EU Formally Accuses Google of Antitrust Violations

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/eu-google/

by simas • 11 years ago

165 292 11 years ago

wired.com

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

Very excited to see this happen. The US surely wasn't going to do it, but it's well past due.

baldfat3• 11 years ago

Can you elaborate on your reasons why? I like to hear both sides of an argument.

I see Google not as a monopoly but as a majority holder where people have control of what services they use. Are they abusing this position to the detriment of users and market?

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

The problem is that people don't have control of what services they use. The vertical integration model, used quite successfully by both Google and Apple, is specifically designed to make it unfavorable or impossible to use competitors.

At least under the US definition, the practice of "tying" is illegal when you use your monopoly position in one market to try to monopolize another market. By using Search to prioritize promoting their other services, they are trying to capture other markets through their dominance in Search. This is what the law was written to prevent. Most of my issues stem with how they do this in Android though, which is a separate investigation the EU is conducting.

Google's Search behavior hurts consumers in a lot of ways. Since Google is the front door to the Internet, effectively, particularly in Europe where their market share is nearly uncontested, being an unfavorable result in Google prevents you from adequately competing. Being "penalized" by Google Search for any reason can put you out of business.

And Google is now trying to exact their will on the entire Internet through penalizing sites in Search as a means of activism. For example, choosing to penalize sites for not using HTTPS, or penalizing sites for not using "mobile responsive" design, which has at best, subjective appeal.

TazeTSchnitzel14• 11 years ago

I see Google not as a monopoly but as a majority holder where people have control of what services they use.

Even if people could switch search engine - which they can't given they have only one competitor which isn't very good - it wouldn't make Google's actions fine. Google has a near-monopoly on search. They are abusing their market share.

Goronmon12• 11 years ago

I never understood the antitrust angle towards Google search. Is there some kind of browser or app out there that is forcing people to use Google as their search engine on all their devices?

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

The fact that most people use the default, and that Google mandates the browser be Chrome and the search be Google for all Chrome web browsers (largest desktop market share) and Android devices (largest mobile market share). And that they then prioritize their own products and services in Search as well.

The issue isn't "everyone is forced to use Google Search" as much as "Google creates a monopoly through connected use of it's various products and services".

mirashii3• 11 years ago

and that Google mandates the browser be Chrome and the search be Google for all Chrome web browsers (largest desktop market share) and Android devices (largest mobile market share)

No, they don't. You're free to use any browser on your desktop. You're free to use any browser on your Android device. And you're free to go into Chrome settings and use any search engine in Chrome on any of these devices.

linkregister• 11 years ago

Not withstanding that Opera, Firefox, and other browsers are available in the Google Play store for android, you can easily change the default search in the Settings menu. The ease of this change can be compared to changing the default search in Internet Explorer or Safari. [1]

[1] http://www.androidcentral.com/how-change-your-default-search...

digi_owl4• 11 years ago

The "monopoly" word is irrelevant. It boils down to using a major market position (search) to leverage a position in another market.

The whole hoopla about browser choice in Windows was for much the same, as Microsoft used their OS market position to push Internet Explorer, that in turn pushed IIS.

Frankly the browser war was a proxy for intranet server competition. Netscape was trying to use internet tech to go after corporate networks, and MS was trying to cut them off at the pass.

You don't need to be a monopoly to get slapped with antitrust. All that is needed is for you to be the big dog of the pack, and seen as abusing that position.

Goronmon12• 11 years ago

The fact that most people use the default, and that Google mandates the browser be Chrome

These charges aren't related to Android, so where is Google 'mandating' Chrome be used?

soxpopuli5• 11 years ago

Google had over 80% of the market before Chrome was even released, and they achieved most of that with MSN Search being the default on Windows.

The majority of Web users on the most used browser (IE) manually chose to use Google.

Brakenshire2• 11 years ago

The article says

At issue is whether the company uses its position as the dominant search engine company to muscle out competition from specialized search services, specifically comparison shopping sites, by prioritizing its own Google Shopping search results.

Where are you getting that the 'antitrust angle towards Google search' is a subject of the complaint?

Goronmon12• 11 years ago

From the fact that it mentions Google's position as a dominant search engine company prioritizing it's own search results.

Lazare• 11 years ago

The sentence you quote is referring to antitrust. The laws about using a dominant position to compete unfairly are antitrust laws.

And it is pretty weird. It's really not very analogous to the old Microsoft/IE cases.

(Edit: Obviously, it's an EU case, brought under different laws entirely. There's no particular reason it would or should be analogous, but it does look very odd to US eyes, just because the legal principles are so different.)

elsewhen• 11 years ago

There doesn't need to be any "forcing" to violate competition laws (known as "antitrust" in the US).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law

Such laws seek to "promote and maintain fair competition"

adventured2• 11 years ago

Anti-trust isn't competition law in the US.

Anti-trust law in the US does not exist to promote competition.

Monopolies are not illegal in the US. The violation of anti-trust law generally occurs when the government 'proves' harm to consumers. It's an almost entirely arbitrary decision on the part of the government as to whether they pursue a company on anti-trust grounds.

Intel maintained a near monopoly in personal computer processors for a long time. They were allowed to keep that position, despite the lack of serious competition beyond AMD's small slice of the market. Cisco, eBay, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have also been allowed to keep their overwhelmingly dominate positions over the years. Why? Because anti-trust has nothing to do with promoting competition.

Aoyagi2• 11 years ago

Search engine isn't Google's only product. And since you use "app", I presume you mean "any kind of software", in which case yes, it's called Google Analytics. You don't have to ever use any Google's site, but you are still tracked by them almost everywhere.

Although that probably isn't very relevant to this case....

kbwt• 11 years ago

Android.

I don't think Google should be allowed to dictate clauses like this one from their developer agreement:

  4.5 Non-Compete.
    You may not use the Market to distribute or make available any
    Product whose primary purpose is to facilitate the distribution
    of software applications and games for use on Android devices
    outside of the Market.

See: https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_us/about/developer-distribu....

Goronmon12• 11 years ago

The EU is treating Android as a separate issue here. This seems to specifically be about Google search (and Chrome?).

coldtea2• 11 years ago

I never understood the antitrust angle towards Google search. Is there some kind of browser or app out there that is forcing people to use Google as their search engine on all their devices

Antitrust law is not about being "forced"...

TazeTSchnitzel14• 11 years ago

You're not forced to use Windows either. Anti-trust is when you abuse a monopoly. That monopoly doesn't need to be forced.

outside12342• 11 years ago

Let the EU shakedown for money begin!

This has nothing to do with anti-trust and everything to do with extracting a kilo of flesh from a successful non-EU company.

declan6• 11 years ago

You might be interested in a classic (well, pre-Microsoft antitrust) book written by a professor who has specialized in antitrust law. I've interviewed him a few times. Excerpt:

"Professor Armentano thoroughly researches the classic cases in antitrust law and demonstrates a surprising gap between the stated aims of antitrust law and what it actually accomplishes in the real world. Instead of protecting competition, Professor Armentano finds, antitrust law actually protects certain politically-favored competitors. This is an essential work for anyone wishing to understand the limitations and problems of contemporary antitrust actions." http://www.amazon.com/Antitrust-Monopoly-Anatomy-Independent...

tajen3• 11 years ago

So what? US has signed bilateral trade agreements with EU for that reason. As much as EU may benefit from fines on US companies, it's still a strict application of the law. US also benefits from the strict application of their laws when EU companies try to enter the US market. Actually, EU companies rarely try it. Guess why.

outside12342• 11 years ago

I think my point is that I can't find a case where an EU company has been threatened with antitrust action in the EU (or the US). Do you have a counter example? (Genuinely curious not trolling)

That leads me to believe these laws are "not strictly applied" but politically applied.

matt40772• 11 years ago

Check page 3 on this list: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistic.... Of the ten highest cartel fines, only one was levelled against a non-European company (LG Electronics).

dublinclontarf• 11 years ago

This is because European companies aren't good enough to get to "monopoly" status, much to the commissions chagrin.

TazeTSchnitzel14• 11 years ago

This has nothing to do with anti-trust

It has everything to do with anti-trust. Google's near-monopoly on search is dangerous, and they've abused it multiple times. Google News and Yelp are good examples: they would steal content (not just link to it as they'd have you believe), then threaten to delist the victim's sites if they complained.

muro• 11 years ago

Google News shows a snippet + link to original page, just like search. The difference is that it groups articles about the same thing together. I don't understand your argument.

baldfat3• 11 years ago

At issue is whether the company uses its position as the dominant search engine company to muscle out competition from specialized search services, specifically comparison shopping sites, by prioritizing its own Google Shopping search results.

Anyone else find shopping with Google Search is almost useless and I always follow up with a search on amazon.com and get a better result?

dragonwriter8• 11 years ago

No, but then I don't use either Google Search or Amazon for much online shopping -- mostly, I go directly to an appropriate (more focused than Amazon) retailer, though sometimes I use Google Search to find a retailer if I'm searching for something where I don't already know a set of retailers to check.

baldfat3• 11 years ago

I still find better prices from Amazon than NewEgg or other sites. Makes me feel guilty though.

lkbm• 11 years ago

What would be a viable way for Google to fix this that doesn't hurt users?

Sure, have Google Chrome installs start with "What do you want as your default search provider?" But can you do that with Android? How much will it affect Google Now to have it be connecting to a different search provider, and what does that mean? If I enter "1+1", or "weather", or "call Bob" or "navigate home", should it go to my search provider, or to Google Now? (I know the first two currently go to GWS anyway, but why should they?)

And if integration of services like shopping on GWS are a problem, does that mean they should be removing the "Shopping" tab and make it just another result? That would suck. (For me, as a user.) I dunno, maybe long-term it allows for more competition and innovation, but short term I don't see solutions that aren't "make your product worse". Even allowing me to choose plug-in search tabs from other services seems iffy.

whyenot• 11 years ago

What would be a viable way for Google to fix this that doesn't hurt users?

If they are prioritizing Google Shopping results, as is alleged, stop doing that or otherwise biasing search results to favor Google products.

tajen3• 11 years ago

This raises a very difficult question: Given the results are personnalized and the algorithm a secret, how can we bring proof? Same question for many companies who can hide behind the absence of measurable data, because they keep it secret.

declan6• 11 years ago

What would be a viable way for Google to fix this that doesn't hurt users?

Assuming that any of Google's business practices needs to be "fixed" (a claim that's debatable and has been rejected by U.S. FedGov), you've put your finger on the difference between the U.S. and Euro regulatory approaches.

The European approach is more inclined to protect competitors that complain about a rival -- in this case Yelp, Microsoft, etc. are doing that. Note protecting competitors from rivals is not the same as protecting competition; in fact, having bureaucrats cripple some firms and favor others can reduce competition and injects politics and lobbying and who-golfs-with-the-commissioner into the process. It also can lead to bizarre results like the lack of a reasonably viable way to "fix" things.

The U.S. approach toward dominant firm behavior (well, since the 1970s) has been different. It focuses on intervening when there's consumer harm, or at least tries to. If consumers are not harmed, the logic goes, there is likely no reason for the Feds to intervene. This is why the FTC did not proceed with its case against Google. U.S. law also emphasizes economic analysis, which stands a better chance of grounding the analysis in marketplace reality.

A colleague and I wrote about the different EU vs. US antitrust approaches here: http://news.cnet.com/Intel-probe-highlights-EU-U.S.-regulati...

Note Microsoft enlisted U.S. politicians in its attempt to fend off broad EU antitrust actions; here's my article from 2004: http://news.cnet.com/U.S.-politicos-fire-at-EUs-Microsoft-ru... Google doesn't seem to have the same depth of congressional outreach, especially among Rs predisposed to be skeptical of antitrust actions.

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

The US's view of Google is inadmissible. Several high positioned White House staff members in tech positions are Googlers, and Google has a massive amount of cash invested in the US Congress as well. Google is at the White House for meetings on a weekly basis. The US Congress' letter to the EU Parliament asking them not to break up Google: Entirely signed by representatives paid by Google.

dragonwriter8• 11 years ago

What would be a viable way for Google to fix this that doesn't hurt users?

Its hard to even evaluate the accuracy of the objections, much less propose something that would resolve them, without the actual text of the Statement of Objections rather than news articles and even the original EU press release [0] and fact sheet [1] on the SO.

But, in any case, but for their anticompetitive effect, actions which violate competition laws often benefit users in terms of interaction with the product. The whole point of competition laws is to prevent that short-term benefit from being the source of monopolization which leads both to stagnation and monopoly rents, which harm consumers over the long term.

[0] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-4780_en.htm

[1] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-4781_en.htm

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

Android is very simple: Google needs to be banned from mandating OEMs install the whole Google Apps package. Leave it on OEMs to decide what browser, search, etc. apps to package on their devices. The market, and consumers, will decide what works.

The Open Handset Alliance is a blatant example of an illegal trust. A large group of supposed competitors agreeing not to compete.

Oletros18• 11 years ago

Do you really believe the things you write?

How the heck is OHA an illegal trust?

soxpopuli5• 11 years ago

Android gets raked over the coals for years for bad customer experience.

Google attempts to reign in fragmentation and divergent and inconsistent UI experience, and move more of firmware to Play store so it can issue security updates to customers without carriers and OEMs blocking.

Google raked over the coals for anti-competition.

Meanwhile, Apple ships iTunes and App Store, which can only be used with their own cloud stores. They ship iMessage which only works with their Cloud. Apple Maps. A fitness app. A wallet. A payment system. etc All in a proprietary, single vendor system, closed source.

If every Android phone's out of box experience was a random collection of OEM apps that had no common standard, the consumer experience would be terrible. Switch from a Samsung to an LG device and you might be hit by the fact that the device has none of the apps you were using on your previous phone, you have to delete all of the current apps, and reinstall all of your previous ones, enter all the settings again, all of the login credentials, etc. The switching cost would be huge and it would cause OEM lock in.

The setup process is a factor in consumer choice. If you are faced with an onerous gauntlet of selection dialogs for 10+ apps when you start (it's not just app store, browser, maps, but email, music, video, camera, photos, etc), consumers are going to be very annoyed. I don't want to spend 30 minutes to an hour unboxing my phone and "installing", that's what used to happen on PCs.

And what happens when things go wrong. If the user installs a third party app store, and gets malware, do you think they're going to be blamed, or Google's Android brand will be blamed? Most consumers aren't aware enough to narrow down who to blame.

So in the end, you'd be asking Google to assume all the brand risk, all of the complaints over fragmentation and failure to patch older phones, and making consumer experience worse.

Apple has none of these problems. Say what you will about their locked down platform, the one thing you don't have to worry about is inconsistent getting starting experience or malware from the App Store.

The 'choice' being presented here is the kind of choice hackers and engineers love, but it's not the kind of choice one's parents and relatives may love. It's just hobbling attempts to improve the Android experience.

TheDong5• 11 years ago

You can currently change your google now provider.

Firefox Beta, when installed now, registers an intent for search, and when you next do a google-now swipe-up, it'll ask you to pick between google now and firefox beta.

Google already has the solution for android of letting apps register intents, even for core things like maps or search or (hell) even the homescreen.

Google's solution of letting other apps register intents to handle things and prompt the user, while having default apps made by them that fulfill those intents, seems to be the best compromise on usability and extensibility.

thrownaway24243• 11 years ago

In which we see a difference between EU and US law. US antitrust law exists to protect the consumer. EU antitrust law, evidently, exists to protect other competitors.

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

Actually, the difference is that US antitrust law won't go after companies who are friends of half the White House staff and pay off a decent chunk of Congress, whereas the EU doesn't care how big you are, they'll take you down.

Goronmon12• 11 years ago

I think you meant "shake you down".

adventured2• 11 years ago

Feel free to provide numerous examples of US companies avoiding anti-trust by paying off a decent chunk of Congress. You need to prove your assertions when they're that outlandish.

Microsoft, IBM, Standard Oil, American Tobacco, Alcoa. Several of the biggest companies in US history, all pursued very aggressively by the US Government on anti-trust. You're clearly wrong.

AJ007• 11 years ago

Thankfully we have leaked documents from the US case.

Excerpt from Ben Edelman, whose done a damn good job over the years not only watching Google but also companies involved in abusive adware and spyware practices:

'At the same time, Google systematically applied lesser standards to its own services. Examining Google's launch report for a 2008 algorithm change, FTC staff said that Google elected to show its product search OneBox "regardless of the quality" of that result (footnote 119, citing GOOGLR-00330279-80) and despite "pretty terribly embarrassing failures" in returning low-quality results (footnote 170, citing GOOGWRIG-000041022). Indeed, Google's product search service apparently failed Google's standard criteria for being indexed by Google search (p.80 and footnote 461), yet Google nonetheless put the service in top positions (p.30 and footnote 170, citing GOOG-Texas-0199877-906).'

http://www.benedelman.org/news/040115-1.html

Were consumers hurt if Google de-ranked content which by even Google's own standards were better than its own? May be not, but it certainly peels away any idea of the integrity of algorithmic search.

Google's business is under attack from all fronts today. As business owners and those employed by internet businesses we are so fortunate as to not have to rely on Google anymore for our audiences. We have have search from two major app stores, and more if you are international. Social can deliver new users at a greater rate than search. There was a day where Google penalized your company, and the next day you fired everyone.

In the next year or so we may start seeing ultra-cheap Chinese smartphones flood the market with Google free Android. Interesting thing commenters here seem to not know, device manufacturers are not allowed to sell any non-Google Android devices if they sell Google Android.

Idealy some lines are drawn so Facebook doesn't engage in similar abusive behavior against its users and customers. I don't have high hopes. If anything, the ability to avoid US penalties and the EU's late reaction time probably emboldens behavior by market leaders everywhere.

thrownaway24243• 11 years ago

I don't understand what you're getting at. The "product search onebox" does not drive traffic to Google, it drives traffic away from it. For instance if I search for "bicycle helmet" the thing at the top of the page is the product search onebox, it contains five prominent links to sites where I can buy a bicycle helmet.

So I don't see what you are getting at. If anything, the product search onebox is the opposite of what the EU seems to be complaining about.

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

"Interesting thing commenters here seem to not know, device manufacturers are not allowed to sell any non-Google Android devices if they sell Google Android." - This is one of those MADA terms few Google supporters understand. Samsung, for example, is prohibited from releasing Google-free Android unless they wholesale give up on all Google Apps on every device they sell.

declan6• 11 years ago

Ben Edelman, whose done a damn good job over the years not only watching Google

Ben Edelman is a smart fellow; I've known him for 15 years or so. But he is a paid Microsoft consultant and advisor. Perhaps he's right on some of these points, but I also suspect that if Microsoft would stop writing him checks very quickly if he suddenly started declaring that Google's actions benefited consumers.

You might as well quote a paid Democratic party consultant doing a "damn good job over the years" describing how evil those dastardly Republicans are.

TazeTSchnitzel14• 11 years ago

Google's behaviour is not pro-consumer. Lack of competition is not good for consumers.

soxpopuli5• 11 years ago

What is a Search Engine? Is this some kind of legally regulated category that says you a) must only return Web results and b) in the form of 10 blue links?

Should a search which a search engine knows the direct answer to (word definitions, the current weather or time, etc) send you to another site for the answer. Why are "search engines" prohibited from direct answers, but voice agents like Siri allowed? Is there something fundamentally different between a text box and a voice input?

Likewise, if a search engine has indexed data and can return deep links to other sites formatted differently, why is that different? For example, if you search for "Playstation 4" and Google simply returned the first 10 hits (Amazon.com, eBay, Walmart, etc) as a page of 10 blue links like it did in 2006, instead of formatting them in a nice box at the top of the screen with summary price extracted, would this still be illegal? Why is it legal to display organic search results as blue links, but if you display them in a box and call it "Product Search", it's suddenly illegal? This makes no sense to me. The only difference between the Google Product Search box at the top, and displaying the links is simply better visual presentation.

The world has moved on from ten blue links. Mobile devices have even more constrained real estate and network latency pushing the need for summarization and smart presentation even further. A new class of consumer expects these devices to almost act like intelligent agents when answering queries.

Is the European Commission saying it will be illegal to build JARVIS or the Star Trek computer, because a smarter search that doesn't delegate to other niche search engines, and instead returns direct answers, is unfair competition?

At the heart of this seems to be the idea that Google search should return links to other shopping comparison engines instead of direct links to Amazon, et al. That frankly seems like a good way to hurt customer experience. If you have a good product comparison engine these days, you're probably going to end up as a native app anyway.

By the time this EU case winds down (Microsoft's took a decade), the traditional web search engine might not even exist anymore.

pjc50• 11 years ago

There is the rather delicate issue of copyright here. If you google for something and the answer is on another page, lifting it from that page is (a) making a copy and (b) potentially depriving the linked page of revenue.

There is also the question of using the threat to ban people from your search results (which is calamitous for most businesses) to resolve your disputes with them.

soxpopuli5• 11 years ago

But the linked page is there. Google is indexing Amazon, extracting the photo, description, and price of the product, displaying it in a box, and making it a link back to Amazon where it got the data from, what's the problem?

Product Search is just another form of summarization/snippeting that just presents the data in more digestable format.

Remember Google Fusion Tables? That was an attempt to extract facts from pages and put them into tables, so if you ask "What's the masses of the planets of the solar system", you could get a table of 8 planets and masses, with the results coming from 8 different sites. But the links could still be there to the original site, it's just formatted as a table instead of as 8 blue links with summary paragraphs, which is harder for humans to process.

Where do we draw the line? You've seen how Google has a new system that can automatically caption images with deep neural networks. (http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/18/new-google-research-project...)

Now what if this same system eventually allows the search engine to summarize your web page by 'reading it', and then auto-generating a paragraph that explains what it thought it was about?

There'd be no actual direct copying of text (like there is with search snippets), instead it would be more like a human going to a library, reading a book, and writing a review

Would this also violate copyright?

fixermark4• 11 years ago

That question is moot in the shopping context; the products that show up in that system are fed directly to Google by the owners of the product listings.

https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/188478?hl=en

tajen3• 11 years ago

deep links, formatted differently

Strictly speaking, you are only allowed to connect to a remote computer if you agree with their Terms of Service. I guess there are legitimate round corners, like you need to fetch the ToS first. It's not applicable as-is for the WWW, but you need to accept the websites have a say in how their results should be displayed.

Btw, is Robots.txt legally enforceable? http://www.robotstxt.org/faq/legal.html

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

"Building the Star Trek computer" was always a funny marketing angle for Google, given that the Federation would frown on a greedy corporation controlling the flow of information.

crazy1van• 11 years ago

By the time this EU case winds down (Microsoft's took a decade), the traditional web search engine might not even exist anymore.

Exactly. The court system moves so much slower than the technology industry. It wasn't the US justice department that disrupted IE. Instead it was Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. It took me 5 minutes to install a different, better web browser. It will take me even less time to start using a different, better search engine whenever one comes along.

BinaryIdiot3• 11 years ago

Now this is interesting

At issue is whether the company uses its position as the dominant search engine company to muscle out competition from specialized search services, specifically comparison shopping sites, by prioritizing its own Google Shopping search results.

Google Shopping results suck but when I search for products almost always is an Amazon, Walmart, Target and others linked at the top of the results sometimes higher than the actual company that produces the product. As far as I can tell you can only get their shopping search results by clicking on "Shopping" (at least I can't seem to trigger it without that).

I don't understand the issue here. foundem is behind the initial lawsuit and kinda kicked off this whole thing but they're a search engine. If I owned a search company I certainly wouldn't want to be federating queries and indexing them doesn't make sense; why would I index an index when I can just index the source?

Am I missing something here?

The European Commission also confirmed that it is opening an investigation into Android as well. Although the operating system is open source, meaning that any manufacturer can install it on the phones and tablets they sell, many core applications, including the Google Play store, are proprietary. Manufacturers must enter into special agreements with Google to include these proprietary apps. The investigation will attempt to determine whether Google is using its position to discourage the inclusion of rival applications on Android-based phones.

I don't understand this one as well. These applications require the use of Google's infrastructure so if you want to use them why shouldn't you agree to handle them as they want? Besides I think Barnes and Noble's nook and Amazon's Fire platforms show this is a non issue.

rhino3696• 11 years ago

The issue is that Google by being the default search engine could slowly subsume all the profitable markets that run on the internet.

Once they kill off potential competitors then there is no reason to be competitive on price or quality.

Think of it as sort of a net neutrality for the search engine. People here are totally okay with telling Comcast they can't leverage their ISP near-monopoly to win the video streaming market.

Why should we allow Google to leverage their search monopoly into capturing other internet markets.

Goronmon12• 11 years ago

People here are totally okay with telling Comcast they can't leverage their ISP near-monopoly to win the video streaming market.

Why should we allow Google to leverage their search monopoly into capturing other internet markets.

The easy response is that I don't have a choice to switch to someone other than Comcast. Whereas I can pretty trivially switch to use a search engine other than Google.

BinaryIdiot3• 11 years ago

Except they're not. The default search engine for Firefox is Yahoo, for IE it's Bing. It's just for Chrome and maybe Safari. They are in no way stopping or even hindering you from using other search engines. Your example of Comcast, however? They actually got several local governments to sign contracts saying no one else could run copper to your home. HUGE difference.

skj2• 11 years ago

Not a lawyer, but is "could" the threshold here? Because Google "could" behave badly, but isn't yet (presumably, or it "could" would not be the word used), it gets punished?

My next startup could be so successful that everyone uses it for everything. Better outlaw me from doing startups!

loceng• 11 years ago

This is what Facebook is doing, should they fall into the same category?

dmitrygr2• 11 years ago

The reason you do not understand is simple: there is no logic here. Google is not a monopoly. The parallels drawn here (by EU and by people on HN respectively) are:

1. Microsoft. This is wrong since while it was mostly impossible back then to buy a PC without windows, it is quite possible today to not use google. In fact not using google is easier than using google (you can skip typing google.com into the address bar)

2. Comcast. This is wrong since in many markets comcast is the only internet provider. No markets exist where bing and yahoo are inaccessible.

Really this is just EU punishing google for getting too big. Unfortunately for EU, even their own ridiculous (IMHO) protectionist laws do not have anything about a company being to successful for their liking. I imagine this will be a huge money and time waste for the EU, but in the end they have no real case. Google owns google.com and may display whatever it wants there. Until someone forces EU citizens to use google, or until bing and yahoo die, they are not a monopoly, even as per EU's ridiculous (IMHO) definition.

Google does not owe foo.com or bar.org or baz.info any place in their results page, unless is so chooses. And foo, bar, and baz are only there at google's mercy. Just like EU cannot force _YOU_ to include content _I_ want on _YOUR_ page, no matter how successful and how non-european you are and how unsuccessful and how european I am, it has no real power to force google to index foo, bar, and baz, or place any content of theirs (snippets of text and links to their pages) on google's property that is google.com/...

dragonwriter8• 11 years ago

The reason you do not understand is simple: there is no logic here. Google is not a monopoly.

Whether Google is a monopoly in the sense relevant in (US) antitrust law is, well, not so easily dismissed. What is relevant isn't the absence of any competition, its market power -- which is usually defined in terms of pricing power (essentially, having some range within which changes in the price at which the firm offers its product in some market will not result in a shift from the firm to competitors.)

And, in any case, EU antitrust law has a less restricted domain than US antitrust law and, AFAIK, while monopoly/market/pricing power is still relevant, is more likely to be violated even before a firm has established market power.

The parallels drawn here (by EU and by people on HN respectively) are

The EU isn't, AFAICT, "drawing parallels", its directly objecting to specific Google behavior on its own merit, not because it is parallel to Microsoft, Comcast, etc.

Really this is just EU punishing google for getting too big.

This inflammatory complaint could use some justification.

Unfortunately for EU, even their own ridiculous (IMHO) protectionist laws do not have anything about a company being to successful for their liking.

What in particular is "protectionist" about the provisions of the law being applied here? AFAICT, the laws at issue are Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union [0][1], which don't seem particularly protectionist.

I imagine this will be a huge money and time waste for the EU, but in the end they have no real case.

Have you seen the actual Statement of Objections? If not, what is the basis of the conclusion about whether or not they have a real case?

Google owns google.com and may display whatever it wants there.

Not if they have dominant power in a market and displaying what they want there constitutes an abuse of that position.

Until someone forces EU citizens to use google, or until bing and yahoo die, they are not a monopoly, even as per EU's ridiculous (IMHO) definition.

Being a monopoly is not required for a violation of either the EU rules on anticompetitive agreements or the EU rules on abuse of a dominant position.

[0] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:120...

[1] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:120...

visarga• 11 years ago

it has no real power to force google to index foo, bar, and baz, or place any content of theirs (snippets of text and links to their pages) on google's property that is google.com

That would be possible only if you can reify the notion of freedom from the personal level to that of a company. A large, multinational company has a much greater impact on society and thus needs to be more tightly regulated.

serge2k• 11 years ago

Their only power is to make it extremely expensive for google not to operate within their rules.

hodder• 11 years ago

As a user of Google search and Android, I want Google to bundle services. Android would, in my opinion, be impaired if it didn't include Google play, gmail, chrome, and Google Maps.

Similarly, Google search would be worse for me if it didn't present me with instantly relevant results like shopping, wikipedia responses, imdb style results, or quick answers to unit conversions and equations.

Yes Google leverages its dominance in search and mobile to bundle services, but is this something that the EU should fine Google for? As a consumer, I don't think so.

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

As someone who's been trying to find a way to not use Google, I absolutely think the EU should not just fine, but shatter Google for. Because even when I moved to Windows Phone, Google bought out my NFC payment app and shut it down, telling everyone to get Android and Google Wallet.

If Google can't crush a competitor in the marketplace, they'll just buy it out and kill it. Which is why rumors they might want to acquire Twitter isn't a shock: They've never succeeded at social.

nathanm412• 11 years ago

Softcard was shutting down anyways. They really never recovered from heavily investing in branding a product named ISIS and then having to change their name after that budget had been spent. On top of that, the early adopters that would have spread the word of the product were annoyed that the phone carriers were actively blocking Google Wallet installations in order to push ISIS adoption in the beginning. Google Wallet had to change business models and use a reloadable card because the carriers prevented Google from using the secure element on NFC to store the user's actual credit card on their own device. After Softcard began to fold, Google just bought what was left.

antsar2• 11 years ago

Android would, in my opinion, be impaired if it didn't include Google play, gmail, chrome, and Google Maps.

Android would be "impaired" if it shipped a general-purpose mail client rather than one designed specifically for Gmail?

It would be "impaired" if part of the setup process was to select an app store[0], a browser[1], and a maps app[1]?

That sounds more like "consumer empowerment" than "impairment" to me.

[0] Google Play, F-Droid, Amazon's app store, etc

[1] Just show that category of programs from the aforementioned app store

dragonwriter8• 11 years ago

More complex setup is a UX quality loss, so, yes, Android would be impaired by your recommendations. (And, on top of that, giving developers less consistency they could rely on on the platform would also be an impairment resulting from that.)

Whether an improved competitive marketplace would result from the changes and yield long-term benefits that offset the cost of those impairments may be a worthwhile debate, but its not a debate you can even have honestly without recognizing the impairments.

euyyn3• 11 years ago

Phone and tablet manufacturers and retailers do with Android whatever they want, by virtue of it being free and open source. If they thought there was any value (greater than the UX harm) in those measures you propose, they'll do it without blinking. They already modify the hell out of any device that's not a Nexus.

ahomescu1• 11 years ago

Android would be "impaired" if it shipped a general-purpose mail client rather than one designed specifically for Gmail?

Android includes (or at least used to include) a generic email app called Email.

It would be "impaired" if part of the setup process was to select an app store[0], a browser[1], and a maps app[1]?

You can have all of those, and more, with custom ROMs like Cyanogenmod, or even with AOSP alone.

TheDong5• 11 years ago

Android already does ship generic apps and let users install their own app stores, browsers, maps, and so on. In fact, you don't even have to use the Google play store to install them because you can install arbitrary APKs.

In iOS there's no chance of installing an alternate app store by default, and yet with Anroid Amazon was able to make the Kindle devices (fire phone; tablet) that run Android without any hint of Google services.

A user can already choose to purchase a device without those services, it just happens users don't want to. I, as a user, enjoy having Google's services and enjoy that I can install alternatives if I so desire (like alternate and better email apps).

That's one of the reasons I don't use iOS

azakai4• 11 years ago

Microsoft said the same back in the day. And it is true - in the immediate term, consumers benefit from a single vendor integrating all their products and limiting competition.

The problem happens when you look a little farther ahead. Anti-competitive measures prevent other companies from offering something even better. Those products might not exist now, but without an open and competitive environment, they won't show up. And consumers are very much hurt if that is the case.

magicalist6• 11 years ago

This is where it's not helpful to talk generically about this issue.

I might agree with you on some of the clauses in Android contracts, for instance, but the EU's previously proposed idea mandating cycling through different spammy vertical shopping search engines at the top of the search results helps no one but those spammy search engines, artificially propping a company up for years for the the appearance of competition.

See declan's excellent post below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9382109

ArkyBeagle2• 11 years ago

I suspect we're overestimating how much end-consumer desire there was for alternatives. Removing the choice of O/S might well have made buying a computer possible ( in terms of internal bandwidth ) for some.

Antitrust arguments famously switch between "harm to competitors" and "harm to consumers" while the empirical case is that with very few exceptions, these are nothing like the same thing.

At least in the '90s, when this really was a thing, people just wanted to go to Best Buy, plonk down their $2k and get on that AOL thingy all the people at work are talking about.

Now? Has anything been more proprietary and closed than iOS? Seems to be perceived as a virtue. When I am among the iOS people, they have trouble with 'em all the time.

euyyn3• 11 years ago

What Microsoft did was completely different: They coerced OEMs to not include Netscape Navigator or they wouldn't license Windows to them. They prevented users from uninstalling IE claiming technical reasons that were proven false. And the reason they did those things was, as proven from internal communications, to protect Windows' monopoly from the threat of portable Java applications delivered via Netscape Navigator, by asphyxiating Netscape to death.

tracker13• 11 years ago

I don't know if google stops android phone developers from including a bing maps, or microsoft office app on their phones, in the same way MS was prohibiting OEMs/VARs from including Netscape Navigator or Opera.

I know they require the google experience apps to be kept, or not as a whole in order to be in certain programs though. Just not sure the extent they block other apps from being installed.

coldtea2• 11 years ago

As a user of Google search and Android, I want Google to bundle services. Android would, in my opinion, be impaired if it didn't include Google play, gmail, chrome, and Google Maps

Even if it was so, the convenience of consumers is less important than having a healthy economic ecosystem.

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

Indeed. Consumer choice is more important than consumer coddling. And nobody is saying Samsung or Sony or LG shouldn't be able to choose to ship Google Maps on their devices. Just that it's wrong for Google to force them to.

blfr2• 11 years ago

Isn't consumer convenience the whole point of a healthy economic ecosystem?

We don't want companies to compete for the sake of competing but to deliver better products and services. Failing that, at least cheaper.

pmontra3• 11 years ago

My 2 cents. I had an Android phone since 2011 and an Android tablet since last December. I do use Google Play to install apps and for nothing else. I use Google Maps without being logged in. I don't use Gmail nor Chrome (also on desktop). I search from within Opera (I bet this is very unusual).

I know it's anecdotal but given my experience the only thing that would impair Android is the lack of an app store. Books, movies, music etc don't matter. Only apps. There are alternatives to Google Play and there will be more if for some reason Google decide to shut it down but a search engine and a little QA for apps is convenient. Having to wander through 4 or 5 app stores would be a bad experience (btw, I do use FDroid for some app not on Google's store).

TazeTSchnitzel14• 11 years ago

Android would, in my opinion, be impaired if it didn't include Google play, gmail, chrome, and Google Maps.

Why should Google blacklist manufacturers who produce anything Android-based that lacks their services? If you wanted Google services, what would stop you downloading them yourself?

bad_user• 11 years ago

As a paying customer of Google Apps, of Google Drive, of Google Music and as a user of Android, I want to have choice. And for example it is regrettable that CalDAV or CardDAV are not baked into Android, or that the mail app does not support IMAP Idle. Which basically means that the only usable standard on Android is Exchange.

I also love Chrome and Maps. However I'd like the ability of uninstalling them depending on my mood.

This isn't too say that EU's claims are fair or not. But I also feel that Google has lost its way.

manulp2• 11 years ago

The investigation will attempt to determine whether Google is using its position to discourage the inclusion of rival applications on Android-based phones.

Shouldn't this also apply to iOS?

antsar2• 11 years ago

Yes. And that doesn't detract from the validity of the claims against Google.

manulp2• 11 years ago

Absolutely. I'm just a bit surprised that such charges have never been brought against Apple.

dragonwriter8• 11 years ago

Shouldn't this also apply to iOS?

Perhaps, but the set of entities behind the complaints that triggered the investigations directed at Google are specifically targeting Google.

If a similar group targets Apple, then maybe we'll see a similar investigation.

soxpopuli5• 11 years ago

By entities, you mean the Microsoft funded astroturf organization FairSearch and the hydra connected to it.

SunShiranui• 11 years ago

In my opinion, yes, and it would be beneficial for most citizens if the EU intervened.

tzs• 11 years ago

I don't see any way to even ask the question sensibly about iOS.

Google supplies an OS (Android) to non-Google phone makers, and Google supplies applications to non-Google phone makers. The potential antitrust issue is if Google is using its position as an OS supplier to other companies to influence those other companies to also choose Google for applications.

Apple supplies neither an OS nor applications to non-Apple phone makers. There is no third party that Apple is using iOS to influence toward choosing Apple applications.

Aoyagi2• 11 years ago

This might help

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/15/what_did_google_do_w...

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

Writing in their PhD paper in 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin described paid advertising as “insidious”, because it “often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results”.

Absolutely hilarious.

undefined0• 11 years ago

In addition to this, Google currently deprioritizes other video search engines over YouTube because of the recent DMCA algorithm change, as Google forwards DMCA's to YouTube and doesn't impact the search ranking for YouTube per notice. It's completely unfair.

1971genocide3• 11 years ago

I wouldn't be suspicious until I read ".. fine of 6.4 billion .."

What ?

Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean.

I don't understand what EU's problem is. If they don't like google and android please ask your tech graduates to create their own.

The EU is an funny organization. they are not democratically elected. Their policies is the reason half of EU is bankrupt. The EU should be fined for bankrupting entire generations of young people in Greece and promoting the largest transfer of wealth from poor European nations to rich European nations.

Even assuming Google did participate in behaviour that is anti-competitive that market that google dominates was created by google !

I like china's approach to this where they forced their countrymen to create powerful competitor to google. The emphasis should be promotion of wealth creation and not redistribution. Why doesn't Europe have its own homegrown search giant ? An EU company would clearly have massive advantage due to the language barrier. The EU should be paying people to create companies to compete with google. Or atleast make it a priority to do so. What happens when google refuses to pay the fine and starts backtracing or treating the EU market as "not worth it", has the EU though about how it will effect consumers ?

Tarang• 11 years ago

Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean.

The fines broke big long after BP's fine. BNP Paribas was fined a staggering $9bn just last year. The fine was selected as the limit of 10% of the annual revenue in the previous year.

Crito• 11 years ago

"Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean."

BP was not fined as much as they should have been, therefore the EU should go easy on all other companies from now on? How does that make any sense?

1971genocide3• 11 years ago

No,

Everyone should be fined based on how much damage they have caused on the environment,civilization, etc

Do you seriously think google has done damage worth 6.4 BILLION ?

BP,Shell,Nestle have caused real damage to real humans and the environment and there seems no outrage or investigation towards them.

Banks in germany have clearly destroyed lives of people financially and no one is asking any questions ?

Google allegedly tweaked its algorithm to make it slightly inconvenient for people to use alternative services and now we need to fine google 6.4 BILLION ?

arikrak• 11 years ago

I like china's approach to this where they forced their countrymen to create powerful competitor to google.

Right, it's not like China just blocks all of Google entirely or anything...

tormeh2• 11 years ago

I think you're talking about the same thing.

matt40772• 11 years ago

This is a bit childish. Firstly, the EU is democratically elected: the parliament is elected directly. The commissioners are appointed by democratically elected governments and subject to the parliament's approval.

Secondly the EU competition bureaucracy has never shown a bias against American (or even non-EU) companies. If you check http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistic... (page 3) you'll see that of the 10 highest cartel fines, 9 went against EU companies. One was LG Electronics.

Thirdly, the idea that any company the size of google would abandon the European market in some sort of spiteful retreat is laughable. Europe has a strong track record in terms of the rule of law and google will have a fair chance to present their arguments.

Fourthly, there shouldn't be spaces before punctuation.

pluma• 11 years ago

The punishment isn't proportional to the damage, it's proportional to their income. Whether that is just or not is a different question.

TazeTSchnitzel14• 11 years ago

Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean.

So? The thing with corporations is, if they do something bad and you give them a small fine, they'll just consider it a write-off expense.

Corporations lack morality. They are not human, they cannot be reformed. If you want them to behave, you have to make their bad actions hurt. You can't just lock them up, either.

Thus, a big fine is the only way to force them to act.

rbehrends• 11 years ago

I wouldn't be suspicious until I read ".. fine of 6.4 billion .."

EU fines for anticompetitive behavior are assessed as a percentage of turnover. As a basic rule, it is set at up to 30% of annual sales related to the infringement (modified by aggravating and mitigating factors) multiplied by the duration of the infringement, plus a base amount of 15%-25%, and capped at 10% of annual turnover.

Atropos• 11 years ago

The fine amounts being thrown around are mostly bad journalism. The law allows a fine of up to 10% of annual turnover, but even in most hard-core cartel cases, they will not go into the upper bound. And especially in this case, it is not clear if Google will be fined in the end at all - the Motorala SEP case ended without a fine as well: http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/04/eu-settles-sep-antitrust-...

wstrange3• 11 years ago

Google's competitors should spend more time improving their products and less time complaining to the EU.

As an example, google flight search is just hands down better than the alternatives. It is ultra fast (a killer feature) and has a simple but intuitive UI.

1971genocide3• 11 years ago

I agree.

I am someone who constantly tries out alternative google services. consumers are always looking for better deals. If there were better search engines, email clients, etc than google people will be switching in droves.

The reality is there isn't and the solution is not to fine these companies but to promote the creation of competitors. Given that there is 60% youth unemployment in may europeans countries I do not see why this is so hard.

This lawsuit just seems like a nice way for lawyers to pocket some money from the wealth that was created by google at the expense of google and the consumers.

ocdtrekkie52• 11 years ago

Honestly, if you constantly tried out alternative services, you'd probably have left Google already. I did, and I found many competitors' services faster, smoother, higher performance, and more configurable. Unfortunately, they have terrible market share because of Google's anticompetitive business practices.

tormeh2• 11 years ago

Not really. It is blazingly fast, but Momondo also find trips via nearby airports and gives you alternative nearby dates when flights may be cheaper. Momondo is also prettier. Google flight search is instant, though, I'll give them that.

wstrange3• 11 years ago

Instant is indeed the killer feature.

Google also suggests alternate airports, and the bar chart shows you alternate dates that may be cheaper.

TazeTSchnitzel14• 11 years ago

Google's competitors should spend more time improving their products and less time complaining to the EU.

If nobody uses their products because Google doesn't let people find them...

father_of_two• 11 years ago

As an EU citizen and consumer, here's my message to European Commission: SCREW YOU!

I would like to know why is it so hard (and expensive) to buy a car on a foreign EU country and legalize it on other, I don't know why am I still paying robbery-like roaming "costs", I don't how is it possible to be considered fiscal resident simultaneous on 2 different countries and why citizens has still to resort to individual country-to-country specific deals to avoid double taxation within EU.

And I could just keep going on... BUT they are worried with a freaking search engine! Piss off.

TazeTSchnitzel14• 11 years ago

I don't know why am I still paying robbery-like roaming "costs"

The EU has brought down roaming every year, and it'll be soon abolished.

why citizens has still to resort to individual country-to-country specific deals to avoid double taxation within EU

because we don't have a federal Europe

mark_l_watson• 11 years ago

While I am in general a fan of Google (like AppEngine, Android, etc. contracted at Google in 2013), it is important to prevent harming markets due to effective monopolies. One problem is that anti-competitive practices may cause long term harm to markets while making consumers happy short term. Really a tough issue to deal with fairly.

I did notice something odd today in Google search results: I searched for "surface 3" and the link I wanted was a top paid for ad link. In the past, I could look down the page and see similar unpaid links, but not today.

EU Formally Accuses Google of Antitrust Violations

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