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

[pas008]

sony and microsoft get fined for only having their products in their console stores?

or for having console exclusives?

 

isnt that pretty much the same thing?

[Centurius]

7 minutes ago, pas008 said:

sony and microsoft get fined for only having their products in their console stores?

or for having console exclusives?

 

isnt that pretty much the same thing?

The difference is that neither Sony or Microsoft are the de facto standard for gaming, Google however is the basically undisputed master of search engines and thus pushing its own products hits competition in other sectors hard.

[pas008]

Just now, Centurius said:

The difference is that neither Sony or Microsoft are the de facto standard for gaming, Google however is the basically undisputed master of search engines and thus pushing its own products hits competition in other sectors hard.

still using their own platform to sell their own things

right?

[handymanshandle]

59 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

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.

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.

As I know the Google shopping thing it's just like a thing where it puts prices from other merchants, I've never seen it promote its own service and this is the first time I've actually used that feature intentionally I think...
 

Spoiler

 

Now if this is what the EU is calling anti-competitive, wtf it's google's product being shown on their service. How is it anti competitive?

Spoiler

The people trying to compare this to ISPs is far different. There is a huge difference when an ISP buys up a company to get into a market and stays out of the market. Like Comcast and the Time Warner acquisition.

[Centurius]

Just now, pas008 said:

still using their own platform to sell their own things

right?

Doesn't matter, when you become large enough as a company anti-monopoly and anti-trust regulations kick in to keep the markets competitive.

[handymanshandle]

3 minutes ago, Centurius said:

The difference is that neither Sony or Microsoft are the de facto standard for gaming, Google however is the basically undisputed master of search engines and thus pushing its own products hits competition in other sectors hard.

Well there's Bing, Yahoo, Ask, etc. Google is not the only search engine. And by default Microsoft makes Bing the search engine for Edge. Google makes Google search the default for chrome. So is that anti-competitve now too?

[pas008]

2 minutes ago, Centurius said:

Doesn't matter, when you become large enough as a company anti-monopoly and anti-trust regulations kick in to keep the markets competitive.

this reminds me of coke pepsi shit

its cokes fault for being the peoples required taste

 

[Centurius]

Just now, wcreek said:

Well there's Bing, Yahoo, Ask, etc. Google is not the only search engine. And by default Microsoft makes Bing the search engine for Edge. Google makes Google search the default for chrome. So is that anti-competitve now too?

Considering Microsoft got hit hard for people not being able to pick their browser upon install a few years back, yes. As for Bing, Yahoo, etc, don't even kid yourself. Those aren't even close to competing with Google in the search engine domain. 

[handymanshandle]

1 minute ago, Centurius said:

Considering Microsoft got hit hard for people not being able to pick their browser upon install a few years back, yes. As for Bing, Yahoo, etc, don't even kid yourself. Those aren't even close to competing with Google in the search engine domain. 

and I agree, Google has a lot more users than those services. But it doesn't mean that people can't use other services. Google isn't buying up those search engines or finding ways to make those engines not work.

They work just as good as google a lot of times at least from the testing I've done with Bing and Yahoo search.

Google is large because it is ubiquitous from it's online presences. Just due to it being large does not make it de facto anti competitive. Google isn't doing anything that makes it impossible for people to stop using their service. Bing does the same things Google's stuff does. Google is the queen of ad revenue, there's no denying that but again Google doesn't lock adsense down to Chrome or w/e.

[Jito463]

1 hour ago, Trixanity said:

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.

Then you need better reading comprehension.  I didn't say anything about the study itself, I pointed out that the origins of the study does not make it objective.

[handymanshandle]

@Trixanity Very fake news, is very sad!

[Space Reptile]

AH SHIT , there goes googles lunch money 

[handymanshandle]

Google doesn't stop users from finding other SEOs.

[Trixanity]

1 hour ago, Jito463 said:

Then you need better reading comprehension.  I didn't say anything about the study itself, I pointed out that the origins of the study does not make it objective.

You hinted (not explicitly) that the study was unreliable because of or despite of the source (eg Reuters being left-leaning and/or deliberately excluding right wing opinions when doing surveys); factors that can sway the results of a study. If the study is reliable does the source matter? As long as it hasn't been tampered with, it's fine. You could argue any data can be interpreted to mean anything one desires but then it's a matter of digging into the source to filter spin and opinion from fact. As long as you can see the data and method used, the source is irrelevant if anything.

 

Surveys aren't the absolute truth and by their very nature can't be as it's a small subset of people.

 

Lastly, you still called your political opponents idiots or rather a portion of them. That's what bad hombres do. That's bad form.

[MrRavens]

1 Billion? Oh no...what are we going to wipe our asses with now? *grabs another billion from the 500+ billion stack*  

[Jito463]

5 hours ago, Jito463 said:

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.

 

8 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

You hinted (not explicitly) that the study was unreliable because of or despite of the source (eg Reuters being left-leaning and/or deliberately excluding right wing opinions when doing surveys); factors that can sway the results of a study. If the study is reliable does the source matter? As long as it hasn't been tampered with, it's fine. You could argue any data can be interpreted to mean anything one desires but then it's a matter of digging into the source to filter spin and opinion from fact. As long as you can see the data and method used, the source is irrelevant if anything.

 

Surveys aren't the absolute truth and by their very nature can't be as it's a small subset of people.

 

Lastly, you still called your political opponents idiots or rather a portion of them. That's what bad hombres do. That's bad form.

Once again, I never said a word about the study itself, I merely pointed out that the origin doesn't automatically make it objective.  I've stated that several times now.  If you can't get it by this point, then there's no reason in even discussing this further.

[Trixanity]

Just now, Jito463 said:

 

Once again, I never said a word about the study itself, I merely pointed out that the origin doesn't automatically make it objective.  I've stated that several times now.  If you can't get it by this point, then there's no reason in even discussing this further.

I accounted for that by saying that the origin doesn't matter if the data isn't manipulated or if the data and method is provided. That's how scientific methods account for bias and manipulation. If you write an article based on some survey you can easily discover falsehoods, manipulation, bias, opinion etc by looking at the data and how it was obtained. You can even discover if the data itself is valid.

 

It seems you conveniently dodge or avoid half the post. That's interesting. 

[Jito463]

20 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

It seems you conveniently dodge or avoid half the post. That's interesting. 

Because I'm trying to avoid making this into a political discussion - derailing the topic further - which I even made a comment about in my first post.

 

The only reason I made any mention of liberals, is to explain why I wouldn't automatically accept a study based on the origins of it.

[MrDynamicMan]

4 hours ago, Trixanity said:

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.

I understand anti-trust, I just don't think this justifies it. Minor self promotion on your own platform is not anti trust. 

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, wcreek said:

and I agree, Google has a lot more users than those services. But it doesn't mean that people can't use other services. Google isn't buying up those search engines or finding ways to make those engines not work.

They work just as good as google a lot of times at least from the testing I've done with Bing and Yahoo search.

Google is large because it is ubiquitous from it's online presences. Just due to it being large does not make it de facto anti competitive. Google isn't doing anything that makes it impossible for people to stop using their service. Bing does the same things Google's stuff does. Google is the queen of ad revenue, there's no denying that but again Google doesn't lock adsense down to Chrome or w/e.

This is it,  Monopoly and antitrust are technically different. And while monopoly in and off itself is not technically illegal, what you do with that monopoly can be antitrust.  In this case though, Google promoting there own wares on their own search engine (which isn't exclusive in anyway and people can switch from at any time with zero consequence) is not antitrust, it does not even fit the definition of monopoly given consumers are not locked out of alternatives in anyway, shape or form.   

 

@LAwLz I did read the article, This one is solely about search results.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/eu-poised-to-fine-google-more-than-1-billion-in-antitrust-case-ft-report-2017-06-16

http://fortune.com/2017/06/01/google-shopping-eu-fine/

  

There are other issues the EU is taking google to task for regarding tax, online privacy and android apps, however they are different cases.

[ravenshrike]

4 hours ago, Trixanity said:

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.

I disagree because I think the EU is populated entirely by hypocrites. Otherwise all of those consumer lawsuits against VW would have been allowed to go forward in the first place since they very clearly defrauded the consumer. Yet somehow that's barely even begun as of January. Moreover, the one legal authority in the EU who has declared it an illegal cheat device has somehow not moved against VW. Now why would that be? Oh, I know, because it's the German KBA.

[Mr.Meerkat]

On 6/16/2017 at 6:23 PM, wcreek said:

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

Well they prevented three taking over o2 (in the UK) so...  

I cri everytiem as I could have had the best 2g coverage (with most of it being edge so..."usable" Internet on mountains)  plus best 3g coverage (combined) and speed which tops out a 35(ish)/4Mbps on HSPDA+...

 

I mean...

3G:

Home:

 

Sed times when your mobile Internet is considerably faster than your broadband...also who needs LTE when you can get 30Mbps on 3(.5)G  

[LAwLz]

29 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

@LAwLz I did read the article, This one is solely about search results.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/eu-poised-to-fine-google-more-than-1-billion-in-antitrust-case-ft-report-2017-06-16

http://fortune.com/2017/06/01/google-shopping-eu-fine/

Thanks for the links. They contain quite a bit of interesting info.

1) The investigation started because multiple companies (both US based and EU based) complained to EU.

2) The investigation and discussions has been ongoing for 7 years, and Google has refused to comply with the EU's demands.

3) The fine is pretty small compared to what they could have gotten. It's only ~1/9 of what the law says it could be.

4) The lawsuit is about Google placing their own price comparison tools at the top of the search results, possibly even above the sponsored links.

 

Google does raise some valid points as well as some really stupid ones, but it seems like there is still a lot of info missing because Google's blog post addresses things the EU has stated which no article I can find mentions. Sadly, the links you posted also use FT as the source which is behind a paywall. Maybe we will get more info later as the EU makes an announcement.

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Thanks for the links. They contain quite a bit of interesting info.

1) The investigation started because multiple companies (both US based and EU based) complained to EU.

2) The investigation and discussions has been ongoing for 7 years, and Google has refused to comply with the EU's demands.

3) The fine is pretty small compared to what they could have gotten. It's only ~1/9 of what the law says it could be.

4) The lawsuit is about Google placing their own price comparison tools at the top of the search results, possibly even above the sponsored links.

 

Google does raise some valid points as well as some really stupid ones, but it seems like there is still a lot of info missing because Google's blog post addresses things the EU has stated which no article I can find mentions. Sadly, the links you posted also use FT as the source which is behind a paywall. Maybe we will get more info later as the EU makes an announcement.

2. google did try to settle 3 times in the last 6 years, but both parties failed to agree on terms.

 

which is interesting if we consider $1B to be  nothing to google.

[FakezZ]

On 6/16/2017 at 9:42 PM, laminutederire said:

They're basically being fair in applying those rules to everyone?

In the US or in China lots of businesses benefit from anti competitive rules that protect them in their own country, so they replicate it everywhere else, which the EU doesn't accept.

If it were up to me, the EU would be even more annoying by implementing stricter rules and more importantly, enforcing them even more often

Oh yeees more regulation haha. GIMME DAT REGULATION! Because regulations have always worked... Not.