Google to be hit by €1B ($1.12B) fine within weeks as EU finds it guilty in antitrust case

[mr moose]

19 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

For those not seeing what the issue is, I think it's a minor detail.  They're not just using their own products and services to promote each other - that is common and fine imo - they're taking what is supposed to be a generic thing and giving their own stuff preferential treatment.

Generic thing?  Since when did the internet become an unbiased social service?

[Dabombinable]

6 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I don't know enough to say whether they are breaking the law by positioning themselves on top of other shopping results. But, boy, I would love if they stopped filling the results pages with sales links! There are exceptions, especially with brand new stuff, but as soon as you look for something a little older, it's all places selling it, zero information... Sometimes the manufacturer's page still exists, but I have to go to 2nd or 3rd page to find it...

And for me that is especially annoying-it took me over an hour to find a manual for one of my "SuperPower" motherboards due to the sheer number of estore liks.

[PlayStation 2]

I still need an explanation as to why all companies should be forced to follow the EU's confusing ass rules, like having Internet Explorer pre-installed on Windows somehow being considered anti-competitive.

[mr moose]

27 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

I still need an explanation as to why all companies should be forced to follow the EU's confusing ass rules, like having Internet Explorer pre-installed on Windows somehow being considered anti-competitive.

Because the EU commission has to pay for their Mercedes and driver and justify their existence somehow.

[MrImnotMLG]

As much as I like Google, You have to operate within the rules of the land. There's no skirting it.

[JoseGuya]

I can`t promote my own products on MY OWN platform? Fuck the EU. The only thing this would do is transform the whole continent in a third world rat hole in no time. 

 

If you disagree with me, in South America we had this kind of laws for ages, do you know any South American company as big as Google? No? Exactly. 

[tlink]

7 hours ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

I still need an explanation as to why all companies should be forced to follow the EU's confusing ass rules, like having Internet Explorer pre-installed on Windows somehow being considered anti-competitive.

why all company's should be forced to follow the EU's 'confusing ass rules': its a huge fucking market that they would be crippled without, the whole world would be (possibly literally) crippled if they didn't have access to the eu since the eu is the major exporter of medicine in the world for example.

the reason why those things are considered anti competitive is because those company's tried to use their platform to gain market dominance. the product they shoehorn into the platform isn't needed for the platform, and the product they shoehorn into it isn't necessarily the best nor the worst but people will use it because its shoehorned in there. it wasn't free market competition anymore since their product had an unfair market advantage. it would be like the government distributing a product for free, thats anti-competitive right? than so are these things.

[Centurius]

11 hours ago, wcreek said:

Well I don't see what's wrong promoting your own products. But for me at least I don't see what the EU is complaining about. You search for a product it shows that product from a variety of retailers. Whether or not those retailers pay to get priority over others I'm not aware of but I figure it would be like a form of advertisement rather than anti-trust anti-competitive. 

 

That's why I wrote what I wrote. And to that one person who said the approval rating of the EU has gone up. Considering the rampant corruption in the EU, I wouldn't take the news articles or stats from the EU themselves at face value.

I think reasonable and sensible anti trust laws and enforcement makes sense but the EU approach seems excessive.

Here's an article showing the same based on research from a non-EU agency. Nice tinfoil hat btw. 

 

http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKKBN1962WI

[LAwLz]

15 hours ago, Deli said:

1 billion is just pocket change for Google.

Yep, and I think this is important to remember.

 

Google makes about 1.8 billion dollars in profit every month. So this is basically half a month's salary for Google. This is pocket change for Google.

 

15 hours ago, wcreek said:

And yet the EU wonders why everyone is starting to hate them.

Except you know, EU is getting more and more popular.

After Brexit people in EU have gotten more aware of what EU actually does and what it would mean to leave. Because of that, people have in general gotten a lot more positive about being in EU.

Source: Bertelsmann Foundation

 

15 hours ago, wcreek said:

It's not the anti trust laws, I think they're fine. But the EU does this to lots of companies. 

So you agree with the anti-trust laws, but you dislike that they are actually enforced and being applied to all companies rather than just a few?

 

 

12 hours ago, Ryujin2003 said:

How about, if you don't want Google ads and shopping suggestions, use a different browser? They own the platform. They should be able to. Same thing with Bing and Yahoo.

12 hours ago, ChineseChef said:

I don't understand why this is wrong.  Why do platforms have to help or even allow others on their platform?

11 hours ago, wcreek said:

Well I don't see what's wrong promoting your own products.

11 hours ago, Snaeb said:

The way I look at it, if i supply your avenue to different places, I will want my products to be a higher priority over others. Why would I give my competition an advantage on my platform that I pay to maintain?

6 hours ago, JoseGuya said:

I can`t promote my own products on MY OWN platform?

It's wrong because you are using an unfair advantage to promote yourself while harming your competitors. I think a lot of confusion regarding this stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what the purpose of laws are.

Laws exist (at least they are suppose to) to protect people. They are there to ensure that one entity can not harm another one. "Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins".

 

Does anyone have a link to the original claim? Financial Times is behind a pay wall and none of the other articles actually goes into much detail what exactly is behind said and done. So to me it seems like everyone who is picking a side on this are doing so not because of facts, but because of their personal feelings for the EU, Google and the free-market (in order to have a free market you need to have monopoly and anti-competitiveness laws).

When it comes to cases like these, you can not just blindly look at the headline and make your opinion up. Like I said before, the IE case which was basically boiled down to a one sentence thing in the media was actually based on several investigations spanning hundreds of pages of arguments between several companies before a conclusion and ruling was made. There might be a huge amount of info missing regarding this Google shopping case which plays an important role.

 

Picking sides too quickly is not a good idea, and it seems like a lot of people had already made their mind up as soon as they saw "Google" and "EU" in the title.

 

9 hours ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

like having Internet Explorer pre-installed on Windows somehow being considered anti-competitive.

Something tells me that you have not read much more than the headlines regarding EU vs Internet Explorer, have you? It's an extremely complicated case which was tied to several other investigations such as this one. And yes, that's a 400 page document with arguments and counterarguments from multiple companies and organizations regarding the licensing deals, implementation and documentation of MediaPlayer in Windows.

 

What happened was that here was a very long legal battle between Microsoft and Sun who claimed that Microsoft deliberately created interoperability issues. Sun won and that set a precedent for other software such as IE. What EU realized was that if they enforced the laws regarding WMP they also had to enforce them on IE, since IE was very similar in a lot of the areas.

Microsoft did not make the situation better either by "accidentally" not implementing the ruling properly either. They were given a much lighter ruling at first, but then their implementation was extremely flawed and at one point just did not work at all for 14 entire months. So the punishment was made harsher.

[handymanshandle]

3 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

 

I did not clarify where I think the line belongs in anti trust laws. I think the US could use some more anti trust laws but the EU has too many of them. Now I'm sure I'm still not being the most clear of what I'm trying to say.

And that is that, I think enforcement of anti trust laws is fine but again the EU just over does it. And I still take those statistics with a grain of salt. Considering how Le pen went from being close to being tied with Macron in the first round to Macron having a landslide. That is incredibly questionable to me at least.

[Simon771]

So another lawsuit where they will be on courts with lawyers for years, and if the end if they will need to pay it, they will make quick transaction and be done with it.

1b is not exactly pocket change for Google, but they sure as hell won't miss that kind of amount.

[handymanshandle]

10 minutes ago, Centurius said:

Here's an article showing the same based on research from a non-EU agency. Nice tinfoil hat btw. 

 

http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKKBN1962WI

>Large British news outlet

[mr moose]

32 minutes ago, wcreek said:

I did not clarify where I think the line belongs in anti trust laws. I think the US could use some more anti trust laws but the EU has too many of them. Now I'm sure I'm still not being the most clear of what I'm trying to say.

And that is that, I think enforcement of anti trust laws is fine but again the EU just over does it. And I still take those statistics with a grain of salt. Considering how Le pen went from being close to being tied with Macron in the first round to Macron having a landslide. That is incredibly questionable to me at least.

 

I think they over do it too.  I can't see how asking google where to find a product and having them tell you to buy from them is antitrust, you asked google you should expect that's what they would recommend.   Is it also antitrust if you go to an ISP asking about internet connections and they only tell you about theirs?    This is just next level corrupt.  If google where using android to actually block websites like yahoo, bing or shopping websites then that would be antitrust, becasue users would not have a choice especially with androids dominant market share. But simply putting their own services at the top of their own search engine service results is not.

 

 

[Centurius]

1 hour ago, wcreek said:

>Large British news outlet

>Large US based research centre 

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, wcreek said:

I did not clarify where I think the line belongs in anti trust laws. I think the US could use some more anti trust laws but the EU has too many of them. Now I'm sure I'm still not being the most clear of what I'm trying to say.

And according to you, how many antitrust lawsuits would be appropriate? Who is to say that a middle-ground would be the best?

Have you actually looked into what antitrust laws the US has compared to the EU? More lawsuits does not necessarily mean there are more laws, or even different laws. Considering how many lawsuits are filed every day, it might not even be the case that there are more antitrust lawsuits in EU.

I think people underestimate the complexity of these things and are way to quick to just pick a side based on emotions rather than actual facts. The fact that I knew what side some users would pick before I even opened the thread, based on their previous statements of not liking X or Y, is quite telling.

 

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

I think they over do it too.  I can't see how asking google where to find a product and having them tell you to buy from them is antitrust, you asked google you should expect that's what they would recommend.   Is it also antitrust if you go to an ISP asking about internet connections and they only tell you about theirs? This is just next level corrupt. If google where using android to actually block websites like yahoo, bing or shopping websites then that would be antitrust, becasue users would not have a choice especially with androids dominant market share. But simply putting their own services at the top of their own search engine service results is not.

Have either of you actually looked into the case and read the report, or are you just basing those opinions on the headlines you read?

Because like I said before, for example the browser one was extremely complicated and yet the media just boiled it down to a one sentence thing with next to no context. Just because the article says they are being sued for putting their service above someone else's does not mean that is the only thing they are doing. That's why I asked if someone had a proper link to this.

 

The laws and investigations surrounding antitrust are far more complicated than just "they put their link higher than Amazon's? Let's sue them!".

 

 

1 hour ago, wcreek said:

And I still take those statistics with a grain of salt. Considering how Le pen went from being close to being tied with Macron in the first round to Macron having a landslide. That is incredibly questionable to me at least.

So what you are saying is that you will disregard multiple studies by several independent organizations just because you feel like it is not true?

 

 

1 hour ago, wcreek said:

>Large British news outlet

Reuters are owned by a US based company that was founded in Canada (Thomas Reuters Corporation) and the article is about a study done by Pew Research center which is a US based group.

 

It's good to be critical of sources, but right now it seems like you're just trying to find excuses to not listening to evidence that contradicts your opinion.

[Trixanity]

9 hours ago, JoseGuya said:

I can`t promote my own products on MY OWN platform? Fuck the EU. The only thing this would do is transform the whole continent in a third world rat hole in no time. 

 

If you disagree with me, in South America we had this kind of laws for ages, do you know any South American company as big as Google? No? Exactly. 

Europe and South America aren't comparable at all.

 

South America has centuries of poverty and corruption shackling it. The EU has plenty large corporations of their own who get sued for anti competitive behavior just like everyone else. Perhaps not as frequently as US companies or at least not as high profile. They still operate there despite that. The market is too big and the purchasing power too great to ignore in any case. The corporate culture is probably also quite different.

 

Either way, the EU isn't suing left and right without merit. The court system is probably the least corrupt in the world. A headline can't cover the complexities of a case like this so it would be ignorant to just dismiss it based on emotion or prejudice.

[Sauron]

18 hours ago, wcreek said:

It's not the anti trust laws, I think they're fine. But the EU does this to lots of companies. 

Wow, how dare the EU enforce their laws against greedy megacorporations! They sure deserve the hate!

 

/s

[MrDynamicMan]

Who even *uses* Google shopping. This... Is just so, so menial. Why I'd the EU going after such non-issues. What's next, Google being sued for using the Google logo? 

 

[MrDynamicMan]

50 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

Europe and South America aren't comparable at all.

 

South America has centuries of poverty and corruption shackling it. The EU has plenty large corporations of their own who get sued for anti competitive behavior just like everyone else. Perhaps not as frequently as US companies or at least not as high profile. They still operate there despite that. The market is too big and the purchasing power too great to ignore in any case. The corporate culture is probably also quite different.

 

Either way, the EU isn't suing left and right without merit. The court system is probably the least corrupt in the world. A headline can't cover the complexities of a case like this so it would be ignorant to just dismiss it based on emotion or prejudice.

There is a difference between Anti-competetive action (IE making it very difficult to change default browsers in w10) and minor self promotion on one's own platform. 

 

Do you sue a games company because they link their DLC at the top of the extensions page over someone's mod? 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

The problem is that the market often NEEDS to be regulated in order to keep the big companies in check.  If you let them do as they please, you get for example huge ISPs that make arrangements with eachother, meanwhile giving the customer really slow internet at high prices and no real alternative.  You also get less choice because they actively abuse their monopoly to make life impossible for any competition to their own services (throttling Netflix while zero-rating their own content for example).  And I'm not even mentioning politicians being in the pocket of said corporations and making laws to stop anyone from breaking into that market and providing a proper alternative.

[Jito463]

2 hours ago, Centurius said:

>Large US based research centre 

Irrelevant.  Do you realize how many idiot liberals we have over here that would love to see us be part of the EU, if they could get away with it?

 

Not trying to make this a political debate, just pointing out that the origin of the study doesn't automatically make it objective.

[Centurius]

30 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

Irrelevant.  Do you realize how many idiot liberals we have over here that would love to see us be part of the EU, if they could get away with it?

 

Not trying to make this a political debate, just pointing out that the origin of the study doesn't automatically make it objective.

Pointing out that a study was done by someone ideologically inclined or by an agency of an organization likewise doesn't automatically rule out objectivity. By all indications(both via research and recent electoral results) the EU is gaining in popularity.

[Centurius]

11 hours ago, JoseGuya said:

I can`t promote my own products on MY OWN platform? Fuck the EU. The only thing this would do is transform the whole continent in a third world rat hole in no time. 

 

If you disagree with me, in South America we had this kind of laws for ages, do you know any South American company as big as Google? No? Exactly. 

Petrobras is about the same size as Alphabet Inc. actually. Beyond that, the EU has had this type of legislation for decades. It's still home to some of the largest conglomerates in the world and is generally considered a great area to start new companies, and American companies still keep opening branches in Europe and otherwise investing. Clearly those laws aren't killing business.

[Jito463]

33 minutes ago, Centurius said:

Pointing out that a study was done by someone ideologically inclined or by an agency of an organization likewise doesn't automatically rule out objectivity. By all indications(both via research and recent electoral results) the EU is gaining in popularity.

I never said if they were or weren't objective (I don't know either way), my only point was that simply stating the study came from a group in the US doesn't automatically make it objective.

[Trixanity]

4 hours ago, MrDynamicMan said:

There is a difference between Anti-competetive action (IE making it very difficult to change default browsers in w10) and minor self promotion on one's own platform. 

 

Do you sue a games company because they link their DLC at the top of the extensions page over someone's mod? 

Think of it this way: "with great power comes great responsibility". The more power you have the easier it is to abuse. A game company advertising their own DLC isn't potentially ruining the entire video game industry.  Google is being sued for trying to systematically favor their own shopping service potentially monopolizing the online shopping business. It sounds like Google shopping would be listed at the top of any search query whether or not it was the most relevant. That's skewing the market in an anti competitive way. It would be different if Google was each and every time the best option and even that could be considered anti competitive by not allowing others to compete. The EU thinks of the consumer before the corporation.

3 hours ago, Jito463 said:

Irrelevant.  Do you realize how many idiot liberals we have over here that would love to see us be part of the EU, if they could get away with it?

 

Not trying to make this a political debate, just pointing out that the origin of the study doesn't automatically make it objective.

Sounds like a case of "I disagree therefore they're idiots". You seem to dislike the results of a study therefore it is biased and, dare I say, fake news. That's a dangerous way of thinking.