European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by Denzel on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @04:51PM (#14649309)

There's a clear difference between what Bing and Google are doing. Please don't mistake the facts:

1. The EC is not asking Google to make their user experience worse.

2. The EC does not have a problem with sponsored search results.

Google's user experience is the generic algorithm that determines what is the most relevant result. Google deliberately did not subject its own comparison shopping service to that algorithm while subjecting competitors' to it. Furthermore, Google took the FIRST result position.

Why would they do this if they have the best user experience and it should come up first anyways?

Contrast with Bing, when I search for "baseball bat": The first 3 results above the fold are organic unpaid SERPs. (Nothing from Bing in the top three spots.) And their shopping ads are displayed to the right of the organic search results.

If Google would've treated these products like ads, then the EC wouldn't have had a problem. But they didn't. And they have a dominant share of the general internet search market.

Google deliberately tried to exploit its market dominance to enter into another market in which it was not competitive.

There's nothing scary about this fine.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by gpderetta on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @05:41PM (#14649751)

I worked at Bing in a previous life. As far as I know it was official policy that internal results would not be artificially boosted but had to be subject to the same ranking algorithm as anything else.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by i_cant_speel on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @10:09AM (#14654233)

But it's Google's website. Why shouldn't they be able to promote their own products on their site?

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by adamnemecek on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @10:33AM (#14654448)

Because it's anti competitive behavior.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by aries1980 on Saturday July 01, 2017 @10:14AM (#14677177)

I don't see AMD offerings on Intel's website either.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by adamnemecek on Saturday July 01, 2017 @01:04PM (#14677881)

You are missing the point entirely.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by aagha on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @12:51PM (#14655777)

Why shouldn't they? It's their site! See the OP. It's not a utility.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by Denzel on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @01:04PM (#14655900)

Just because I own my own house doesn't mean I can blast a jet engine I'm testing inside it... there are rules and laws that exist in the world.

If you think those rules and laws have a negative impact, then work to fix them.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin... by aries1980 on Saturday July 01, 2017 @10:16AM (#14677186)

The problem with these rules that they are not precise. The right approach would be to let the court order a company and give enough time to comply and if they still don't, then fine.

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