European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30228279

by tombowers • 12 years ago

124 126 12 years ago

bbc.co.uk

FreakyT• 12 years ago

It's pretty clear that this and other their other specifically anti-Google rulings are about protectionism and nothing more.

celticninja4• 12 years ago

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.

thret• 12 years ago

It's just a ploy to grab headlines and appear relevant, nothing will come of it.

tomjen34• 12 years ago

Newspapers. They claim that google is stealing their "content" , as if newspapers produced much original content.

lumberjack3• 12 years ago

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.

tomjen34• 12 years ago

Protectionism never makes sense, but in this case it is to benefit newspapers.

adventured4• 12 years ago

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.

marak8302• 12 years ago

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).

celticninja4• 12 years ago

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.

marak8302• 12 years ago

Your right i didnt make myself clear sorry, i was referring to a post made by techdirt :

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141121/17314329218/eu-pa...

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.

Elrac4• 12 years ago

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.

brador2• 12 years ago

You know collectively Europe is the largest economy in the world? It's not something any company can just shrug away.

I believe the goal of this and recent similar decisions is to fracture the internet, allowing for easier law making and rent seeking.

Elrac4• 12 years ago

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.

Thimothy• 12 years ago

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.

mousa• 12 years ago

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.

adventured4• 12 years ago

That claim gets throw around a lot.

The US has more assets than Europe.

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.

gutnor• 12 years ago

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 )

antr• 12 years ago

The citizens of Europe barely take the European Parliament seriously

and yet 43% of Europeans decided to vote in the last European elections. That is a higher turnout than many local/regional elections across Europe.

I guess Europeans do care.

Elrac4• 12 years ago

Good point!

crdoconnor2• 12 years ago

The citizens of Europe barely take the European Parliament seriously

Mainly because all the real power rests in the (unelected) European commission.

kghose• 12 years ago

Because the only de facto monopolies allowed in the EU are european, like Airbus.

byEngineer• 12 years ago

And NOBODY would even dare to think to treat Russian monopolies like that. Monopolies that actually are a real threat to Europe. Like Gazprom.

tomp2• 12 years ago

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.

tomp2• 12 years ago

How is Airbus a monopoly? What about Boeing?

tormeh2• 12 years ago

Huh? I live in Europe and I'm pretty confident I've flown more Boeing than Airbus.

MichaelMoser123• 12 years ago

What is the point of this vote ? the article says that the European Parliament has no authority to enforce such a break-up.

Also Google is not a European company (wasn't it based in the US ?), so what's the point?

Alphasite_• 12 years ago

They operate in Europe so atthe very least they can affect measures on that subsidiary.

crdoconnor2• 12 years ago

Possibly to demonstrate that they have the political capital to levy a very large fine.

lnanek22• 12 years ago

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.

Oletros2• 12 years ago

Mmm, no, Google, like a lot of companies has sold the rights for foreign licensing of those patents to the Irish subsidiary

tomjen34• 12 years ago

That is not fraud, it is legal. Stop blaming business for tax holes.

cbeach3• 12 years ago

Why is this story showing on HN, whilst the following one (on the breakup of Google) has more points, and was previously top of the HN front page?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8666921

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?

_wmd• 12 years ago

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.

cbeach3• 12 years ago

It may be "controversial," but it is also big news and very HN-worthy. Disappointing to see that HN's algorithms are so trigger-happy

lumberjack3• 12 years ago

The controversial posts brought on a lot of upvotes/downvotes that triggered the flame war detector and buried the post.

dang• 12 years ago

I think it's just a dupe that we missed and that got lots of additional attention.

pgodzin• 12 years ago

If anything happens to come of this, what does "breaking up Google," or the unbundling of search and ads businesses practically entail?

Brakenshire• 12 years ago

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.

pasta_2• 12 years ago

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.

http://www.benedelman.org/publications/google-tying-2014-10-...

He's consulted for various Google competitors but he's also a professor at Harvard Business School, and the argument he makes is sound.

DannyBee5• 12 years ago

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.

aragot• 12 years ago

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].

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_comp...

[2] http://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global-...

cbeach3• 12 years ago

To copy from the previous discussion:

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. reply

comboy2• 12 years ago

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.

patrickk• 12 years ago

... 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.

raverbashing2• 12 years ago

Or people being locked out of their GMail account

This is the problem, and customer service in Google barely solves anything.

psykovsky• 12 years ago

Which customer service are you talking about?

snird• 12 years ago

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?

pluma2• 12 years ago

Being best at their own economical interests and being best at their customers' interests are not the same thing.

Retra• 12 years ago

So your idea of 'force' is just flexible enough to qualify regulation as violence, but a monopoly is still ok?

Nobody forces a business to get big. Nobody forces a business to even exist.

ldng• 12 years ago

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.

venomsnake2• 12 years ago

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.

archgrove• 12 years ago

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.

mbq• 12 years ago

Yup; but it may be impacted by some privacy regulations in the future.

tomjen34• 12 years ago

Wouldn't surprise me if Apple has 90% of the app income.

adventured4• 12 years ago

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).

venomsnake2• 12 years ago

Apple app store have roughly 100% market share of distributing software to IOS devices.

Safari rendering engine has 100% market share of ios browsers.

lumberjack3• 12 years ago

Apple is completely opt-in unlike Microsoft and Google.

ponyous• 12 years ago

Can you elaborate? How is Microsoft not opt-in?

blub2• 12 years ago

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.

Oh wait they already did that with Google+

DannyBee5• 12 years ago

"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).

snuxoll6• 12 years ago

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.

Someone• 12 years ago

Let them do what they want? http://online.wsj.com/articles/apples-irish-tax-deal-breache..., http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/dec/14/european-commis..., http://www.zdnet.com/eu-plans-stronger-consumer-law-enforcem..., http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2014/03/european...

arikrak• 12 years ago

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.

sfrank2147• 12 years ago

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.

bwilliams18• 12 years ago

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.

avz4• 12 years ago

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.

pacala4• 12 years ago

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

dmix• 12 years ago

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.

digi_owl• 12 years ago

Duckduckgo may claim otherwise.

cturner• 12 years ago

    > 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.

silveira• 12 years ago

Logistic/economic and most importantly, legal. ISP have deals with local governments to have monopolies.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

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.

lnanek22• 12 years ago

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.

ouiya• 12 years ago

Well, they are the only 'convicted patent troll' in the right definition of the term: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/09/06/apple-google-motorol...

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.

Oletros2• 12 years ago

Using SEPs for suing others is wrong.

Source for that?

c3o• 12 years ago

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...

skrebbel• 12 years ago

Curious, what is the Pirate Party's stance on this? (I have no idea how to find individual MEP votes on bills)

pgeorgi• 12 years ago

https://juliareda.eu/en/ is the website of the Pirate MEP, and she's quite active in her communication.

There's some mention of Green MEPs every now and then which is because she joined their coalition.

tonfa• 12 years ago

http://www.votewatch.eu/en/term8-digital-single-market-joint...

(and she voted against)

avz4• 12 years ago

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.

dogma11382• 12 years ago

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...

adventured4• 12 years ago

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.

dingaling2• 12 years ago

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.

dingaling2• 12 years ago

If i were Google i would give the EU a day without Google.

I'm not sure how that would help refute an accusation that they're abusing their monopoly. It would seem to play right into the accusers' hands.

mikerichards• 12 years ago

No matter what they say, it's obviously an anti-american action, plain and simple.

If the EU wants a trade war, then they'll have it.

European Parliament votes in favour of breaking up Google

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