Tuesday, June 27th 2017
European Commission Fines Google in €2.42 billion for Antitrust Violations
Another year, another European Commission fine for an antitrust violation. This time, the target of the fine is none other than Google. In what could be the most important antitrust ruling in recent years (which overshadows even Microsoft's 2004 browser fine), the EC has found that Google has systematically worked towards increasing prominence in search results to those displayed by the company's own comparison shopping service, dubbed "Google Shopping". "Google Shopping" started in 2004, when Google entered the comparison shopping market in Europe, with a product that was initially called "Froogle", renamed "Google Product Search" in 2008 and since 2013 has been called "Google Shopping".
However, it would seem that Froogle wasn't all that successful. When Google entered the comparison shopping markets with Froogle, there were already a number of established players, which dampened the company's market foray. The EC states that Google was aware that Froogle's market performance was relatively poor, pointing to one internal document from 2006 that stated, quite plainly, that "Froogle simply doesn't work".
By increasing prominence of its own "Google Shopping" results in detriment of its competitors, the EC has arrived to the conclusion that Google managed to "increase its [Google Shopping] traffic 45-fold in the United Kingdom, 35-fold in Germany, 19-fold in France, 29-fold in the Netherlands, 17-fold in Spain and 14-fold in Italy." At the same time, the EC states that "(...) traffic to rival comparison shopping services (...) dropped significantly. For example, the Commission found specific evidence of sudden drops of traffic to certain rival websites of 85% in the United Kingdom, up to 92% in Germany and 80% in France. These sudden drops could also not be explained by other factors." The EC further states that should Google not desist on its erroneous, illegal, censored conduct within 90 days, the company would face additional penalty payments of "up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet." To put things into perspective, Alphabet's full-year revenue in 2016 stood close to $90 billion. Check the source links for the complete rundown and announcement of the EC.
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: "Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That's a good thing. But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn't just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors.
What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation."
Sources:
European Comission Press Release Database, Statista
However, it would seem that Froogle wasn't all that successful. When Google entered the comparison shopping markets with Froogle, there were already a number of established players, which dampened the company's market foray. The EC states that Google was aware that Froogle's market performance was relatively poor, pointing to one internal document from 2006 that stated, quite plainly, that "Froogle simply doesn't work".
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: "Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That's a good thing. But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn't just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors.
What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation."
70 Comments on European Commission Fines Google in €2.42 billion for Antitrust Violations
And companies rarely winning really pushes that first part. You know what other country people don't win in? China.
People in Europe may criticize governments, but they actually like public administration. They like money redistribution. They like this way of living.
We have publicly funded health system, publicly funded education, publicly funded many other things. So when a company evades taxes, here it's seen as "injustice", while a typical American would approve (it's a private company after all, it's their money!).
You can call this "socialism" if you want, but it actually works - unlike a proper socialism that my parents had to live with (i.e. Eastern Bloc).
So if Google pays the fine, it'll be OK for Europeans while Americans might not even notice. Actually, Google could use this as a marketing move.
However, if Google doesn't pay, it might raise some eyebrows in US, but will just be brutally bashed on this side of the Atlantic.
Also, this is just a bad moment for them to make enemies in governments. Europe won't block their websites for sure, but Google is not just an internet company any more. In a couple of years they'll try to sell their autonomous technology here (maybe a whole car), they might get into financial services or internet providing. All these needs a government approval.
You also should read what negative and positive rights are because you're clearly lacking an understanding in this.
https://www.libertarianism.org/media/around-web/positive-rights-vs-negative-rights
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
Most people who value freedom would call the EU governments tyrannical and would even argue the US government is tyrannical with very good objective evidence in comparison to past government in history.
also we have pointed out and showed you that google search engine does not equate a monopoly in any way shape or form. Ask any sane economist and they will laugh at you for claiming a search engine can be a monopoly.
monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.
google in no way has exclusive control of search engines. Anyone can make one and the barrier of entry is not high. Just because everyone uses google does not make them a monopoly.Again you keep bringing up this red herring about taxes. There is no where in this about google evading taxes....god can you be anymore intellectually dishonest.
If they evaded taxes they would be in court for tax fraud...good god man. This is like the 4th time i have said this.yes the use of force to steal someones money to give to someone else is a positive right and not a negative right and is the definition of socialism.
www.libertarianism.org/media/around-web/positive-rights-vs-negative-rightsThis is called tyranny........
The case of google in OP is a prime example of tyranny. As I have showed you 5 times? Google is not a monopoly and this is nothing but a tyrannical money grab that is factually baseless.
(one of many definitions)
tyranny: cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control.
It is amazing how Europeans hate freedom and liberties and self-governance.
My argument has always been that I see nothing wrong with a company promoting itself. Would you expect to come to TPU, and at the home page, where the latest TPU reviews are showcased, instead see reviews from a competing site like us? Maybe we should headline reviews from Anandtech or PCMag and make users navigate to our reviews section in the forums to find ours, before the EU sues us for not giving our competitors a fair chance?
What's this about, you say? Well, when someone uses a search engine, they expect the first few results, or maybe even the first page of results will be what they are looking for, since most people have similar searches and needs on given subjects. That is not what people were getting with their searches, however.
All the search engines sell ads for persons or businesses to get listed. Bing and Yahoo always had a little word next to those first few Ad results, listed as "Ad." Google? Nope. People thought that first result or two was most relevant, when in reality, someone paid their way to the top of the results without anyone knowing it was a paid result.
This is deception, and that is why EU filed on Google. Deception. Interestingly enough, once the EU filed on them, Google changed their practice, and now have that little "Ad" word prior to the result. If Google didn't actually know what they did was deceptive and wrong, skewing search results without telling anyone, and believed what they did to be proper, why change once they got filed on?
The lawsuit was for practices only up until filing, so why change their practice if they thought they were right? Answer: they knew they were in the wrong.
Again government has the monopoly on force......he is under no obligation to release his taxes. If I was him I wouldn't. I value my privacy.
If you want congress to pass a law requiring it so do it. But you getting pissed at someone not doing something he has no duty to do is ridiculous.I dont know if EU was different but Google always showed what was an ad. They just didn't put the word ad under it. Ads were always enlarged and bolded.
I prefered this method over the wall of text that all looked the same on bing and yahoo.
Yahoo was the worst. Ads looked like regular hits unless you looked for the thing little ad symbol.
Google had all ad links enlarged and you could simply tell very quickly what an ad was verse what wasn't.
Search
Crab store
Bob's Crabs
Billy's Crabs
Red Lobster
Joes crabs
Milly's crabs
This is how google used to be done and which is why i always used google over yahoo. It was much easier to tell what was an ad on google vs what was a normal result.
I really ahve no idea why people prefer this
Bob's Crabs
ad
Billy's Crabs
ad
Red Lobster
ad
Joes crabs
Milly's crabs
I think the first is much easier to tell :kookoo::kookoo::kookoo::slap::banghead::banghead::banghead:
EDIT: did google literally just do an update in the last hour? It doesn't go example 2 anymore. I am getting a camera roll with pictures of products in a sponsored slide.
?????
As to the bolder ad listings, most people are not as astute as you, and would not necessarily know that means it is an ad. That's why the little word ad is used now. No question, no deception.
2/3rds of all Americans are in the USSC 100 mile boarder BS. I was close. 2/3rds not 3/4th
People's stupidity is not Google's problem. That was quite self evident (the bolded part)....humanity somehow keeps making me lower my bar of expectation TT. It might be rock bottom now.....
I wish they at least kept the bolding. It made it easier to actually skip ads :/
BUT
I think Google literally just updated this morning.
weird..one of my edits didn't take but if you google newegg you will see newegg at top with the little Ad box but i still think the other way was far more intuitive and user friendly in regards to separating ads verse regular results mentally faster.
No fracking clue how this older method was not self evident or the method prior to the update. This also allowed you to clearly see ads s organic and skip ads.....
a page showing various changes in 2011. I miss the cached part being a simple click but i guess hiding it in a drop down is smarter.
www.ghacks.net/2011/05/07/google-search-new-layout-style/
www.seobook.com/new-google-search-results-bar
A complete history of google ads layout...how is this not self-evident???
searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-google-bing-254332
2013 and earlier was my preferred method. I liked the damn box.
We don't need that honestly.
People are advocating people and or entities giving the finger to a government clearly doing something unjust
It's not about whether a company should promote it's competition. No one expects e.g. an online shop to give you results of the competitors. It's a shop, it sells stuff.
Google Search is a search engine, not a store.
www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/web-users/
"
Our goal is always to provide you the most useful and relevant information.
Any changes we make to Search are always to improve the usefulness of results you see. That's why we never accept payment from anyone to be included in search results.
"
You seriously have no leg to stand on.
I can keep doing this all day long with showing how baseless you are.Maybe because 95% (IIRC) of people prefer google over the others for good/personal reasons...........
And it's not me who you should call "baseless", because it's not me who decides here. Google was fined by EU. Care to comment on that situation? :)AFAIK around 90% in Europe.
I never said Google has a monopoly on search engines, nor did EU. The case is based on Google having a dominant position.
You're so blinded by your political aggressiveness, you're already loosing your grip on what's happening here and what the fine is for. Be careful to not lose your grip on reality - it's known to happen...US Declaration of Independence has no significance in Google vs EU case. I don't understand why you're mentioning it in this discussion.
Of course other than the fact that you clearly love to argue about politics (which BTW I'm not interested in, nor is this forum a right place for)
And I'm from Poland, from Europe. I really don't have to learn US history to know what tyranny is.I assure you Europeans love freedom. We just like our freedom differently - not the American way.
But freedom is such a difficult thing to define and analyze. We wouldn't even agree on how a pizza should look.
So maybe we might just stay with computers and games? This seems to be a lot more universal.
Do I want this to happen? No. However historical precedence isn't on yalls side. Also when our stupid ass government gets involve and my ass gets drafted I expect you @Prima.Vera to show me were the good beer is so I can rant about how right I was.
No argues from me on your comment, I actually feel the same if not exactly the same. The problem is those migrants are not only working to any corporation, but they are actually living on wealth fare payed by honest idiots like me and you, and on top of that they refuse to integrate themselves into the system and only following a retarded primitive religious law that, in their primitive minds, think is above all of the government and societies laws.
I listed Union Carbide in my first response, that's to show what unchecked Capitalism can do, you know that was the single biggest man made disaster ever, bigger than Chernobyl & the people at the helm got away with murder literally. That was obviously because of the money & power at their disposal, also the local politicians were sellouts, not to mention they were US citizens! Now Dow chem, owner of UC, says they're not liable.
Compare that to the BP oil spill, where BP even had to pay for frivolous claims, the payout was probably 1000x more than the UC claim. So in the US we have a foreign company being fined incessantly (VW anyone?) while they usually get away with it in most other parts of the world if they have enough money or power.
The EU fine is as much about deterrent & setting a precedent as anything else, Intel still haven't paid the EC for their anti AMD bribes, hell we had a repeat with contra revenues! So in essence the EU & US authorities act similarly, the biggest difference is IMO that people in the US sometimes cheer when corporations get away with it, using loopholes, but in the EU it's the opposite.
Also The EU punishes the successful to give to the failures! How is that fair to those that work thier asses off?
VW were just straight up falsifying data to pass even European regulations. Nevermind the US. VW sucks anyway. Over priced/over engineered junk IMO. Could care less about them.
While I agree with a lot of your points, those two examples are VERY bad.
I'm not trying to equate the two but human lives cost less, certainly where money & power is involved. You have people getting away with murder, literally, whilst others rot in jail for years having been involved with drugs or financial misappropriation, heck blasphemy in certain other parts of the world.
The point is we've moved away from a moral/ethics based society to something where the (election) winner decides our fate, it just so happens that those with money/power are almost certainly the winners. This isn't a US/EU only thing, also the governments usually do some populist stuff, for the benefit of common man, but the profit making company is not under any such obligation. In that sense I may believe the govt once but corporations are last on my list of "can we trust" these entities?