Re:Google should be broken up, say European MPs
by mike_hearn on Thursday November 27, 2014 @11:12AM
(#8667779)
That's a highly controversial and tricky argument to make, though.
Is Google Maps a separate product that's being illegal tied to web search? Or is it actually a search engine for physical places, an integrated part of the one unified Google Search Engine? It could be argued either way, but if you try and imagine what it'd take to make Google Maps "pluggable" in google.com search .... well, that would be a tremendous technical challenge. Competitors would have to be able to process every web search Google does, to decide if it contains a location. That's a lot of traffic. And they have to respond as fast as Google's own servers, despite not being in the same buildings. This sort of thing suggests they're really one unified product, but I doubt such technical details would have much impact on what is a fundamentally political process.
Is Google Maps a separate product that's being illegal tied to web search? Or is it actually a search engine for physical places, an integrated part of the one unified Google Search Engine? It could be argued either way, but if you try and imagine what it'd take to make Google Maps "pluggable" in google.com search .... well, that would be a tremendous technical challenge. Competitors would have to be able to process every web search Google does, to decide if it contains a location. That's a lot of traffic. And they have to respond as fast as Google's own servers, despite not being in the same buildings. This sort of thing suggests they're really one unified product, but I doubt such technical details would have much impact on what is a fundamentally political process.