You'll see people baffled by this decision and generally happy with the service and products google offers.
It's just a reminder to remember that what doesn't work for you may be pure bliss for other people.
The EU has long used 'anti trust fines' as a way of levying tariffs against US companies.
And that while the reality is that there is a list of European companies/kartels receiving high anti trust fines as well for their behaviour.
The "problem" is that this never receives any interest in the states which only contributes to this blurred image that only US companies are getting fined. That is frankly untrue.
So why the heck would you not support an action that stops a giant corporation from stiffling the most important mechanism of capitalism?
I think at some point in the discussion, some people have tried to redefine "monopoly" as "state-sanctioned monopoly" and declare everything else fair game as long as the evil government is not involved... Apparently you can get surprisingly far before the logic breaks down.
Because it's not the government's job to unclog the market. It's the entrepreneur's opportunity to disrupt the market and kick Google's ass.
Capitalism is inherently anti-competitive. Larger established companies have more power than the idealized "entrepreneur" that libertarians like to posit. If a competitor appears they can simply force them to shutdown, via dumping, via legal harassment, or simply by virtue of being much larger and being able to do everything more efficiently and with larger margins. Government regulation is needed to prevent monopolies. This is self-evident.
There are multiple search engines providing the same service that Google does and the cost of switching is so negligible as to be almost non-existent.
While I generally appreciate the EU's approach towards protecting the consumer's best interests, this just reeks of making up excuses to extort money from a highly successful company just because they can get away with it.
I fully expect a future superpower to have strict rules in some new area, say China will only take English-language/law services from legal firms in any country if they are zero carbon.
Do you have anything at all to back up that claim? It seems to me the EU applies these fines fairly equitably between US and EU companies.
FWIW, companies in the US have long used 'anti trust complaints' as a means of harming companies they can't compete with (e.g. Microsoft, back in the day).
Doesn't alter the fact that Netscape was incapable of competing with Microsoft (in fact I think you sort of made my point, there) once the latter got their arses into gear.
Edited: Wow! The "Viewable With Any Browser" campaign site is still up, in 2017. I wonder if they're keeping it handy for the forthcoming Webkit monopoly ...
Netscape could compete with IE. Netscape couldn't compete with the entire MS empire being dedicated to destroying them.
MS played hardball and were willing to do anything to gain nearly complete dominance in the market. A lot of their strategy was clearly anti-competitive and anti-consumer. It's not even a debate. See U.S. v Microsoft. Netscape couldn't compete with that sort of scorched earth strategy. And it took Google and Mozilla years to make a dent in that and MS had to help by letting their market dominance stagnate for over half a decade and causing endless irritation for a generation of developers who are always going to treat an MS browser as a second class citizen.
So yeah, great for MS, they beat Netscape. But they couldn't beat Google or Mozilla and that's the most recent battle, so the one that actually matters.
No-one will ever know.
Perhaps we're meaning different things by the word 'compete'?
So, yeah in the sense that a five year old Rocky vs Ivan Drago in a boxing match is a competition technically. But no one can honestly say it's really a competition, as in there's any spirit of competition.
U.S. v Microsoft makes it pretty clear. MS'es strategy was break the law and do anything to win. Then it was weather the lawsuit and win or lose, they had years to position IE as the dominant product. So losing hardly mattered they still got what they wanted.
What could Netscape actually do to counter all that? They were practically bystanders in this nearly as much as my grandmother was. Such was MS'es power in the 90's.
"We can't compete, let's make an anti-trust complaint"
"I can't run as fast as Bolt, so I'll shoot him"
What's pure bliss for some people might also be dangerous and cancerous for society. Segregation was "pure bliss" for lots of folks.
I've read through the other thread, I couldn't find a comment that agrees with "connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both."
The thing is, personally I prefer getting integrated results from Google's
other search services when I do a Google search. I like getting Google Maps
results when I search for a location, I like getting Google Flights results
etc. When I do a Google search I am not just using it as a simple website
search. I want it to use it to search the whole Google suite of services.
If they are forced to stop doing this it will make my search experience
worse for me.
Random, maybe silly idea. Maybe they could start providing two search
streams. One would just be a simpler website search while the other would
be a more involved google services search as well as a general website
search. This way search users could explicitly say that they want to see
direct integrated results from the whole Google ecosystem.>I prefer getting integrated results from Google's other search services when I do a Google search.
One example of "other search services" is Google Shopping. It's the retail advertisers that sponsor their ecommerce buying links to Google Shopping. Hence, the "advertisers connection to users".
Btw, there are also other posters making similar comments about the convenience of Google "connecting users to advertisers". Like the previous example, you won't see it if you're looking for that exact phrasing.
E.g. another comment by cyxxon: "Currently Google's services just so damned conveniently integrated": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14644100
That example "connects me, the user, to the advertisers".
Seriously, without playing the game of "words are anything I want them to mean just to win an argument"... what would _you_ call the mechanism of those Google Shopping results? <Genuinely confused here.>
But did you want to be connected to the advertisers, i.e. those who paid Google to give their product a better placement, or did you want to be connected to the sellers, ranked by how desirable their product is to you?
I'm using the Google Shopping as it's deliberately designed: connect me to the advertisers.
I think the confusion is that regular search results (e.g. search for "how to concatenate a string in PHP?") is a "pull" mechanism in which Google spiders webcrawls and scrapes from pages like StackOverflow. You expect some sort of pagerank curation without requiring StackOverflow paying money to Google. Nevertheless, Stackoverflow answers often show up at the top.
On the other hand, the Google Shopping is a "push" mechanism where the advertisers pay to place their links there. The advertiser/sponsor model is basically how all the major comparison shopping sites work.
I don't know of any reputable/reliable price comparison site that uses a "pull" mechanism to scrape prices across multiple retailers that covers most products. If it does "pull" price data, it tries to derive income via techniques like affiliate url links for commissions. Camelcamelcamel uses a pull mechanism but it only scrapes Amazon and not the other retailers like Best Buy, Newegg, etc.
To turn this around, let me ask you... what price comparison website connects me to sellers instead of advertisers? (A site like Ebay connects me to "sellers" but doesn't include results from multiple major retailers such as Amazon.)
"Not to be confused with Double-talk.
Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words."
Anyhow, I like google shopping (when I click the google shopping tab, not when im actually on the search tab), I can trust it more than other comparing sites. Also just like other comparing sites, it doesn't have all sources.
You'll also see people (me) baffled by this decision and generally disgusted by the services Google offers.
People were very happy indeed with Microsoft products. Back when Netscape Navigator was better than Internet Explorer in all respects, people were very happy with NN too, and would have been happier if they could have bought Windows computers in which the software preinstalled by the OEM included Netscape. Do you know why they couldn't? MS told the OEMs "you put NN on your computers, you don't get any more Windows licenses at all".
People were also happy with the Java applets NN could execute, but MS made its own incompatible version of Java so that they wouldn't be cross-platform. Same with their version of web standards in IE.
All this is publicly documented by the courts, including the internal communications in Microsoft about it being a deliberate strategy to preserve Windows' monopoly. So, please, don't go up in arms to defend that cause, or imply that history made them justice.
> I'd encourage you (and everyone) to read the comments in the other thread happening today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643712
> You'll see people baffled by this decision and generally happy with the service and products google offers.
> It's just a reminder to remember that what doesn't work for you may be pure bliss for other people.
Read that, then read my comment, and then read your comment... it makes no sense at all. The person I replied to was defending Google using what I consider to a bullshit argument: using the apparent benefits of the monopoly to defend its existence; this (bad) argument also applies to Microsoft.
In my post, I demonstrated that if that posted truly believed that, then they had better be prepared to defend Microsoft as well. Then you come out of nowhere and try to attack me, as if I was the one making the argument, rather than replying to it? WTF... I absolutely think that both Microsoft and Google are clearly abusive.
This is particularly interesting and annoying as you seem to be going around this thread making the exact same mistake in multiple contexts. As an example, in reply to this other comment from someone else trying to compare the PR spin from Google to that of Microsoft.
It doesn't apply is what I'm saying.
> In my post, I demonstrated that if that posted truly believed that, then they had better be prepared to defend Microsoft as well.
You didn't, because your argument was based on the false premise that MS got in trouble "for having the gall to believe that web browsers should be free" or, as you detail now, that monopolies shouldn't exist and that their benefits aren't enough of a reason for them to exist. Being a monopoly isn't what got MS in trouble, harming consumers to protect that monopoly from competing OS's is what did. There's no need to "defend the existence of a monopoly", because monopolies aren't illegal.
I don't care about your personal attacks. This is a website for discussion, not pissing contests.
Saying "yes, but in this particular edge-case, my actions will be beneficial to society" is a pretty old way to do spins.
Also, as I've said in a different thread, the main problem is not with google's users but the amount of control Google has over 3rd parties (in the case price comparison sites). Of course it's convenient for the users, but's that not the point.
It's still a bad thing.
Still it's not nearly as nonsensical as this case in which a website operator is being fined billions for not featuring other website some more.
And I'm thankful that the all-pervasive Google behemoth is subject to some regulations, thank you very much.
You seem to confuse having never read PR releases with still being outraged by their BS.
Something being familiar doesn't make it right -- or means that only people that have never seen it would ever be enraged by it.
For pointing out "nonsensical" stuff this was a very nonsensical argument. Not even wrong.
You seem to confuse having valid concerns vs. making assumptions.
Calling a PR release BS without any fact is illogical at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.
Google wants to give the best search results possible, and it obviously has hooks into it's own shopping database that allow it to show targeted results.
A logical conclusion would be to force Google to open up its API, so that internal customers and external customers would be competing on the same playing field, rather than just complaining about search result orders.
Citation needed. Why would Google want to give "the best search results possible" over other concerns (e.g. manipulating tests results to boost paid advertisers or its own properties) as it has been known to do?
In social media (e.g. against FB, maybe), but what competition does Google have for search?
Neither Bing nor anything like DDG matter.
They have less market share, true, because Google has a better product. Your argument seems to be that Google doesn't bother to have a better product (in search), because Google has all the market share, because Google has a better product.
(a) Google has a better product (in search) to which they had no real competitor for 17+ years.
(b) it remains better than those non-competitors even though Google has decreased its quality over time (worse results and more ads and BS)
(c) whether it copies/embeds third party stuff or not plays little into it. Nobody would switch to Bing just for those , after comparing the respective search quality, which is still better for Google.
So my argument is:
Google doesn't bother improving its search results -- on the contrary it lets them somewhat decline over time too -- because it has all the market share and better results than the competition.
If you are 80 points (fictional unit for illustrative purposes) better than the competition, you can let it slip to 70 or even 40 points better, and people will still use you.
Because that is what they claim, and to call somebody a liar requires evidence, not unfounded accusations.
I suggest you read your own post again. Project much? Google's PR statement is somewhat based in fact. I'm saying that I generally believe public statements made that are decently substantiated.
When you're the one saying that I'm naive or just gaping in disbelief, the burden of proof is on YOU to give reasons why the statements are at fault and why their reasoning is wrong. This is truly projecting at its finest.
First, you've got it backwards: the burden on proof is to them for putting up such a claim (generally, to those putting up any claim), not to those who dispute it.
Besides, we have a long history of documented foul behavior by Google in search results. In fact this very story is based on a fine ordered because of this kind of behavior.
> When you shop online, you want to find the products you’re looking for quickly and easily. And advertisers want to promote those same products.
No, Google: advertisers don't want to promote the products I am looking for. Advertisers want to promote the products they want to sell. They may happen to be the ones I'm looking for, but probably they are not; probably I don't even want to buy anything and you still want to show me ads.
There is an interesting parallel to make here with the Soviet Union: they used to set up puppet states which were nominally sovereign, independent, "people's republic", etc, while in practice were obviously just colonies.
I guess extremely powerful institutions founded on abusive practices end up having to cover up their abuse, and an effective way is to confuse the common person into thinking that maybe they're not that bad after all.
Another tactic is to dress your institutions with good causes as much as possible. You could see this in Google I/O, they often used examples such as curing cancer as applications of their AI infrastructure.
If your institution is 10% good and 90% bad, you can downplay your bad acts and loudly campaign about your good doing and you may be able to shift the public perception of your monopolistic institution to look more like 70% good, 30% bad and win the support of majority of the people, which usually have a neutral stance.
So just like "wars to spread democracy" when it's just oil/control of land/etc?
You have provided exactly zero (0) examples of this happening - just accusations. You accuse "tech giants" (whatever that means) of being abusive and deliberately confusing the common person, then you bring up Google's AI infrastructure as an "institution" dressed up in good causes.
When you have examples or really anything besides a huge bias and wild accusations, please contribute to the conversation. Your comment adds exactly nothing except for letting all of us know you don't like large tech companies.
Examples of rhetoric from those companies where they do the opposite of what they say: they often claim "you [the user] are in control". For instance
1. https://privacy.google.com/# ("put you in control") 2. https://www.facebook.com/facebook/info ("make the world more open and connected")
While it's debatable what "in control" is and what "open and connected" means, they make a bold claim without revealing the subtlety of the topic.
Not being honest about user data collection in NSA PRISMA is not exactly putting the user in control.
Google has a track record of deprecating services that were used by a sizable user base, such as Google Reader or Picasa. Shutting these down without even giving them out as open source or providing some migration path is not really letting the users be in control.
Google's core strategy is shifting towards suggestions, away from search. Page and Brin said this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpjOZGxKhRM&feature=youtu.be While it could be argued that suggestions just create assistance like a personal secretary does, Google doesn't just assist on demand, it proactively suggests (and will do more of this, according to Page and Brin), and also shapes users' perception of reality (through Google Search results, which is the topic of the fine). So an entity has pervasive information about a person, does proactive suggestions and shapes their perception of reality is not exactly what I would call a mere assistant. I would compare that role to parenthood, which is consistent with Google's strategies: to know more about you than you know yourself, and to take care of you (which is aligned with their "Don't be evil" / "Do the right thing" motto. It seems they genuinely believe they are benevolent). That is, arguably, Google in control.
Now onto example 2, Facebook has long said it makes the world more open and connected. The mere fact that Facebook holds massive amounts of relevant content locked up behind a login wall means content is not accessible to search engines. This is the exact opposite of an "open" scenario. It's also debatable what they mean by "connected". It sounds like "people connected to each other", but in practice it is "people connected to Facebook", and incidentally also connected to each other. If their goal was to connect people to each other, they would pursue P2P, mesh networks (e.g. https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ is one implementation), etc that allow local communities to connect with each other and with the external world despite the lack of internet infrastructure. In practice, their internet.org program is widely known to have dropped net neutrality when it was implemented in India and other countries, favoring Facebook's walled garden. This is the opposite of open and connected (e.g. it eliminates interaction with other people on different social networks like forums, Reddit, etc). They have plans to provide internet to regions that lack internet infrastructure through drones and satellites (http://www.computerworld.com/article/2855979/why-google-and-...) but the priority here seems to be getting those people connected to Facebook first, and then connected to other people. Cheaper and quicker solutions could be implemented simply with phones and P2P, allowing people to connect to each other first, and share data in a gossip style which is also scalable.
So there you go, two examples at least. It should be enough to confirm that I am contributing to the conversation, and I'd appreciate if no ad hominen comments are made, they just distract.
You're begging the question. Define tech company and giant. You're defining the term by itself, which is a great usage of circular logic.
> 1. https://privacy.google.com/# ("put you in control") 2. https://www.facebook.com/facebook/info ("make the world more open and connected")
Google allows you to control any information you decide to share with it, and gives you a dashboard where you can see what information it uses. It shutting down systems that it no longer deems profitable is not putting you out of control - you cannot control Google, and it's not required to give you alternatives to its systems. It does allow you to export all data you have uploaded into it.
> That is, arguably, Google in control.
That is arguably, not. You're debating semantics here and saying that you're the sole valid arbiter and true interpreter of Google's statements. I assert that you're not. Our arguments are equally valid.
> Cheaper and quicker solutions could be implemented simply with phones and P2P...
In your opinion. Facebook has a set of constraints - just because they're prioritizing certain other priorities or technical solutions to lack of connectivity and openness doesn't mean that they're lying about their priorities.
> I'd appreciate if no ad "hominen" comments are made, they just distract.
First, it's spelled hominem. Misspelling a logical fallacy is on the same order as misspelling idiotic - it makes it very difficult to take either your arguments or your point seriously.
Point out exactly one instance where I disparaged somebody's character or background as a reason for the invalidity of their argument, rather than a lack of logic in their discussion. Your introducing of an supposed ad hominem attack is baseless and a red herring, designed to distract from the basic weakness and invalidity of your argument.
Next horror story to come to your monitors over the next 5 years is monetising on the below:
I search for "Item A". One week later I purchase "Item A". 2 days later Google reaches out to the retailer claiming $ for sending me to that specific retailer.
We truly live in the age of spinning, of euphemisms, where words lose all their meaning. All-pervasive advertising, the most insidious technique of consumer capitalism, is now an idealistic connecting of people (why, rather than fining us indeed they should be thanking thanking us for that, they seem to say). Complete invasion of privacy and control over content and information reaching the person is "enhancing the user experience", etc etc.