I don't complain that google uses it search to improve it's own products, it's awesome actually. From knowing what kind of food I prefer to show me recommendations, to targeting me with ads that actually interest me. I'd rather pay 10$ for a gadget I saw on an ad than for a penis enlargement pill or give my credit card number because I am a millionth visitor.
What do you believe could be hidden motives behind Axel Springer trying to push google out? More money for them from ads?
AS reports that their traffic went down so much due to that shorter format that they project a 7-digits loss a year per site. (at first they gave permission only for some sites to get directly comparable data)
So AS gave Google a revocable free license to show snippets and complains that they were pressured into doing so because "Google has a monopoly".
So they want to get Google to show full snippets (so AS gets their usual traffic and ad revenue), but to also pay for them (because there is that new law that allows AS to demand it).
Im not sure how google 'monopoly' has any effect on AS. Its not like google is the only site that scraps media sites for news overviews and things like that.
As far as I know google does not give them lower priority in searches, so how would there search monopoly matter?
You might not be a google fan, but let me tell you, you dont want to support Axel Springer over google.
The german hacker scene has spend years and years fighing against all the laws Axel Springer tries to push threw governemnt that would hurt the internet.
The lates one, "Leistungsschutzrecht", actually passed, but now instead of google paying them money, google kicked them out and everything happend as hackers said it would, the websides lost a lot of views.
Now that they have (finally) figured out that was a unbelivably stupid idea, they are moving forward to the next part of government that they can manipulate and target against google. My last information was that the antitrust people to told them that they should better calme them, or they would be investigated.
Now they probebly just do what everybody does when they cant pass a law in germany. They move up to EU level, force the EU to it, and then the EU forced germany to do it. The same allready happend with the "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" (mass surveillance).
They generally have a hard time passing these idiotic laws because the german hacker community is very, very politcal but the managed it with the "Leistungsschutzrecht" but not with the "Vorratsdatenspeicherung".
I for one thing, that even if google had some unfair market position, its well deserved. I dont use them because they force me, or I dont have any other choice. I use them because they are far better then the competition. Based on the same idea on could block any tech company that has a technical advantage or a unique product. You might also want to arrest Brad Pitt because he has a monopoly on beeing Brad Pitt. Google is in competition with lots of alternative search engines that are more or less specialised, and even if they were not, I dont see why one should go after a company that is so good that nobody wants to compete with them.
If everybody was complaining how terrible google is and how much they hate it, but they cant find a alternative, then we might strick up a conversation again.