EU Lays Groundwork for Antitrust Charges Against Google

Re:EU Lays Groundwork for Antitrust Charges Against Google by icebraining on Thursday April 02, 2015 @01:36AM (#9308857)

Purely in terms of UI, one possibility regarding maps and similar services, would be to allow the user to choose a preferred provider the first time (s)he searched for a location, like in the Windows browser choice dialog the EU forced Microsoft to implement.

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Re:EU Lays Groundwork for Antitrust Charges Against Google by tomjen3 on Thursday April 02, 2015 @03:14AM (#9309061)

As a user I don't want to be asked what map service I prefer. Make it an option in the settings if you want for those 0.1% who cares.

Google is in the information business and geographical information is firmly in their business area. If the EU autocrats can't understand this, then Google should use its stores of information offensively.

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Re:EU Lays Groundwork for Antitrust Charges Against Google by Frompo on Thursday April 02, 2015 @08:43AM (#9310290)

On the web Google is in the ad business, and their business is collecting personal information about anyone that touches them as a means for selling more expensive ads.

Historically Google was also a big group of people many of which are engineers who were quite free to direct their work. Lately it is mostly the first description that applies.

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Re:EU Lays Groundwork for Antitrust Charges Against Google by magicalist on Thursday April 02, 2015 @02:01AM (#9308913)

Of course the problem with that is if you search not logged in or in an incognito window, you'll get asked every single time (on the other hand, this is exactly what happens with the EU cookie warning, so...).

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Re:EU Lays Groundwork for Antitrust Charges Against Google by LLWM on Thursday April 02, 2015 @11:37AM (#9311331)

So it's also in Google's interest because it encourages users to allow themselves to be tracked.

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