is being discussed is stopping them from using that position to help out their non-search businesses, of which they have a great many.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Has Google engaged in any anti-competitive actions to enforce its dominance or is it simply a better search engine than the rest? I don't think that there's anything that prevents or hampers people from using Bing or Yahoo or AltaVista other than a lack of desire. Calling that sort of thing "anti-trust" would be like penalizing the Denver Broncos because their having both Peyton Manning and a couple of awesome wide receivers isn't fair to the Buffalo Bills. It's not really what the term means.

Which is probably why that isn't how it is being used.

The case isn't about Google's dominance of the search engine market. It's about Google using their dominance of the search engine market to support their other business interests. That's why the suggested course of action is not to stop them having dominance of the search engine market, but to split that business apart from their other business interests.

There's nothing wrong with them having a search engine. There's nothing wrong with them having a restaurant review site. There is something wrong with them altering their search results so that their businesses come up before their rivals, or taking data harvested from other companies for search results and copying the content of that company's business onto their own competing business' website.

If your post is talking about Bing and Yahoo, you've missed the point. Google will continue to kick their ass. What is being discussed is stopping them from using that position to help out their non-search businesses, of which they have a great many.

That's a good point.

 

[Jarhyn]

Which is probably why that isn't how it is being used.

The case isn't about Google's dominance of the search engine market. It's about Google using their dominance of the search engine market to support their other business interests. That's why the suggested course of action is not to stop them having dominance of the search engine market, but to split that business apart from their other business interests.

There's nothing wrong with them having a search engine. There's nothing wrong with them having a restaurant review site. There is something wrong with them altering their search results so that their businesses come up before their rivals, or taking data harvested from other companies for search results and copying the content of that company's business onto their own competing business' website.

If your post is talking about Bing and Yahoo, you've missed the point. Google will continue to kick their ass. What is being discussed is stopping them from using that position to help out their non-search businesses, of which they have a great many.

That's a good point.

Not really. I want to search Google for restaurants, and get reviews of them. This is a feature that is a part of their search engine. You're proposing to leave the world a shittier place by making features impossible to implement, so that some other company can succeed with that shittier service. Google can and does buy out such companies in a regular basis to improve and build in those service features. And they don't charge for access to non-sponsored services. I don't WANT to see bumfuck.com's restraint reviews when I look up Denny's. I want to see Denny's prioritized as a result. If Google is artificially ranking competitors specifically, then that needs to stop... But that is different from prioritizing exclusively the Denny's site above bumfuck's results, and simply attaching the data of their reviews in place.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

That's a good point.

Not really. I want to search Google for restaurants, and get reviews of them. This is a feature that is a part of their search engine. You're proposing to leave the world a shittier place by making features impossible to implement, so that some other company can succeed with that shittier service. Google can and does buy out such companies in a regular basis to improve and build in those service features. And they don't charge for access to non-sponsored services. I don't WANT to see bumfuck.com's restraint reviews when I look up Denny's. I want to see Denny's prioritized as a result. If Google is artificially ranking competitors specifically, then that needs to stop... But that is different from prioritizing exclusively the Denny's site above bumfuck's results, and simply attaching the data of their reviews in place.

But you just said why this is a problem. Google buys out these companies to improve their service features. As a result, the competitors of the companies they buy out are at a competitive disadvantage because their former competitors are now part of the Google engine and they can't compete with that and Google's monopoly on the marketplace ranks the new division of Google higher. If, as is being proposed, a wall exists between the search engine and the companies which come up, then Google can't marginalize competitors in favour of their own divisions.