European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by kuschku on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @06:34AM (#14643964)

That's another case that's being worked on.

The preferred solution of the EU would be that there would be a standardized API between search engines and map providers, shopping providers, etc, and you could simply choose which map provider you'd want, and that'd be shown in every search engine.

This is still being discussed, of course, as no solution has been found yet, but in general the idea is based on Android's Intent system, where this concept works quite well.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by charlesdm on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @06:56AM (#14644128)

That sounds horrible though. Another abomination in the making. The effort to align all those map providers is probably quite significant. Such a massive waste of efforts and engineering time.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by TeMPOraL on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @07:19AM (#14644289)

I don't think so. Google is actually in a perfect position to do that. They could just unilaterally announce they'll support other map providers if they conform to a specified Google API, and guess what, map providers will do it, forced simply by power of competition.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by orsenfelt on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @06:06PM (#14649968)

If I ran a mapping website I'd bend over backwards for a chance at that embedded sidebar Google spot. Everyone would.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by threeseed on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @06:50AM (#14644072)

Interesting problem though.

How would Google differentiate between a search and an address without having the Maps product deeply integrated ? Sure they could identify the address and then render the map using say Apple Maps. But what if Apple Maps didn't understand the address or if their API implementation didn't match up.

Seems like it would very much hurt the overall experience.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by mhermher on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @06:01PM (#14649931)

Apple maps would have to implement Google defined api and respond with some sort of failure.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by ridewinter on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @03:42PM (#14648678)

So if Spotify creates a music recognition feature that competes with Shazam, would they need to create an API that allows you to choose your music recognition service from within Spotify? This a very slippery slope!

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by jolic on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @04:36PM (#14649166)

Probably not. Someone using Spotify and their hypothetical music recognition service is more like someone using Google Search and Gmail which isn't a problem. This is more like is someone would search Spotify and artists from their own record label (or promotion company) were at the top of the search results.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by ridewinter on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @04:52PM (#14649319)

That really helps my understanding of the matter. Thanks :)

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by kuschku on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @04:13PM (#14648958)

If spotify is the only app used by 97% of all users, then yes. At that point, spotify also couldn’t refuse to list an interprets album.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by ridewinter on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @04:35PM (#14649151)

Spotify is close to the 50 or 75% threshold. So would they also need to include Shazam's advertisements within their own app? Cause otherwise Shazam would still fail. I'm not understanding how this can work practically.

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