“Google must do more to allay concerns that it is blocking competitors in web search results, the EU’s antitrust chief said on Wednesday, after rivals criticized concessions it has offered as being inadequate.”
“Google must do more to allay concerns that it is blocking competitors in web search results, the EU’s antitrust chief said on Wednesday, after rivals criticized concessions it has offered as being inadequate.”
It’s interesting that these corporations seem to be all about free market capitalism, until they start getting their asses handed to them by the competition, then they go whining to the government about how the competition isn’t playing fair.
I’m not aware that Google broke any laws to obtain their market dominance in search, or that they have a monopoly on search either, with options like Bing being freely available. So what the hell are MS and others complaining about?
New definition of monopoly that the EU created to extort money out of Microsoft and others. Recall, other web browsers were “freely available” back then too. So what the hell were Opera and others complaining about?
Edited 2013-07-17 19:02 UTC
Yeah, I kinda felt the same way back then. I think there was a justification for legal action against MS when they started bullying OEMs into not selling PCs with compatible operating systems. But the IE bundling? Whatever.
WorknMan,
That’s not the whole story. If I recall microsoft went so far as to use their windows monopoly to prohibit OEMs from installing alternative browser software, which is where they crossed the line in that case. I suspect MS could have legally bundled IE if they hadn’t banned OEMs from installing competing software at the same time. Consider the resolution in europe did not ban IE bundling but instead declared that other browsers would be bundled alongside IE.
Edited 2013-07-18 04:00 UTC
Well, the question, as it pertains to my original post is not whether or not they did something illegal, but rather if it should have been illegal in the first place. We get told repeatedly that we should let the market decide these things and not involve the government, yet these companies go running to the government, crying like little bitches when they don’t get their way.
Anyway, as a result of MS no longer being able to control what OEMs include with the OS, that’s why most PCs sold today come with 40 pieces of crapware running in the system tray, and of course MS gets blamed for it.
Since the browser situation pretty much sorted itself out sans direct government interference, do you really think putting that restriction on MS benefitted consumers in the long run? And why didn’t apps like Winamp not have issues gaining marketshare over MS defaults? Maybe because unlike Netscape 4, Winamp didn’t suck ass?
WorknMan,
“Well, the question, as it pertains to my original post is not whether or not they did something illegal, but rather if it should have been illegal in the first place.”
Actually I did understand that, and I did want to convey the opinion that it *should* be illegal for monopolies to prohibit vendors from installing competing software.
“Anyway, as a result of MS no longer being able to control what OEMs include with the OS, that’s why most PCs sold today come with 40 pieces of crapware running in the system tray, and of course MS gets blamed for it.”
The computers I dealt with already had the crapware, so I didn’t get the impression the trial made any difference in this regards, but it’d be interesting if you could empirically show otherwise.
“Since the browser situation pretty much sorted itself out sans direct government interference, do you really think putting that restriction on MS benefitted consumers in the long run?”
You can’t really say that though, the government(s) DID interfere. Microsoft was seeking to dominate the browser market through coercion rather than merit, and IE at the time was *notoriously* worse than the competition. More indirectly I do think there’s long term benefit in that it dissuades microsoft from attempting this tactic again with other competing (none-browser) software.
Mind you I know our anti-trust policy has very limited effectiveness, but still I think it’s better than nothing.
“And why didn’t apps like Winamp not have issues gaining marketshare over MS defaults? Maybe because unlike Netscape 4, Winamp didn’t suck ass?
”
As I remember it, the bundled version of MS media player in the 90s was a basic OLE player with no media library or even a queue. MS was late on the bandwagon and as usual had to play catch up.
I tried researching it, do you have historic market share information for winamp?
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/itfacts/music-players-market-share-winamp…
According to this link winamp had 5.5M users compared to MS’s 43.1M in 2003. The monstrosity that was realplayer had 26M (it was heavily bundled too).
Although there is the integration of SkyDrive into Windows Eight, so perhaps now that the antitrust has died down, they’re gradually starting to edge down that path again.
IE wasn’t really “*notoriously* worse” in comparison to the old Netscape – in the first browser war, IE won also on merit.
BTW, older Steam hardware survey showed also percentages for installed software, also few audio players (including Winamp and WMP) …sadly the new one doesn’t do that, and I can’t quickly find the old one archived anywhere.
It was never about monopolies, those are not illegal. Abusing market position is a problem, and FYI the EU fines mostly European companies (you just don’t hear about it so much on the web)
MS and others are complaining about this: “At the time, the EC found four areas of abuse. Google artificially gave its own services preferential treatment in search results, harming competitors. Google stole content from competing services and presented it unattributed in its own results. Google forced advertisers to use its advertising services, shutting out competitors. And Google prevented advertisers from moving from Google to competing ad services.”
source is a pretty good article on http://windowsitpro.com/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/eu-demands-more-conc…
Uh, how would they force anyone to use their services?
The didn’t force just anyone. They forced advertisers that were already advertising with them to use their advertising services.
Similar to Microsoft telling Dell “you cannot sell Linux”
These are not my words, but they are the conclusion of the EU
So they forced the advertisers to use the Google product that they were already …uh..using.
Yeah, that’s not crazy at all.
Microsoft seems to imply that Bing is inferior, anyway. They tried selling it to Facebook. If it was one of their prized IP, why would they be trying to get rid of it?
What did they expect to hear?
It’s pretty common to try to get all sides of the story in cases such as this. In fact, I would be concerned if the competition had NOT be consulted.
OK, that one I can understand.
Now, this is wtf nr. 1. I, as a company, being required to actually promote my competitors? What weird upside down idiocy is this? I mean seriously, wtf?
Yeah, wtf nr. 1/a. I offer a service. Then, as required by the top point above, I have to make sure people know that the service popping up in search results belongs to me, as opposed to my competitors. Then, at point two (i.e. wtf nr. 1
) I am required to actually promote my competitors by explicitely listing their links. Then, I also have to make them easy to leave my service for a competitor.
I have my issues with Google as anyone else, but all this seems like a huge ball of crap. I mean it looks like it and smells like it