EU Lays Groundwork for Antitrust Charges Against Google

http://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-lays-groundwork-for-antitrust-charges-against-google-1427928793

by adventured • 11 years ago

50 42 11 years ago

I'm a fan of some of Google's work, but I also believe in strong protections against them abusing their position.

However, does anyone really believe that certain categories of competitor should be protected? Maps for example. If I search for something with a nearby physical location, I do not want Google to have to present their mapping product amongst a sea of others. I want a map displayed on my screen immediately.

It seems that the vast majority of 'rivals' in this context are actually rival search engines which isn't really that anticompetitive, just straight up competitive. I guess we'll have to see which companies have filed constructive points, I have yet to read any of them.

icebraining• 11 years ago

Purely in terms of UI, one possibility regarding maps and similar services, would be to allow the user to choose a preferred provider the first time (s)he searched for a location, like in the Windows browser choice dialog the EU forced Microsoft to implement.

magicalist• 11 years ago

Of course the problem with that is if you search not logged in or in an incognito window, you'll get asked every single time (on the other hand, this is exactly what happens with the EU cookie warning, so...).

tomjen3• 11 years ago

As a user I don't want to be asked what map service I prefer. Make it an option in the settings if you want for those 0.1% who cares.

Google is in the information business and geographical information is firmly in their business area. If the EU autocrats can't understand this, then Google should use its stores of information offensively.

tim3332• 11 years ago

I'm not sure that's quite what they were thinking. A previous proposal was:

The deal, which would allow Google to avoid fines of up to $6 billion, requires the company to tweak the way it presents search results to address concerns that it favors its own services over those of rivals. Under the agreement, when Google promotes its own services and products—such as hotels, restaurants or shopping—the services of three rivals would be displayed in a comparable manner. The rivals would have to bid for the space through an auction.

(wsj). They've dropped that idea - not sure what's next.

grey-area5• 11 years ago

Taking the example of say hotels, here is what happens:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=hotels%20in%20cambri...

A sort of booking widget appears, taking up the space of the first 4 results. Instead of web pages we are presented with google place entries (another google project), and a dates widget at top, which when you fill it in leads to a nice list of google place results, so they are channelling users through other web properties they control.

This might seem superficially appealing to customers (personally I think it is great design, but used for evil ends), but it means that google controls that entire space, because people generally click on the first few results, and clicks after that diminish very very rapidly. So at some point when they start charging for google place entries or booking via google wallet or whatever, they can mint a huge amount of money purely because of the dominant search position they enjoy. They can also drive out of business anyone who wants to compete in that space, or force them to pay a toll to google - in fact I see they're already doing this as adverts for booking.com appear on google place bookings. Once we are used to them inserting non-organic results at the top of every search, they can start to charge for those results, and for everything associated with them. They will then have completed their transformation from a company organising the world's information to a company controlling and charging for the world's information.

As to maps, I think we need to clearly delineate between search results and mapping results. People would be fine I think if google offered a small option to go to google maps when you do an address search, but if they take over half the page with a google map on these results, it is legitimate to ask whether they are leveraging their dominant position in one domain to enforce dominance in another (classic monopolist behaviour).

This wouldn't be a problem if Google did not have 70-90% of the market share for search (depending on your country) - that is a near monopoly position. So Google are abusing their dominant position in search to promote their other properties, and to control which websites appear first in many domains (shopping, images, hotels, shops etc), and they are also in de facto control of the web due to their position in search, which is not good for anyone, least of all google.

mike_hearn2• 11 years ago

The counter argument Google uses is that booking.com and friends have no inherent right to exist. They either provide a service that people want or they don't. Hotel booking is a commodity business: other than reviews and the like there's a limited amount of value that can be added. If they add enough value people will go there directly. If all they do is provide a few calendar widgets and a billing backend then maybe Google can do that more effectively by inlining it into the results page.

People would be fine I think if google offered a small option to go to google maps when you do an address search, but if they take over half the page with a google map on these results, it is legitimate to ask whether they are leveraging their dominant position

Wait so the outcome of a legal case depends on how many pixels the feature takes up? I don't see any rational basis in law for that. Why should a map not be large? If someone came along that did mapping much better than Google did, people could just go to that site directly, right?

I remember a time before "universal search" when maps did not appear in Google web search at all. Yet Google Maps was still a popular service. So was Google Earth which had to be downloaded.

q7• 11 years ago

Could you provide a screenshot? It looks differently on my screen (probably because I'm in another country).

katbyte2• 11 years ago

when they start charging

If they start charging. Theres nothing that i know of that suggests they will?

That aside, google displaying non-organic results like that is one of the reasons i use google. Like if i google "sunset vancouver" the first result is a box displaying exactly what i'm searching for. What's next, the sunset websites taking google to court due it leveraging its search monopoly?

makomk• 11 years ago

The absurd thing is, one of the main companies pushing this is Microsoft and they know how important a feature this is - the main advantage of Bing that they advertised everywhere was that it included stuff like maps and other contextual information in the search results. Then Google rolled out the same feature and Microsoft tried to use anti-competition law to force Google to remove it.

throwawaykf054• 11 years ago

I've said it the last time this popped up (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9236862) but when you have a dominant monopoly position, you can't always safely do what "everyone else" does. Antitrust laws are tricky like that. Nobody cares when Apple bundles a browser and media player with its OS.

Alterlife• 11 years ago

You can access the entire text of article without the 'subscription wall' by accessing it through google search results: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...

Is that irony? I don't know what irony means anymore. Hmm, might as well google it.

igravious• 11 years ago

It's recursively ironic which is the sweetest tasting type of irony.

Any idea why going through search results succeeds and allows us access to the full content by the way?

zem• 11 years ago

because google won't display search result pages that show one view to the crawler but another to the person who clicks the link.

violentvinyl• 11 years ago

WSJ will get a better Google ranking by allowing the Google spider to crawl the whole article. If they allow the spider to crawl the whole article, then they have to allow users coming in from the Google results to see the full article as well.

walterbell• 11 years ago

If TPP/TTIP were already in effect, would EU regulators have priority over a TTIP court? Stated differently, could Google sue the EU in TTIP court under ISDS rules?

adventured• 11 years ago

I believe the ISDS provision would only apply to suing specific States. How Google would go about arguing any given State were responsible, or that all of them were... talk about a convoluted legal situation. I'd be skeptical it would apply to anti-trust actions brought by the EU.

kuschku• 11 years ago

Non-Paywalled link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/02/google-eu-idUSL2N0...

tim3332• 11 years ago

not quite the same article. Better to google the title and click that link which avoids the paywall.

spacemanmatt3• 11 years ago

Without PJ (of Groklaw fame) around to say, "Oh yeah, the usually legally-adroit Google has really stepped in it this time." I'm skeptical this will go anywhere. Microsoft has been buying politicians to hurt Google for years.

throwawaykf054• 11 years ago

1. Google is simply buying more politicians these days: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&year... - helps to get pesky investigations blown over, I guess ;-) I don't blame them either, just the way the world works. Microsoft's mistake was not doing it sooner when they were getting investigated.

2. PJ's analysis might have been useful in the SCO days, but really, her knowledge of other topics that I'm more conversant with (specifically, patents) was woefully lacking. Not sure if she'd have done any better with antitrust laws.

spacemanmatt3• 11 years ago

She was not a SME to every patent in litigation but her forum attracted tons of incredible insight. It was not a solo act, to be sure. I guess the person is a shorthand for the forum when I refer to her by name.

msh• 11 years ago

Why does hn allow pay walled links?

LLWM2• 11 years ago

Why do hn users refuse to pay for content they want?

dzdt• 11 years ago

I am cynical on this: I strongly suspect this is an attack being orchestrated by google's competitors rather than an enforcement motivated by the public interest. Can anyone point to evidence either way?

freehunter• 11 years ago

Aren't they all? Do you think the EU regulators said "Man that Microsoft is really hurting people with IE and Windows Media Player, let's help the underdogs" or do you think Microsoft's competitors had some kind of influence on them?

yuhong• 11 years ago

Personally, I think what the US anti-trust regulators did was pretty sensible, but I do wonder why Larry Page thought some of this stuff was a good idea in the first place.

EU Lays Groundwork for Antitrust Charges Against Google

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