Well, this was pretty much inevitable. With Google having pretty much a monopoly in search, it’s not surprising to see authorities putting the company under a microscope, and this is exactly what the European Commission is doing. The EC has launched a fact-finding antitrust probe into Google. However, looking at where the probe originates from, some might have a sense of “ah!”. Update: more bad news for Google.
The inquiry launched by the European Commission is a preliminary one, and is in the fact-finding stage. This means that Google has not yet been accused of anything, and the outcome of the inquiry might as well be that absolutely nothing is wrong. Still, this is the first time the European antitrust authorities have launched an investigation into Google in this manner. “The Commission has not opened a formal investigation for the time being. As is usual when the Commission receives complaints, it informed Google earlier this month and asked the company to comment on the allegations,” the EC said.
Julia Holtz, Senior Competition Counsel at Google, announced the inquiry on the Google Public Policy Blog, and in it, she also detailed where the antritrust complaints come from. Three companies are involved: ejustice.fr, a French legal search engine, Foundem.co.uk, a UK price comparison site, and Ciao!, also a price comparison site.
The interesting part here that will sure much speculation is that the last two mentioned both have ties to Microsoft. Ciao! is owned by Microsoft, and Foundem is a member of ICOMP, which is partly funded by Microsoft. Google is obviously keen to mention all this.
Foundem and ejustice.fr claim that Google “demoted” them in their search results, which obviously hurts both companies. Ciao! originally lodged their complaint at the German competition authorities, but this has now been transferred to Brussels. Ciao!’s complaints deal with the AdSense terms and conditions.
Google obviously denies any and all involvement. “Though each case raises slightly different issues, the question they ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners,” Holtz writes, “This is not the case. We always try to listen carefully if someone has a real concern and we work hard to put our users’ interests first and to compete fair and square in the market. We believe our business practices reflect those commitments.”
Whether Google indeed conducts its business fairly or not, it never hurts to have an investigation from time-to-time. If no problems are found – no harm done, but it keeps large companies on their toes. IF problems are found, well, then it’s a good thing.
Google is doing better than us in a business, that must be stopped! They are being monopolistic! STOP THEM!
Ahhh.. The news sites’ business model!
Fixed that for you. Or insert Apple, Adobe, et. al.
@kmdf, i was just being sarcastic considering that microsoft has a 90+% os marketshare, windows comes preloaded with ie and microsoft search engine and still they complain about search market. That’s because people don’t like their search engine. Get over it and build a better one or shut the f… up.
I was just being sarcastic myself, saying that, depending on your views, you can insert any number of companies in that sentence. Google, MS, Apple, whatever. I’ve heard the same complaint about all of them. So yah, we all need to “get over it.”
So much fail going on here I can’t comprehend it. *sigh*
Coming to a browser near you in 5 years time, the EU search choice ballot.
Because, right now, they are the best at it. They got to where they are by being better than the other search engines, and so far at least they don’t seem to be doing anything to choke off competitors either in their search, advertising, or web app arenas. Monopolies themselves aren’t necessarily bad, it’s when those monopolies start using one monopoly to push another, or when they start forcing out competitors, that there is a problem. I doubt they’ll find anything wrong with Google at the moment… then again, this is the EU we’re talking about, so who knows. Just so long as they don’t demand Google put up a search engine ballot.
edit: Crap, Kroc beat me to the ballot thing,
Edited 2010-02-24 12:37 UTC
That’s exactly why an inquiry is a good thing – even if it originates from Microsoft. I’d rather we nip anti-competitive practices in the bud (or scare Google enough to never even begin), than that we’re too late.
Since Google is a company, they are inherently conditioned towards evil and anticompetitive practices. Google is no more or less evil than Microsoft, Apple, or any other giant.
Strangely enough, it is Microsoft who have paid funds to other firms (such as Yahoo and even Canonical) in order to try to get people to use Bing, and it is Microsoft who have accepted money from some firms so that Bing will return search results higher in the page rankings for those firm’s websites.
So, pray tell, exactly how should one define an “anti-competitive practice” when it come to search?
Are you 5 years old?
“Timmy does it, so why can’t I?”
Pardon me?
Come back when you have a sensible, mature and non-rude comment on how one should actually define an anti-competitive practice in the search market.
The buying search users and the selling higher page rankings certainly sounds to me like a good place to start.
You are trying a classic argument: Microsoft is doing X, so why should we look at Google for doing X? You are trying to downplay the accusations against Google by pointing at Microsoft and saying “but they do it too!”.
That’s the argumentative skill of a 5 year old.
Google don’t do what Microsoft do. They don’t sell page rankings, for example.
In fact, Google go to considerable lengths to protect the integrity of their page rankings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb
There have even been contests to try to corrupt Google’s page ranking algorithms, because Google protect it as closely as they do. “nigritude ultramarine” and “seraphim proudleduck” are phrases that are relevant to that topic. The idea behind these contests was to try to sell the winning method discovered to companies that wished to increase their Google page rankings.
To Google, this reeked of corruption, and of mis-representing something to the public. To Microsoft, it seemed like a good idea to just sell the high page rankings directly.
As for your argument and debating skills, what you are doing is invoking the fallacies described as (1) red herring, and (2) ad hominem.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/red-herring.html
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html
I’m sure many 5 year olds have far greater skills than you are using, and would be appalled if I compared your techniques to theirs.
Edited 2010-02-24 14:01 UTC
You know, posting random link spam does not really count as “argumentation”, even less so as “references”.
More importantly, it is annoying.
It might be annoying, but what else can you do when the other person in the conversation has absolutely no idea?
You have to start their knowledge on the topic somehow.
And you base this on what, exactly? Larry’s, euh, brown eyes?
This is the real world. It’s quite adorable how so many people actually believe the “Don’t be evil” nonsense. Google is a company like any other, and as such, are inherently drawn towards evil. Anyone who believes otherwise is delusional.
Sigh!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb
http://blogoscoped.com/googlebomb/
http://www.searchenginedictionary.com/terms-google-bomb.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEO_challenge
http://perth.rayofshadow.com/
Read, educate yourself a little, then lose your ultra-rude attitude, and get back to me, and perhaps we can then have a civil discussion on the topic.
Thom, for once I side with lemur2: you are the one acting immaturely and totally ignoring the questions posed to you. He clearly made a question as to how you would define anti-competitive practices in search space and your response was personal attacks. You haven’t provided any kinds of arguments whatsoever whereas lemur2 atleast tries to. No, I don’t like him either in the least, I am only saying that you ain’t doing any better than he is right now.
As for your argument about companies being “drawn to evil” by their nature of being companies: well, this is off-topic and doesn’t really belong here, but that is a VERY black-and-white way of seeing the world and makes you look naive. Yes, big companies tend to do risky things and often trample on the rights of the general populace. But smaller companies often do not do that. It could be that they are small exactly because they don’t wish to conduct in such practices, I don’t know, but the fact remains that not all companies are evil. I’d suggest you to rid of those “World of Black and White” – glasses of yours.
I don’t know if Thom was thinking about that, but in my opinion it’s public companies who are inherently evil.
Not because they actually mean to do harm, just because the very reason of their existance is to return benefits to the shareholders. As such (to a certain extent) legality and morality are irrelevant as long as it turns out to be profitable.
Evil: profoundly immoral and malevolent
Companies are in business to make a profit, to grow, to be bigger and better than their competition. None of these things are profoundly immoral and malevolent. Sometimes companies make questionable judgements in their pursuit of profits, again this is not necessarily evil. If, through cutting corners where they shouldn’t or not doing as many test as they should, they produce a questionable product, it still does not make them evil – just irresponsible. Operating under a business model that we don’t like also doesn’t make them evil.
If they purposely set out to make a product to harm people or the planet then they could be considered evil. I don’t think we’d find many companies who fit that description.
Yep.
That’s just a mean to make (more) profit, sometimes a side effect but not a goal in itself.
One could argue that trying to keep making more profit ever and ever can only be achieved by being profoundly immoral and malevolent.
But that’s another topic…
I don’t mean evil in the literal sense of the word; I mean in the Google-motto sense of it all. All companies are inherently “evil” (I’ll use quotes), because their goals are incompatible with ours. They want to give as little as possible for as much money as possible, while we want to get as much as possible for as little money as possible.
There’s an inherent incompatibility in there, and that’s why trusting companies, or advocating them is silly, because you’re hurting your own interests.
In a overly dramatic sense, yes, companies are out to bleed us dry. That’s their goal. However, that’s a good thing – it ensures innovation, it ensures people have roofs over their heads, food to eat, etc. At the same time, we must never grow complacent, and we must always keep a watchful eye, because no, nor Apple, nor Google, nor Microsoft gives a rat’s bum about any of us. Seeing some people get all starry-eyed about Apple or Google really frightens me because of it. Those people are already lost.
As such, I am always in favour of keeping close tabs on their behaviour – especially that of large entities like Microsoft, Apple, and Google.
Edited 2010-02-24 16:09 UTC
With this I agree completely, I just don’t think evil is the best term to use. “Profit centred” yes, “overtly materialistic” probably, maybe even “uncaring”, but not evil.
No need to insult the 5-years olds.
Bing doesn’t have anywhere close to the marketshare Google has.
Strangely enough, it is Microsoft who have paid funds to other firms (such as Yahoo and even Canonical) in order to try to get people to use Bing, and it is Microsoft who have accepted money from some firms so that Bing will return search results higher in the page rankings for those firm’s websites.
Well, let me answer you with the same excuse anti-MS trolls use to justify the E.U with the anti-trust MS case.
“Bing is not a monopoly”.
Isn’t it weird that you are, at the same time, calling people trolls while validating their point?
So Google has to play by different rules.
At least that’s what I’ve been told for years and years regarding another company’s dominance of another market. lol
FWIW, my default position is that all antitrust probes launched by the EU are BS, so I assume this one is as well, until shown otherwise.
Edited 2010-02-24 22:21 UTC
The trouble is you can’t trust government investigations any more than you can trust companies these days. One is just as corrupt as the other.
By “as” you mean “by”, right?
While there is some truth in this – certainly the nature of competition and business encourages certain types of selfish behaviour. We cannot however, disregard corporate culture and ideas these can influence behaviour and the modify how a company interacts with it competitors, consumers and society in general.
After all there is nothing more selfish the Biological competition an evolution yet altruism can evolve from selfish competition.
Search engine is a matter of USER CHOICE! Default windows installations choose Bing (or Live previously) but people switch to the best, just like they are doing with browsers after Microsoft has neglected theirs for almost a decade. Cry babies indeed. This is not a monopoly! Google might have a few bruises in their ‘dont be evil’ mantra, but Google are NOTHING like Microsoft! Stifling innovation at every turn? Ramming competitors into the ground? Embrace and extend? ..no sir.. Google are the exact opposite of Microsoft, they make profit from catering to their users! Not by creating shoddy products at outrageous prices!
LEAVE GOOGLE ALONE!
Google’s majority of profits come from advertising which caters to the clients; the “users” are the commodity not the customer.
And, it’s nothing to do with “MS is more evil so Google shouldn’t be treated this way”. Actually, it’s really a non-event; a regulatory body is looking at an organization to decide if it’s remaining within the regulations or not. So, a regulatory body is doing it’s job. This is the same as someone running up to a police officer crying “there’s a man being beaten in that alley” and having the officer walk over to look down the alley and confirm the report before calling it in and taking any real action.
Windows 7 is a shoddy product at an outrageous price?
The market thinks otherwise.
That’s not entirely true. Google has a pretty good search engine, but a few things have changed which are potentially anti-competitive. Google now has a monopoly; while that, in itself, doesn’t mean that Google’s actions are anti-competitive, it does mean that Google has to accord itself by different rules than in the past. For example, Google used to place all advertising-driven search items in the right-hand pane to explicitly distinguish them from supposedly objective search results on the left. But Google changed all that, and decided to blend ad-driven results with non-ad-driven results — without actually telling you that the ad-driven results were given priority. Also, Google prioritizes its own products in search results. Why does this matter? Well, it means that Google can extend its monopoly in search to steer you toward other markets. Worse, you don’t know that this is happening.
Here’s my take on what will eventually come down. Google will be forced to explicitly distinguish ad-driven search results from non-ad-driven search results, and it will only be able to list its own products and services with sponsored content. That will prevent Google from extending its monopoly, or abusing its monopoly to essentially steer us toward particular products and services. It’s inevitable. We can debate whether or not antitrust law is “fair” or “reasonable” but, as it’s written now, that’s what will happen.
Either that, or the government will get into the business of monitoring Google’s search algorithm — or declaring the algorithm a “public utility” — which isn’t something that anybody wants.
Edited 2010-02-24 20:47 UTC
Now that is interesting. I have been paying so little attention to the right-hand pane (the sponsored links section) of Google’s search results that I had not noticed that it was now missing. OK, that is a game changer.
Given that Google’s sponsored links are now merged back into the PageRank links (similar to what Bing does and has always done), and also considering that Google has a very significant market share, then this EU investigation has a lot more legs than I had originally thought. There is some chance that Google is indeed gaming its own page ranks in favour of sponsored links. If so, that would be anti-trust IMO.
My, God. Hell has indeed frozen over: We actually agree on something.
Yes, how about that!
It is pretty simple, really … it is in the best interests of people to know what is paid advertising and what is not.
Google’s PageRank used to be all about trying to rank “what the web thinks is important”. Sponsored links are self explanatory, someone has paid Google to show that link. One can bet such a link is going to be totally biased in favour of the product or service being touted.
So it is in the best interests of people to know which are sponsored links (and therefore likely to be biased) and which are “web consensus” links. Google always used to keep these separate.
If Google have now merged them, then IMO that is not in people’s best interest, and I am always going to say so … even if you agree with me!
You Sir are an idiot turn off ad block and the sponsored links show right back up on the right side…
I can see why Ciao!, being owned by Microsoft is mentioned, but Foundem being a member of an industry organization (which apparently organizes conferences) which is in part funded by Microsoft? That’s just obsessively looking for connections.
They can look all they want, bt the biggest question is: is google abusing their dominant position in search and advertising? I for one haven’t heard rumours about competitors getting screwed in any grand sense or about payola schemes, but I could be wrong.
I would be very surprised to see corruption to the level of the secret oem deals MS makes or their draconian methods used for killing platforms by making threats against hardware manufacturers.
It might interest you to try to search for the original business plan for Google. Many people quote it as “Do no evil”, but I believe it was simpler than that. It was, I believe, “do the exact opposite of what Microsoft does”.
It’s quite adorable how so many people seem to think this actually mean something real.
Perhaps it indeed was that, but it is interesting to observe that Google is now pretty much doing exactly what Microsoft did in the 1990s. Many hold indeed the view that Google is the new “Microsoft of the 2000s”.
But of course it might be hard to consider such viewpoints with your hatred glasses.
They very well could go down that road, but hopefully they do not. There’s no way to predict with certainty what will happen in ten years. If Google do turn into the next Microsoft in several years time, with all the dirty tactics that implies, they have the potential to do far worse damage than Microsoft has ever managed or even dreamed of doing. It’s good they’re being watched, but I’d feel a bit more comfortable if the government watching them wasn’t so prone to jump at EU crybabies. Jumping at shadows is just as bad as waiting too long, jump at too many shadows and no one takes you seriously. The boy who cried wolf, you know.
Read up on what an “Internet meme” is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme
Think about it for a bit. Then think on who it might be that would be interested in spreading an Internet meme about Google being the “Microsoft of the 2000s”.
BTW, how come Microsoft don’t qualify as being the “Microsoft of the 2000s”?
Edited 2010-02-24 14:19 UTC
You are either seriously paranoid or seriously stupid if you think that MS manages to control the opinion of common men, that people constantly push some hidden agenda in the public internet forums, that people are not generally capable of formulating their own opinions.
Seriously, you sound like those communists in the 1970s, living in a totally black and white world of two polar opposites, constantly trying to “educate” the poor laborers who are “unenlightened” to see your Soviet Linux as the new Garden of Eden.
Say what?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
Corrupting search engines page rankings is seen in some quarters as exactly the practice of “to control the opinion of common men” and that common men indeed “are not generally capable of formulating their own opinions”.
Google’s entire business, its entire wealth, the very reason it was started, and flourished, is because of the integrity of its PageRank, and its resistance to corrupting those page rankings.
This is what Google is all about. It is the core of the thing. It is worth billions.
There are other companies whose very business is to try to corrupt Google’s PageRank, and then to sell that method of corrupting the PageRank to other buisnesses. “We can get you a higher Google ranking than you deserve” is their entire thing, that is their product. It amounts to spamming.
Meanwhile, Microsoft simply sells page ranks to the highest bidder, buys search customers, and sets about trying to bring down Google’s reputation.
Edited 2010-02-24 14:45 UTC
Wow, from your profile:
http://intjcentral.com/manual3
… that sounds like technical way to say “I’m an asshole, so don’t try to argue with me.”
Enjoy life!
No, by all means argue … just don’t expect me to give in to your viewpoint!
Hi! Do you have a link with something about this? I’d like to read some more about that
Great news.
I’ll just hope that the fanatics manage to stay consistent, regardless whether it is Microsoft, Google, or Intel.
… but oh, that was a too high hope.
If I understand Italian politics (a fairly uneasy task even if you are Italian) all Google has to do is to shut down Youtube in Italy for a couple days. The protests, both from people and the anti-Berlusconian politicians, will push another judge to cancel the previous judge’s sentence (then, of course, Berlusconian politicians will say that the first judge was an anti-Berlusconian).
Monopolies should be nationalized and all that crap would just go away. I know anglo-saxons will yell at me and spit non-sense about the free market, capitalism and liberalism for even thinking about nationalizing but I still think this is the best thing to do with monopolies.
At one extreme there’s no regulation so the corporation can do whatever they want. At the other extreme the government owns the corporation and the corporation can do whatever they want because regulations are altered to fit.
Well technically, “the government” does not own much. Nationalized entities belong to the nation, but I see what you mean. The corrupted government might abuse its power in order to serve its private interests. At least the government is not supposed to abuse its power. Even if it does, it has to hide. On the other hand, the private share holders of corporations are supposed to abuse their power to in order to serve their private interest the best they can. They don’t need to hide.
I’d say that the monopolies should belong to the nation as it’s less bad that private entities owning it. I’d rather see the profits made go to the nation and lower my taxes, even if some corrupted government officials get their share, rather than all that money going to fill the pockets of billionaire parasites who get it all and are proud about it.
It doesn’t concern me one bit. I have switched to Bing and have always used Hotmail. I have no plans to use Google Chrome browser or Google Chrome OS. Windows 7 and IE8 are working fine. The importance of Google is overhyped in the blogosphere.
Edited 2010-02-24 15:27 UTC
i have no idea how google can be a monopoly when most people change their search home page to google so they can use it. how is having a product people want to use over other competing products a monopoly?
SO, if Google lose the case we can call it a “Convicted monopoly”.
Not to mention “Criminal.”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ad%20hominem
ad ho·mi·nem   [ad hom-uh-nuhm â€nem, ahd-] Show IPA
–adjective
1.
appealing to one’s prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one’s intellect or reason.
2.
attacking an opponent’s character rather than answering his argument.
Origin:
< L: lit, to the man
I particularly encourage everyone to click on the sidebar links for “ad hominem attacks” and “ad hominem arguments”.
I don’t know if anything will be found worth finding, but it is good to have these kind of probing investigation every now and then to make sure that things are in fact on the level. With google going into every industry it can (search, adds, video, email, energy sales, books, mobile OS, web broswers, ISP, office, becoming a verb, etc…), it is worth checking to make sure they are playing fair.
if google wanted too, they have enough money to buy up their competition in virtually any “emerging” market oportunity situation (i say emerging because, even though they could buy out other established players it waoul raise anti trust concerns, while emerging markets and tech does not, in most cases). Google can leverage their brand recognition and all the cash they have to do pretty much anything, and with all their recent aquisitions it only makes sense to get the Willy Wonka style tour to make sure its legit.
all in all (personal bias aside) I am assuming the investigation will go well and google will be in the clear. Just glad it’s happening.
There’s a major difference between dominating a market and having a monopoly.
The term monopoly is thrown around way too loosely, and often by people who are also unaware that having a monopoly is not illegal.
Is there? Competition laws (which is what this Google stuff is about) seem to consider both to be quite similar:
-None of them is, per se, illegal.
-Abusing your position, be it a monopoly or just market dominance, is illegal.
google in not a monopoly, search is free on google.com, yahoo.com, bing.com, etc… I can go on for about hundreds more free search engines. How is this a monopoly