To copy from the previous discussion. These are the issues that are up for debate:
>The manner in which Google displays its own vertical search services compared with other, competing products
> How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - to include within its own services
> The exclusivity Google has to sell advertising around the search terms people use
> Restrictions on advertisers from moving their online ad campaigns to rival search engines
In my opinion, there's zero chance of Google being broken up, what's more likely is that limited regulations get introduced for services as they are provided in Europe. I recall there being a great hoo-haa about the EU breaking up Microsoft, what actually happened were regulations that they unbundle Media Player and Internet Explorer, and provide some networking specifications to allow for third party clients to interface with Windows. I imagine something similar will happen here.
The intention was never to break them up. MEPs calling for it is just to show the EU Commission that they have the political support to take the gloves off.
If you actually want to know the justification for the EU doing this you should read this paper by Ben Edelman.
If by "consulted", you mean that Ben has been paid to come up with papers exactly like this for various anti-google lobbies, many many times over the past 10 years, then yes, he has "consulted".
Ben has literally no legal training in antitrust law that i'm aware of, so his opining on it is somewhat interesting.
(I edited this comment because Ben does have a JD from Harvard law that I forgot about, so he does have legal training, just not anything related to antitrust law)
When he's not writing antitrust papers, he's busy writing scare papers about click fraud, or online ad deals.
There are plenty of people who have views i disagree with, and respect. But folks like Ben, whose views seem to change entirely with who is paying him (i've watched him argue the same thing both ways depending on whether MS was doing it or Google was doing it), are not even worth arguing with.
You only have to look at his testimony list to see where his views lie, and have since 2006.
> Ben does have a JD from Harvard law that I forgot about
A major omission when attacking someone's legal qualifications.
> When he's not writing antitrust papers, he's busy writing scare papers about click fraud, or online ad deals
Yes, and they're scary because they are true. The insidious thing about click fraud is that consumers are the mules who do the work but generally are only indirectly harmed. Advertisers and merchants really get screwed. Ben has been exposing those situations for a decade.
> You only have to look at his testimony list to see where his views lie, and have since 2006.
Actually I worked with him in 2005 and his views were consistent then as well. If he works on behalf of people who share his views, that's not a bad thing is it? It's fully disclosed, which is more than I can say for many of his attackers.
I do work for Google, but i explicitly don't speak for them on HN. I also don't work for Google Legal, and don't work on issues related to this stuff. I have opined on this stuff long before i worked for Google, and will long after.
Google literally does not pay me for my views on this.
Ben is literally paid for his anti-google views on this stuff.
You are of course, welcome to discount whatever you like. You should always read and judge everything critically :)
You may feel that way, and you may really be acting that way, but what matters is not so much what you do but how it is perceived. Simply being employed by someone introduces bias, or at least the perception of bias. Just as you raise important notes about Ben that readers of his "work" ought to be aware of while drawing conclusions from it, readers of your comments ought to be aware of your association to Google while drawing conclusions from what you say about its critics.
My conclusions from this thread are in fact that you mostly just happen to work for Google, that you have a long personal (and vaguely professional) interest in observing this dispute, and that Ben is a paid shill that abuses his credentials and the brand of his employer to make easy money. But it gave me pause that you weren't up-front about your own employer.
He's been consistently up-front about who he works for; he's even talked about which projects he's worked on. You haven't paid attention, and that's fine, but you can't then feign offense when he doesn't start every single conversation he has on the site with "I work for Google".
Also, once again: you can't accuse someone of being biased by their employer, and then say you've "taken pause" about it, without insulting that person's integrity. To do so casually says much more about you than the person you're talking about.
People like Daniel take a lot of flak on HN simply because they sign their names to their comments. As we saw downthread: not only do the anonymous assholes taking potshot not do that, but those anonymous people are actually paid shills.
It is fine to have questions about people, but you should have been much more careful asking them. You share a community with these people, but just now, you didn't act that way. Like they say on Wikipedia: WP:AGF.
(This is a hobby-horse issue with me on this site, because I've been here awhile and had a lot of dipshits question my integrity over utterly fictitious biases, like "you work in security so all that government contracting money you get selling vulnerabilities to the CIA is why your crypto advice is obviously corrupted by NSA".)
(Also: 'DannyBee is one of several compiler-wonk/lawyers we have on HN, and how cool is it that we have any of those? It pisses me off to see people try to chase them off with torches and pitchforks, even if those chasers are so dumb they're using nerf pitchforks.)
You are part of Google, an you are paid by them. You are invested in Google, and your interests are heavily aligned with them.
Claiming that they don't pay you for your views may be true in the sense that this is not an official assignment for you, but to pretend that you are not heavily incentivized to act in what you perceive to be Google's interests is dishonest.
Come on. Really? This is a ridiculous post. Seriously go back and read it. The worst part about Google is its employees insistence that they can do no wrong.
wfjackson and ckelvin are fakes, replying to and upvoting each other in order to astroturf this thread. This is the latest incarnation of a pro-Microsoft astroturfing campaign that has plagued this site for years, using these two accounts:
This person (or persons) is an accomplished if not professional pro-Microsoft astroturfer whose "contributions" to Hacker News consist of shilling for Microsoft, slagging Microsoft competitors, and covering their tracks. At one point they even created fake female identities to make it look like when we banned them, we were banning women (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7079380).
We ban any account that evidence suggests is part of this campaign or anything similar. It is a bad-faith abuse of this site that has cost us many hours of work that would otherwise have been poured into improving HN, so they steal from this community in addition to violating it.
It's especially galling to see them personally attack sincere users who don't hide their affiliations and don't snake around replying to themselves.
Everyone on HN works for someone.
I am not my company. Google has plenty of views i don't agree with, and I have plenty of views they don't agree with.
If you believe comments on HN (or almost anywhere else) should have conflict of interest disclosures, you may as well shut it all down.
Everything here is opinions of people, presented as opinions of people.
Indeed! Who cares about conflict of interest in a discussion thread? Your point is either valid or not, intelligent or not, it will persuade me or not. I don't need to know your entire background to see value, insights or lies in your remarks.
It is extremely hard to take this moralizing seriously when the only reason he's taking this flak is that he's actually signed his name to his comments and been forthcoming on the site about where he works. That's not something you can say about every opinionated HN commenter.
I agree. And intolerable to take when the provocation comes from an accomplished if not professional astroturfer who has plagued this site for years using dozens of accounts.
If you're going to impugn someone else's integrity, could you perhaps sign your name to the comment? I have no idea who you are. I'm just going to assume you work for Alibaba, or Vk.
Surely you can't be this blind to the power imbalance.
A Googler defending Google on HN has the backing of one of the most powerful corporations in the industry, and no risk to his future career.
Calling out this bias or even being critical of the Google carries potentially huge career risk.
Anonymity is a necessity if unpopular opinions are to be heard.
And by all means assume I work for a competitor (which I do not) - that doesn't change the fact that DannyBee is incentivized to support Google and yet tries to distinct himself from this truth.
Anonymity is vitally important to civic discourse, which is why it's so galling when it's recklessly abused for cowardly and pointless drive-by character assassination.
But that's what I'd expect to see from a secret shill for Yahoo.
There is no character assassination going on here. I'm simply pointing out the incentives. Bear in mind that DannyBee is also engaging in what you call 'character assasination' on the same basis.
You, on the other hand, are now name calling, denying the power imbalance I mentioned, and accusing me of lying.
Why do you feel the need to put so much emotional energy into defending DannyBee, who seems quite capable of defending himself?
You seem to have clearly deviated from what you call 'civic discourse' - why have you chosen to do that? Does it seem justified by my comment?
If you think so, then ask yourself why it is acceptable for you to break from 'civic discourse', and yet it is not justified for me to do so, as you claim I have. Do you think your opinion is more right, or more likely to receive support?
I'm disappointed you feel justified in your rude and dismissive behavior, but since you don't see any need to examine it, I request that you refrain from challenging my comments on that same basis in future.
I would certainly be not against some external entity or random event shutting HN down. That would lead to genesis of new communities and contribute to spreading the influence to several or dozens of separate entities.
Ironically, voice of the hackers, the independents, the non-affiliated is weak here. The voice of the tech establishment, the VCs, the startups, the megacorps is heard loud and clear.
Do you not see how HN is crucial for YC continued success as the VC company? YC doesn't have to censor anything, the increased presence of YC alumni defines the narrative.
I do not believe that it is healthy for most important tech community on the open internet to be so strongly influenced by one VC company.
Yeah, because surely YC would give up one of their most important generators of competitive advantage willingly.
Also, ofc, with you being one of the top HN members would not support that. I don't have any personal benefit from any outcome, but you do. Who is all class now?
edit:
I am curious, in what way, shape or form "external entity or random event" part of my comment is related to either presence or lack of my class? Care to elaborate?
It'll be amusing to watch you try to build an intellectually coherent narrative out of (a) insulting strangers for supposed conflicts of interest, as if it was possible to do that without directly questioning their integrity, and (b) openly suggesting that coercive force be used to shut down a forum that happens to host arguments you don't agree with.
(a) "A conflict of interest is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgement or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest." "The conflict in a conflict of interest exists whether or not a particular individual is actually influenced by the secondary interest. It exists if the circumstances are reasonably believed (on the basis of past experience and objective evidence) to create a risk that decisions may be unduly influenced by secondary interests."
It is reasonable to believe that a person discussing his employer on public forum creates a RISK that his posting decisions MAY be unduly influenced.
Stating that a conflict of interest exists doesn't question the integrity of the person per se. I am not sure why would you choose a COI definition that is easily disproven by Wikipedia.
(b) Simple. That is not what I said. "suggesting that coercive force to be used to shut down" != "[to] be not against some external entity or random event shutting down".
And finally, (c). You were the one going full ad hominem without addressing anything in my original argument.
I don't get your motivation, though. It is obvious that HN is skewed in UX/UI and in the discussion contents in the favor of YC and YC alumni. That's the point. What is your reason to be aggressive about that?
YC censors plenty on HN, especially negative stuff linked to YC alumni or startups.
I posted something the other day about the myo and i got a error page everytime I submitted it. tried submitting something else and bang it goes straight through.
I dont care that they censor stuff but that they are underhand and sneaky about it gives me pause for thought when I see content on here from YC startups, was it pushed to the front page artificially? Probably. Best to err on the side of caution and assume that it is just YC trying to sell me on their latest startup.
> YC censors plenty on HN, especially negative stuff linked to YC alumni or startups.
No, we don't do that. We actually take care to penalize stories less when they are negative about YC or YC-funded startups, and none of the HN software takes YC-related material into account. I mention the latter because what you're describing sounds like it was done by the software.
There must have been some other problem with your post. If you provide a link we'll be happy to look into it for you.
This was the link that I tried to post, I submitted it 9 days ago when I subsequently posted another Myo link to the offical website which was allowed to stay up. I tried to post 3 times each time it just disappeared and threw me back to the submission page. I then tried to make another submission, one about a drone being used by an estate agent, which went through fine, then I submitted a direct link to the Myo site which also went through fine. So I tried my original link again and got the same 'error'.
Interestingly enough if you look at the original article I tried to submit there is a line that says:
"Quick aside, but if you want to see how nearly every form of media is crooked, try submitting this to Hacker News and look at the Thalmic investors. Edit: don’t bother, we’re blacklisted or something."
So evidently others had a similar experience to me whislt trying to submit the story.
Ok, I found that in the logs. What you experienced was caused by the duplicate detector. That story had already been submitted by a different account, but was dead. (It was dead because the submitter had lost submission privileges because of prior off-topic posts.) The system redirected you to the existing post, which is how it tells you that you submitted a duplicate—but since you don't have "showdead" turned on in your profile, you didn't see it. This is a bug. We're working on a better duplicate detector, which should eliminate this problem.
Re the quote from that article, it's common for article writers to spice their posts with claims of being blacklisted. In HN's case, at least, you should take such claims with a lot of salt—they're usually groundless, and the ones that aren't are typically distorted. I tried to point that out in this case at the time (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8625890).
> In my opinion, there's zero chance of Google being broken up
In 2004 when the European commission fined Microsoft €497m, I thought the company had good enough lawyers and lobbies to overturn it. This case and the next one in 2008 finally resulted in more than $2bn in fines [1], more than 3% of its global revenue [2].
Interestingly the above story has comments that are far more scathing about Google, whereas the story I am now commenting on, which HN has favoured has mostly arguments in defence of Google. What's going on, PG?
It can happen due to 1) significant numbers of users flagging the link, 2) the admins demoting it, or 3) it attracting too many comments too quickly ("controversiality"). It seems likely 1 and 3 happened here, but due to a lack of transparency it's always impossible to rule out 2.
I work for the Pirate Party MEP in the Parliament. My understanding is that this is mostly about German (and to a lesser degree Spanish) publishers putting pressure on Google for their various interests, including that they want to be paid when Google uses snippets of their content in Google News:
https://juliareda.eu/2014/11/breaking-up-google-or-just-bank...
I think there are actually two interesting questions here since there are now many Pirate Parties in Europe. One about the general stance of pirate parties and one about the stance of the German PP specifically.
I would generally expect a pirate party to support free-of-charge publishing of snippets and linking to content on the internet as a basis for the open internet. On the other hand, I wonder whether the German Pirate Party is able to look beyond what may be construed as an interest of German publishing industry.
> On the other hand, I wonder whether the German Pirate Party is able to look beyond what may be construed as an interest of German publishing industry.
It's not actually in that industry's interest and even if in were, no, the Piratenpartei is completely opposed.
Noone is seeing any problem with defending google in one instance, and bashing them in another.
A monopoly should be defined by barriers to entry, not just market share. There's nothing preventing other large companies from entering the search space, and in fact many of them have (yahoo, microsoft, etc).
There are true monopolistic firms like Comcast or Time Warner, where there are serious logistic/economic barriers preventing other firms from entering the market. This doesn't seem like one of them to me.
There are serious logistic/economic barriers to enter the search space. Building a competitive search engine is very expensive. Ask the Bing people.
Yahoo Search is actually powered by Bing since 2009 according to Wikipedia. Their own search engine was not competitive enough. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search
> There are serious logistic/economic barriers to enter
> the search space.
But there were before Google started as well. Google entered the search engine party after it seemed to be over. I remember reading about them first on slashdot and thinking - wow - someone still thinks there's room to break into this? Surely portals are the proving ground. (Who knows? Maybe they are.)
Something particularly interesting about Google is that they just took the industry head-on. I'd guess that there'd be areas where you could build a kind of search engine that was better than the market leader, and focus on carving out a niche. Yandex have done just this with the Russian market. (and there's an example of a commercially-viable post-google search engine business).
But Google just went after being the leading power.
History in general, but in our space in particular, is written by small, well-coordinated teams who can repeatedly execute. If you can get that team together, you can do almost anything.
Just because it is expensive and technically hard doesn't mean Google is preventing them in any way.
What would be worrisome is if they abuse their market position. Is there strong evidence they do this in search? It'd be more concerning if they did to promote their other products.
I am refuting the statement "A monopoly should be defined by barriers to entry, not just market share." made by sfrank2147, specifically interpreted as "barriers of entry for search market", which are surprisingly high. Based on his definition, Google is deep into monopoly territory.
What a monopoly really is and whether Google qualifies is a separate question, and I'm recusing myself from commenting on this point.
The "many" examples you gave is actually just one: Microsoft. Both Yahoo and DuckDuckGo searches are essentially based on Bing.
There is tremendous barrier to entry in the search space - otherwise Bing wouldn't still suck compared to Google. The point of competition is to get good enough to steal market share from the entrenched incumbents or gain new users somehow. If that doesn't happen, for whatever reason, then you don't have strong competition.
In the US "natural" monopolies are allowed to exist, the best example of this being Microsoft with their Windows operating system. What isn't permissible, is using that monopoly to advantage your other products, and possibly more importantly disadvantage products of your competitors.
Natural monopolies are things like infrastructure where the entry cost of providing a fully separate parallel network (of railway lines, phone lines, broadband etc) is prohibitively high or where provision of such parallel network is undesirable for other reasons (e.g. environment).
Could you explain how an operating system is a natural monopoly?
Development of a new OS isn't cheap, but isn't prohibitively expensive either. It also isn't undesirable AFAICT.
> Could you explain how an operating system is a natural monopoly?
The cost of providing and OS and an entire ecosystem of device drivers and an an entire ecosystem of apps is very high.
But even if you manage to build that, the cost of training a significant percent of the population into using and developing for your platform is much higher. Getting a significant presence in the "brain space" of a population is very expensive. Having people switch to an alternative is even more expensive due to, among others, human network effects.
You're making implicit assumption that a new OS must come in with a new ecosystem built from scratch. There is a significant number of standards (e.g. POSIX, ELF, PDF etc) that can help you ensure different levels of interoperability with existing software and data. Implementing such standards lowers the cost of building an ecosystem significantly. Also, with the push to the cloud, fewer applications need to be provided natively.
Driving adoption is a matter for all products in the market, not specific to operating systems. You can make it easier with familiar UI, advertising and bundling your OS with hardware (although that may be anti-competitive practice it seems to be widely accepted where I live).
> Driving adoption is a matter for all products in the market, not specific to operating systems.
It's a matter of degree. To simplify, the costs of switching are linear in the complexity of using the product. I apologize that I don't know how to precisely model human network effects (you need to learn the product from someone) on top of it, but intuitively the societal costs are super-linear.
Computer systems are by far the most complex products human kind has ever produced. Given the simplistic model sketch above, the costs of switching in the computer industry are the highest humanity has ever seen, likely by orders of magnitude. Fun times.
I was blocked indefinitely from Adsense by Google's faulty algorithms (without explanation and with appeals rejected without explanation). I lost the revenue I'd earnt that month, and soon realised Google holds a monopoly in this space, and no one else offered a comparable service.
I'm all for Google's stronghold to be broken.
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Paypal got repeatedly slapped on their wrist for similar behavior until they somewhat understood. Why don't you gather people to start a class action suit ?
There are cases of true abuses but because it is "only" some few hundred dollars, people let go ... And Google keep the money. Reminds me a lot of a certain Paypal area.
The only real customer service Google has is for active AdWords advertisers, if you are on the AdSense side or an end-user of any of its other services then good luck getting any real assistance from them. Microsoft has amazing customer service in comparison for its Live services, which is saying a LOT.
Well, Google's customers are its product, seeing as it lives off ad revenue. :)
I hear what you are saying though, Google doesn't even care about its own services for what they are, just how much data they can collect from them for advertising.
They're in stark contrast to Microsoft who will keep things on life support forever because they think the service provides value to someone since they can prop it up with funds from elsewhere and a little TLC on occasion, because frequently they can spin them differently or make the changes neccesary for them to become profitable on their own (see BPOS to Office 365).
Pay for an Apps account. This gets you a live person to talk to and an SLA. Even if it's just one account on your personal domain (cost: $5/month), that alone makes it worth it.
Shockingly, Google allocates their CS to people who pay for their service.
> Shockingly, Google allocates their CS to people who pay for their service.
I don't expect 24x7 phone support for free services, but god damnit if my YouTube account gets shut down because of bullshit DMCA requests, or my AdSense account is closed because of fault algorithms suspecting bad-play I expect to have SOME recourse without needing to break out a lawyer and trying to take Google to court.
I have used a wealth of free services and products in my lifetime and NONE have had such piss-poor excuses for support.
> Pay for an Apps account.
I'd rather not need to host my email with Google (another problem I have with their account system, you can no longer make a Google account that isn't a gmail account) just get proper support from them. Even then it doesn't get me support for anything but the Google Apps services, the rest of their support is still garbage.
Breaking up a company is a violent action.
No one forced you to use their service, and they do not use violence or any kind of illegal actions to kill those who try to compete with them.
Google simply are the biggest due to being the best. It's that simple.
If you'll break up everyone who is too good, then what is the society we are walking toward in this situation?
I'm in minority, but with all VCs funding available today I just don't get any anti-monopoly laws.
Adsense didn't work for you and you are unhappy with the experience. Does some other company solution works better for you? Then switch. If it doesn't then adsense is giving you the best value for your money and I see no reason for inefficient governments to interfere with how efficient companies function.
edit: I don't mind downvotes but I would appreciate some arguments, especially if you don't agree but you are in favor of free market as opposed to heavily regulated one.
> ... with all VCs funding available today I just don't get any anti-monopoly laws.
Are you implying that there is a sum of money that could dislodge Googles stranglehold on the search (and therefore search advertising) market? Look at Microsofts efforts with showering Bing with money. If VCs could back a potential Google-killer, what is the chance that it could resist becoming swallowed by Google once the threat was apparent?
> Does some other company solution works better for you? Then switch. If it doesn't then AdSense is giving you the best value for your money
If you are reliant on AdSense and are locked out by a mistake, you're screwed. Google has total dominance, no other platform comes close.
ad1. I'm implying it's much easier with VC. But you surely cannot beat Google trying to do exactly what they are doing. With enough innovation, yes I think you can. Google used to be a small company too. As long as there is a freedom of choice for customer all giants fall once they are bad enough.
Of course there is advantage in being big, apart from the technology. But that advantage comes from many many people choosing this technology over other options.
ad2. No other platform comes close so let's make it worse so that other ones are closer? I know you think you don't want to make it worse but to improve it. But that's your, or some government opinion. And these opinions are not what led to this dominance. It's quite possible that being led by those opinions it would never succeed, and some other, worse platform would be dominant.
EU bureaucracy logic at its best - go after google and microsoft, but we let apple do whatever they want. For me they with their closed ecosystem are both bigger danger and more anti competitive than both Google and Microsoft combined. Or at least force them to accept other web browsers in their store.
Apple don't have anything even vaguely approaching a monopoly in any area. Their market share in everything from phones to computers is < 30%; Google's is > 90% for search. You can't have a "Monopoly on the contents of the iPhone app store" any more than Coke has a "Monopoly on the contents of Coke cans", and thus should be forced to fill some with Pepsi.
They have a monopoly on downloaded music purchases. That has been weakened in the last few years. Prior to Spotify and Pandora climbing to substantial scale, iTunes had a very strong monopoly on digital music sales (spanning both the Windows and Mac platforms).
You are completely wrong. Apple has a small market share, so it doesn't matter that they abuse it by disallowing e.g rival browsers and certain apps. It sucks, but one can use Android without too many headaches.
But Google search is more like a public utility than a service. It has extreme market penetration which they abuse for various reasons like prime placing for their own products. And that not only hurts competitors but in the end also consumers which will end up with only one option for maps, video sharing, etc. And hypothetically speaking, at this point Google could just shove whatever they want down their throats and tell them to deal with it.
> And hypothetically speaking, at this point Google could just shove whatever they want down their throats and tell them to deal with it.
Or the new GMail app on the Lollipop ROM for my Nexus 5.
My email address was originally on Google Apps. I switched to Windows Phone from my Palm Pre in 2011 and they discontinued Exchange ActiveSync support shortly thereafter, so I moved everything over to Windows Live Domains, keeping my Google Apps login as my Google account.
I recently took a foray to Android in June and picked up the Nexus 5 I'm currently using, and I had no issues setting up my now Outlook.com account (same email address I used for my Google account) in the stock AOSP email app, I removed GMail and there was no trace of my no longer used Google Apps services on my device. Now with Lollipop, I always see two email accounts, one of which is the Google Apps account that no longer has email routed to it but I have no way to hide, and since it shares the same address getting my Outlook.com account added was a pain in the ass (it errored saying I cannot add multiple accounts with the same email address, had to use my @outlook.com alias).
Google used its search monopoly to wedge its way into other areas, the two big ones being email (I see way more active @gmail.com users than I do @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com/@outlook.com and ISP emails today) and online video (youtube). They then used these markets to push their way into the mobile space, which now has the opposite effect (their mobile OS is pushing people into using Google services exclusively).
Both iOS and Windows Phone use their own account systems (Apple ID and Microsoft Account respectively) to provide access to platform-specific services (Store, Synchronization, etc) but both allow users to sign up without requiring they create an email account with them, and both platforms have easy setup for the wealth of other email/calendar/contact sync services most people use.
Honestly, anyone who DOESN'T see Google abusing their monopoly position to prevent or at least actively discourage people from using competitive services is lying to themselves.
"It has extreme market penetration which they abuse for various reasons like prime placing for their own products. And that not only hurts competitors but in the end also consumers which will end up with only one option for maps, video sharing, etc."
Assuming they did prime place their own products, this is not a recognized antitrust harm (it is not bundling or tying, despite random claims on HN).
If you want to base this on "good for society" or "ethical", i don't suspect you'll actually get anywhere in terms of coming to a conclusion. There are reasonable arguments on both sides.
My opinion on things related to competition/antitrust are based mainly on evolution of law and economic viewpoints.
Basically, over the past hundred years, courts have moved away from (and economists have strongly supported) declaring these kinds of things as "per-se" illegal precisely because evidence has not shown that you can simply point at them and say "yeah, this hurts competition" or "yeah, this hurts consumers", despite what one may think.
In some cases, this evolution of law/economy has pretty clearly turned out bad for consumers price-wise (with the return of folks requiring retailers to sell at certain minimum prices).
I know there are reasonable arguments on both sides - I'm really wanting to understand your personal view. It sounds as though you might think that ideas about ethics or good societies are things you prefer not to hold a view on given the quotes.
The second part of your comment only mentioned prices as a factor in terms of what is good or bad for 'consumers'. I realize that you leave room for other ideas of what is good or bad, but in lieu of mentioning anything else, it seems as though this is all you are willing to put forward as a criterion.
I guess I understand a little more about your perspective, but not much.
I don't really have a personal view on the ethics or societal good, to be honest.
I try not to hold uninformed views, and i haven't had the time or honestly, desire, to do the research into history necessary to have an informed one.
Truthfully, this kind of stuff is only tangentially interesting to me: Companies without physical resource monopolies (ie oil, diamonds, whatever) tend to come and go despite all efforts to the contrary. I don't expect Google, Facebook, or anyone else will be any different.
The fact that the bits are shipped on a CD or downloaded as a webpage should not make a difference. Google gives its own services a major advantage while burying the competition.
Beats me, both Apple and Microsoft require an account be created to get the most out of their devices and services, but making an account doesn't force you to create a new email address in the process unlike Google.
I suppose it's that 90% of offices around the world use Microsoft products (Windows, Office, etc...) so it's very difficult to not use them both for users (they must use it in work) and for companies (try explaining that you fucked something up because Pages displayed something different to Word)
Similarly, massive chunks of the internet rely on Google (and Facebook) for functionality like authentication. Aside from that, I'd struggle to suggest a different mail provider than gmail such is there monopoly in that space.
> I'd struggle to suggest a different mail provider than gmail such is there monopoly in that space.
Outlook.com is great, I love it more than GMail personally, especially since I can pay a relatively affordable $19/year to get rid of the ads and know that my email provider doesn't have programs scanning every word of every email I send or receive.
Privacy is a feature, you don't get that when using Google services.
As someone living in Europe, I think they don't realize that, in a way, Google is bigger than the European Parliament. The citizens of Europe barely take the European Parliament seriously, and there's not much reason for Google to.
I happen to be a fan of Duck Duck Go. But I think Google can do without Europe more easily than Europe can do without Google.
There's no need to go to extremes, either. Just like Microsoft, Google can simply buy enough of the European Parliament to get them to quietly change their minds.
Europe is mainly about regulating a common market, that's what it does, what it was design to do since day 1. Not taking seriously would cause Google infinite problem if they don't pull from Europe entirely.
It is all the other things that Europe is not taken seriously for. Before the crisis citizen living in Europe had some feeling of being European (see the talk about a social Europe, European constitution, ...). The crisis had made clear that countries in Europe are business partners rather than a "union of countries", hence the recent push of euro-sceptic parties all over Europe and the call for "preserving country X sovereignty" by traditional parties.
The failures of/problem of the EURO currency recently and the weirdo relationship it caused between EURO-zone countries is a confusing point, but in general, from an economic point of view, Europe is quite active and well respected between all the members. ( and do not get confused by the "Brussels made us do it" card politician play in order to apply unpopular decision they nevertheless supported )
I know that. But I think you fail to realize that Europe is not the same as its government, just as the US is not the same as the US government.
The analogy isn't perfect, but the citizens of the US want drugs. The American government pours untold billions into its War on Drugs, and as a result there are more drugs available in the US than ever before. Similarly, Europe's Internet users want a smart, convenient master index to the Internet; and they're not likely to knuckle under as docilely as the population of China, whose government has been at least partially successful in locking Google out.
Exactly. There's a lot less cohesion and a lot less centralized power.
Some European governments ship politicians off to Euro-government just to get them out of the way. Perhaps not quite justly, the Euro Parliament is sometimes considered a retirement institution for incompetent politicians.
I understand how a fractured internet (In the physical sense, Europe here, US there, no easy interconnection) could lead to easier lives for politicians, but, How does a fractured google make that easier?
I mean, where you had to deal with one entity, now you have to deal with two. It's more possible that one of them doesn't accommodate to your whims.
Google is the glue that holds the modern internet together through it's universal indexing, but it's based in the US, thus weakening the power of foreign governments.
A fractured google is easier to control. Right now, the French government could pass certain laws and Google could simply say no with few detrimental effects (French users would simply use a proxy). With a fractured Google, Google would need to hold all infrastructure servicing French search in France, or at least significant infrastructure, allowing the French government more leverage in law making, and rent seeking.
That may be the effect but I doubt that is what is going through the minds of individuals making these decisions. This is just a misguided attempt to give Europe's tech industry a shot but another American company will fill in any space lost by Google.
US GDP is growing drastically faster than Europe's GDP. Europe's economy hasn't grown since 2007, with GDP still below those levels. In another year or two, the US will also have a larger GDP than Europe.
Technically I think Google claims their search technology is invented and produced in their Ireland version of the company and just licensed to the US one or something like that to defraud the US from taxes. So it is actually more UK/Europe than it is US since they just kind of steal from the US.
I don't think they have the power, but they can impose regulations and fines Google would have to pay to do business in their area. I think it would be great for the ecosystem if Google was no longer allowed to put their own products at the top of search results. Google Finance ahead of Yahoo Stocks, etc..
Right now Google uses their power to direct traffic to unfairly compete in a lot of areas, so consumers don't get the best product. Looking at web metrics, often 90% of the traffic to a web site is from Google, and companies live or die based on that traffic. So unfairly placing your own products above others kills them.
If i were Google i would give the EU a day without Google.
But in any case the EUP can vote for what ever they wan't they do not have any legislative power, as it (and all other) power (s) within the EU lie in the hands of the European Commission, which luckily is not "democratically" elected and it's members are appointed by the Council of Europe.
The EU parliament for some time now has been a mess of fringe politics from both the extreme right and left, all the crazy parties that can't get elected in their own countries join forces and form even crazier pan European parties, and whats worse is that all the crazy (and just plain bad) politicians that can't get elected locally manage to get elected to the EUP...
I think if the Germans want to play nationalistic economic war, the US should return fire at Porsche, BMW, and Daimler - claiming that they possess abusive and unfair positions in the luxury car market, and proceed to levy extreme penalties in the US market on those companies (with the US market being 1/4 of their auto sales). Or perhaps try to force those automakers to divest those brands for the US market.
If the Europeans aren't careful, all they're going to accomplish is a tit-for-tat economic war.
> Porsche, BMW, and Daimler - claiming that they possess abusive and unfair positions in the luxury car market
Can you explain how any of those examples are abusing their market dominance?
For example, if Porsche engines only ran on Porsche oil and petrol, available only from Porsche fuel stations which required an annual membership subscription, then that might be a problem.
Well TBH when you deal with those types of cars you are actually tied to quite a bit of items if you want to keep the warranty on your car.
BMW cars can only be services at specific authorized service centers, and you can only use approve lubricants, tires, and parts...
And although the same goes for virtually any other car the luxury cars put a huge entry barrier for service providers and charge hefty fees for mechanic classes.
But forget BMW, the best monopoly example is Tesla the cars can only be serviced by Tesla, every part is made by Tesla, and can only be sold by Tesla.
One of the main reasons they actually released their patents to general use is that the US car companies were starting to build anti-trust cases against them...
I know this won't happen, but it's a ridiculous idea. Google's search revenue is what helps fund many of its other projects; they couldn't be separated.
Funding other projects within your business, using your primary source of revenue, does not automatically qualify as abuse of monopoly. That's a non-informed opinion if I've ever heard one.
1) Google has never been legally shown to have a monopoly by any of the relevant anti-trust entities, whether in the US / Europe / Asia.
2) To claim a harmful monopoly, you have to show that consumers have been harmed. That has not been done either. This alone invalidates everything you said.
3) Funding self-driving car projects, google glass, maps, etc. is a hilarious example of consumers being harmed. Google hardly makes money with maps, yet they continue to produce a free-to-use, outstanding product. I can't think of a greater win for consumers than that. There is no consumer harm occurring.
Your last claim is wrong and has zero basis in actual anti-trust law. Funding or subsidizing other businesses with a market dominant business, DOES NOT inherently constitute abuse of monopoly. If you were right, Intel would never be allowed to invest into any other business; Cisco would never be allowed to invest into any other business; Microsoft would never be allowed to invest into any other business; eBay would never be allowed to invest into another business; and so on. You are not right of course.
No - well, not in the way your parent meant. It's abuse if you're using the fact that it's a monopoly to benefit your other areas. It's not abuse if one division of a company makes enough profit to subsidize other areas, that's just a way companies manage budgets and is unrelated to whether they have a monopoly or not.
what are they protecting? Its not as if there are small european based search engines that are failing to compete with Google who would benefit fromt his action.
There's a distinct category of "edgy" activist types which have decided Google must be some sort of evil monopoly on the internet by a sheer failure of understanding of why infrastructure business models can be monopolies, whereas "being a popular search engine" really isn't.
Being a monopoly is not necessarily a bad thing. It can lead to consumers being negatively affected but that is not a foregone conclusion. YKK, the zip manufacturer, has effectively had a monopoly on zips for a long time but they produce high quality goods at a low price. The consumer gets a great deal and the monopoly knows to keep the customer happy to keep their market position.
Google do search better than anyone else. Before Google I would use 2 or 3 search engines but once Google proved their Quality I had no reason to go elsewhere.
I think YKK is a bad example here, considering they were fined for beign part of a cartel in Europe (2007). That doesn't seem like something that benefits customers or gets them a great deal.
I was unaware of that, however I do know that they produce a quality good at a low price. they kept other manufacturers out of the industry for a long time simply by producing a quality good at such a low price it was not worth the capital outlay to get into the market for the small profit (per unit) available. now of course the chinese can make things for fractions of what it costs elsewhere so almost all alternative zip maufacturers are low quality chinese manufacturers.
There isn't yet an EU based competitor for this protectionism to make sense. But if there was, I see no reason why the EU shouldn't try to help it gain market share. It's in their interest for various reasons and more competition in search would really benefit everyone but Google.
It's being done on behalf of Google competitors who have been complaining loudly in Europe. And it's being done on behalf of German publishers who want some extra extortion money and they're using the government to get it.
Using SEPs for suing others is wrong.
Google has learning marketing ploys from IBM, place ads in influential tech blogs, get lots of good PR, the same blogs will call anyone a patent troll but Google.
And because I know this will come up- Patents are not evil- the system is broken sure, people misuse trivial patents, but at the same time, people who put hard work in their work need to be rewarded (for meaningful patents). If I'm an academician and I've spent 5 years coming up in my life with something innovative that would otherwise have taken a lot of time, then I should have the option to sell it to someone who is better equipped to monetize it. It's like an author hiring a publisher. So patent consortiums are not trolls, they are like publishers. Google is because they misused SEPs.
Sidenote: I'm against those kiddish patents that are just about 'describing at technique in which x y z'. I feel the patent overhaul should involve the FTC creating a team that would decide the 'year' validity of a patent, and companies having to pay for it.
That notwithstanding, Google is a troll. And just because it gives out free stuff, you guys like it.
Opinion? You stating that they misused SEP's, can you provide a source for that or will you again talk about astroturfers when perhaps people is downvoting you for that nonsense
Well... right now, Europe pretty much depends on Gazprom et al. They are working fast trying to introduce alternatives (gas from US, new gas pipes under the Mediterranean and from the middle east, fracking in the UK), but there is a long way to go.
I cant see how their a monolopy. I almost switched to bing, except its results were not accurate enough for me. I tried different email hosts but i was getting too much spam. I dont touch google+ so that wasnt an option.
There is competition but (in my opinion) dont do enough or arnt what i want. There isnt any way i see google stiffling competition that i can see as i have tried quite a few (and do use them on occasion), to me it seems as if its more because their not a european produce (as techdirt originaly noted and seemed to ring true to me).
well i kind of deciphered your comment, but I dont see how this has anything to do with Google not being european. There is no european counterpart who would benefit from this outcome, the biggest benefit would be to Microsoft (Bing) andother American company and probably a whole host of other US tech companies.
And also to the fact that i dont believe they are a monopoly(nor do i think their abusing their position), and as such dont think anyone has any right to demand anything from them - especially breaking the company up.
>The manner in which Google displays its own vertical search services compared with other, competing products
> How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - to include within its own services
> The exclusivity Google has to sell advertising around the search terms people use
> Restrictions on advertisers from moving their online ad campaigns to rival search engines
In my opinion, there's zero chance of Google being broken up, what's more likely is that limited regulations get introduced for services as they are provided in Europe. I recall there being a great hoo-haa about the EU breaking up Microsoft, what actually happened were regulations that they unbundle Media Player and Internet Explorer, and provide some networking specifications to allow for third party clients to interface with Windows. I imagine something similar will happen here.