Are the rivals going to be required to show google results now or is this really not about choice but about crippling google or is it about extracting an easy multi-billion dollar payday?
When I go to the SNCF (French rail) website, are they showing me flight and bus options or only their train results?
Nobody is forcing anyone to visit google. It’s a website. Perhaps if the EU really cared, they’d ask themselves why Europe hasn’t produced a credible Google rival.
That settlement money ought to go directly to funding EU startups. Instead it will likely make its way into CAP agricultural subsidies. The Common Agricultural Policy is about 35% of the entire EU budget despite supporting an industry that that is just 1.6% of EU GDP. It’s clear that the EU prioritizes some industries over others and then they wring their hands when American tech becomes ubiquitous.
They were really not.
For every search you assume you will be given the more popular matches, what they were doing was purposefully bypassing their own algorithm to their advantage, giving doctored results.
There wouldn't have been any problem if they promoted their service making it clear it was not part of the search results.
EDIT: For a counterexample, google "flights price compare".
You will be shown a small form at the top from which you can use their own service.
It is clearly separated from the search results, which show the actual most popular websites for flight comparison.
Where did you get this from?
Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results: rival comparison shopping services appear in Google's search results on the basis of Google's generic search algorithms. Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted. Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down. Google's own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including such demotions."
> Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted.
Sounds like a jump to conclude they were doctoring results from "they modify their ranking algorithms".
" Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down. Google's own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including such demotions."
> Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results: rival comparison shopping services appear in Google's search results on the basis of Google's generic search algorithms. Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted. Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down. Google's own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including such demotions.
There is nothing wrong with Google's integration. The complaint is that Google unfairly promotes its own services at the expense of rivals. When I search for something, I expect the search results displayed to be relevant and fair. I have no problem with Google having that sponsored Google Shopping ad, but demoting other highly relevant results to the fourth page is highly anti-competitive and downright unfair. How many times in the last week have you actually flipped through 4 pages of Google Search results?
While it may be the case that today, Google likes to pile all these things into one integrated product (the user benefit of this being really debatable, even if you personally like it), their market dominance was initially acquired from their web search.
If they had historically always been demoting other shopping sites in favour of their own, they would probably not have gotten this dominant at all. One of the features that set Google apart from the other big search engines in its early days was in fact very similar: Other engines would sell rankings and other tricks often favouring profit over relevance. Google didn't do this, partially out of "principle" (which is apparently lost now), partially because their pagerank algorithm was so superior in ranking for relevance that they didn't need to. If they had only returned results for their own shopping business, it wouldn't have gained nearly as much support and wouldn't have been as successful.
But because of this established market dominance, they can get away with it today, because everything is integrated, people just google stuff, even if shopping results are heavily skewed towards their own. And not only does this obscure competition, the competition that does appear far down really sucks, and now you have people arguing that Google Shopping is actually in fact better. Google's web search has deteriorated in quality quite a bit, especially for queries related to "integrated Google products", which makes sense because why bother sorting out a web filled with spam for the good bits (like they used to work very hard at) if you can just push your own product instead?
Finally, regardless of whether Google likes to integrate and pile everything into one heap, Online Shopping and Web Search are different markets.
That's the whole point of this antitrust, just because different businesses in different markets can be grouped under one huge company, doesn't mean it can abuse its market dominance in one market to stifle competition in another.
They have a dominant position in many markets.
Yes, apparently they do show bus results. Both from their own bus company and at least one seemingly unrelated one. I know it is similar in Sweden with SJ, which shows trains and buses from other companies.
> Nobody is forcing anyone to visit google. It’s a website. Perhaps if the EU really cared, they’d ask themselves why Europe hasn’t produced a credible Google rival.
Isn't that essentially what they are doing? It might be to late to compete on web search. That doesn't mean Google should have an unfair advantage in other search like price comparison.
> That settlement money ought to go directly to funding EU startups.
Most EU startups will be happy if they just have a chance to compete "pound for pound". US companies have been enjoying single digit VAT and corporate income tax for years. Which is both the result of EU laws and the US leaving their own "loopholes" open to make their companies more competitive.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax-checkthebox-insigh...
What actually happened was that Google removed the need to compete with anyone, by always listing its own other businesses up-front in search results. Since Google has the dominant position in the search market, this guarantees a steady stream of customers to the other businesses, even if they're not as good as other companies' products/services, and means they don't face competitive pressure. Without competitive pressure, quality doesn't get driven up and prices don't get driven down.
Since we want competitive markets to drive quality up and prices down, we have laws which don't allow a company that dominates one type of product/service to use that as a way to achieve dominance in other products/services by avoiding the need to compete.
By following the rules & regulations set out, which Google will have been fully aware of. This is explained in the link and should not have required calling it "ridiculous". I also disagree it wasn't previously known to be illegal unless you can show something has been applied retroactively (so a law created in 2008 or later).
> The Commission's fine of €2 424 495 000 takes account of the duration and gravity of the infringement. In accordance with the Commission's 2006 Guidelines on fines (see press release and MEMO), the fine has been calculated on the basis of the value of Google's revenue from its comparison shopping service in the 13 EEA countries concerned.
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-06-857_en.htm?locale...
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-06-256_en.htm?loca...
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/legislation/fines....
> What do they want to force Google to do now
> The Commission Decision requires Google to stop its illegal conduct within 90 days of the Decision and refrain from any measure that has the same or an equivalent object or effect. In particular, the Decision orders Google to comply with the simple principle of giving equal treatment to rival comparison shopping services and its own service:
> Google has to apply the same processes and methods to position and display rival comparison shopping services in Google's search results pages as it gives to its own comparison shopping service.
Doesn't mean they have to show terrible shopping pages, they just have to compete with them on an even footing rather than pushing every other comparison site back to almost nowhere in the results.
There was no previous ruling that indicated that displaying their own relevant content on their own Search pages was illegal. It's absurd to think displaying relevant content in the context of what the User is searching for is illegal, or that they should've been investing resources in helping their competitors get more exposure.
These shackles on User Experience are going to give Amazon and Bing an advantage who aren't limited in their ability to provide integrated services or forced competitor placement.
> Doesn't mean they have to show terrible shopping pages, they just have to compete with them on an even footing rather than pushing every other comparison site back to almost nowhere in the results.
Are they going to be able to charge for prominent placement or do competitors get it for free? If there was an Auction Google could just outbid everyone since they're going to keep the bulk of the revenue, which they're unlikely going to be allowed to do, so if they're not forced to give prominent placement for free, they're going to have to charge an amount they wont be able to bid for themselves.
Previous anti-trust rulings seem pretty similar to me. If microsoft gets into trouble for making IE a default browser or bundling windows media player, I'm really not surprised with the way this went.
> It's absurd to think displaying relevant content in the context of what the User is searching for is illegal
It's not absurd to think that using your dominance in a market to heavily push people towards your own other services is illegal.
The Commission also note that it's not just the relevance of the link, but the position that makes a big difference.
> b) Furthermore, the effects cannot just be explained by the fact that the first result is more relevant because evidence also shows that moving the first result to the third rank leads to a reduction in the number of clicks by about 50%.
Since the introduction, it massively increased click-throughs to their already available service, with a corresponding huge decrease to competitors.
Was their own service good?
> Contemporary evidence from Google shows that the company was aware that Froogle's market performance was relatively poor (one internal document from 2006 stated "Froogle simply doesn't work").
So to be clear the problem is that they had a pretty naff service, which when treated similarly to other players lost out. They then promoted it far above other results, resulting in a huge shift towards them and away from their competitors. They did not compete by making the service better, but by using their huge dominance in one market to step into another and significantly harm the other players.
Except this has created quite the slippery slope. What's stopping the EU from deciding it's unfair for a search engine to have it's own maps served prominently when searching an address? What's stopping the EU from deciding it's unfair for Google to provide reverse image search through it's webtool (you used to have to go to tineye if you wanted that)?
You can pretty much apply this ruling to every Google product that is not their basic, text, search engine. It seems like Google is on the edge of simply being classified a utility in the EU.
What other Website do you know has been penalized for showing their own content and are being forced to give their competitors prominence? Microsoft had a 95%+ Monopoly on Desktop Operating Systems and wouldn't allow you to remove IE, anyone can easily go to amazon.com, bing.com, ebay.com or visit any other website to do their shopping if they prefer to.
In which case, quite possibly, if
* amazon can be argued to have a very large position, with the vast majority of searches going through it
* it can be shown that people tend to click almost exclusively on the first or first few links
* they are treating their own, different, service more favourably than competitors (and remember when in the context of google, it's how people would find the competitors in the first place)
* you can see them having hugely increased sales for their own product after the introduction, and massively decreased sales for other people
But then my understanding of the regulations comes largely from the links here.
Fundamentally though, if you're big enough to be concerned about this you should be able to afford the legal teams to figure this out or approach the commission to discuss what is and is not within the regulations.
I also just searched for "aaa batteries" and the first hit, after the AmazonBasics ad, were AmazonBasics batteries.
I'm not saying either of these are anti-competitive. I understand that more goes into it than just that. Just offering these little facts in case anyone else is curious.
(I do think that with both Amazon's increasing dominance and seemingly increasing aggressiveness, they're heading for legal issues).
(1) https://www.recode.net/2016/5/31/11826394/amazon-apple-tv-go...
Then they would investigate if they abuse this dominance to stifle competition. Which I think your batteries example would qualify for. They'd probably look a bit further though because I dunno, if it's just batteries :-p So they'd gather more evidence and if they find enough, they too will get an antitrust case.
Just that, market dominance in itself is not illegal, so if Amazon, unlike Google (knowingly!!) did, uses that dominance responsibly, no problem.
What I got from the article, the investigation has been very reasonable and it's beyond doubt that Google went way over the line.
People may question whether this EU regulation is right (but I believe it is), but from the looks of it, at least it's fair: With great market dominance comes great responsibility.
What do they want to force Google to do now, prohibit being able to advertise on their own platform? give their competitors priority placement for free? How many rival comparison services do they need to show now? There could be hundreds popping up to take advantage of the forced exposure with scam and ad-ridden pages. Does Google have to show them all? Who decides? Will this ruling extend to all other relevant content Google shows around Search results?
Guess we'll have to see, but this ruling could force Google to provide a degraded Customer experience which I guess is one way to make their Services less appealing and allow competition to catch up.