It doesn’t seem you understand how the American legal system works, which is based on “common law” i.e. court precedents thus 1890s antitrust decisions are highly relevant in the US.
As to us over here in Europe we like to think that our regulators are well informed and base decisions on the here and now while informing their decision process by times gone by.
Oh, right. Victim blaming. It’s so cool when people do that.
I think leaving off the important end of the sentence shows that you don’t understand what I’m saying.
I’m well aware of how the American legal system works (and how it doesn’t always work well in all areas). There are plenty of articles from Cory and Mike Masnick about how laws written prior to the current information age are poorly applied to modern technologies and information services. There isn’t sufficient case law on this subject by knowledgeable courts for a good ruling to come out for at least, I’d guess, twenty years. You also can’t trust the old, corrupt politicians to write sensible legislation on the matter. Stevens wasn’t the only out of touch old man whose concept for the internet rose to the complexity of “a series of tubes.”
That’s a lot of trust to place in human beings. Good luck with that.
I have already quoted the NSDAP example. Hitler was elected by 43.9% of the population, nonetheless every German for generations was considered responsible for the aftermath.
Let’s hope the orange monster doesn’t create damage of the same scale. But learning from the German example I think the sooner Americans start with the deep soul searching–I know many are already doing just that and I also know and respect the many resistance movements which are alive and thriving in the US atm–the better for all of us.
Somehow a man is in power who should be nowhere near power and the system allowed it–it is a system problem, beyond personal one.
Glad to hear. Rather puzzled who did, as the two people named in my post didn’t.
I found your and @Israel_B comments on the EU regulator hard to take. We are all edgy and especially in the UK we feel a bit protective of the EU, but would never consider flagging someone.
Hitler wasn’t elected. The Nazi Party won a lot seats in the Reichstag and Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor.
And i’d like to add, as a native English speaker, that “is choosing not to accept it” is frequently enough the subtext when “don’t get it” is used that your usage was perfectly understandable in the way you meant it.
Who or what do you think you’re placing your trust in?
Again, the issue is not that Google was using its search engine to make its price comparison offering better.
The issue for which the regulator took action is that they used their position as the organisation which de facto has complete control over which price comparisons to show to consumers to promote their price comparison offering to the detriment of other price comparison offerings.
In other words they were not using “one to enhance the other”.
They were using one to foist their otherwise underperforming service on people who had no realistic way of knowing that there were other options out there.
Do you consider that allowing that to happen would be in the interests of consumers?
Whereas you seem happy to place your trust in the people running giant corporations…
But its OK to use the variety of unflattering terms you have used for the POTUS of the USA? What color of monster would various heads of state in Europe (in and outside of EU membership) be?
I’m well aware of the problems surrounding POTUS Trump, I simply go against the common trend here of using such colorful language for a head of state.
Thanks for that addendum. In that light I stand somewhat corrected.
Ok. This is something I know about (i.e. “not just get it”).
Hitler was the leader of the NSDAP from day one (i.e. 1924). The NSDAP won the March 1933 election with 43.9% (admittedly with underhand and evil tactics, but they were by far the largest party.) Consequently Hitler was the leader of the strongest party in parliament and likely candidate for Reichskanzler. What he didn’t have was 2/3 majority to be able to run Reichstag like his personal fiefdom for that he needed Hindenburg and the Parteien der Mitte. They did their part and in time for the November elections there were no other parties than the NSDAP to vote for. Most of the SPD and KPD in Concentration camps and dead and the rest is history.
Point being that up until March 1933 Hitler’s rise was in accordance with the workings of the system. And from November 1933 Germans had little options other than play along with Hitler. Despite this complicated history every German has been considered culpable for the rise and atrocities of the regime.
You are comparing an attack on a EU institution and its legal binding decision with an attack on the trump’s person. In return I find the attack on the institution far more offensive, because as a citizen I have much more stake in institutions than in individuals (thankfully).
I for one would not attack American Institutions and their legal functioning with such vehemence, because I consider them the representation of the people and believe that just as the people are able to evolve and change so do the institutions. My entire hope for the future, at the moment, rests with the American Judiciary and strong and united EU leadership.
trump in my view is the outlier (although the GOP is trying to prove us otherwise) and colourful language is all we got in view of his blatant disregard for every institution, regulation, convention and human decency…
Mostly grey, I’m afraid. Yours is at least flamboyant.
I agree that the unflattering language wasn’t needed but I think there is an interesting point there that a lot of Americans genuinely don’t seem to see anything wrong with Trump continuing to hold and operate his personal businesses (and presumably using his position as POTUS to benefit those businesses).
I don’t include you or @CarlMud in that, I have no idea what your views are on the issue. Some people see it as wrong, others don’t seem to see anything wrong with it.
I think this Google fine is much the same. For some of us it seems self-evidently a legitimate thing for a regulator to do (in principle at least); you and @CarlMud evidently disagree.
Can you explain why?
As I’ve said before, Google search has consumer-driven market dominance. Their “de facto…complete control” is a result of consumer actions (choosing to use Google search) rather than choosing another search engine. So consumers are choosing which service to use. Google isn’t choosing for them. If you want different search results, go to Bing, go to Yahoo!, go to DuckDuckGo, build your own search engine.
You can’t have a real monopoly in a digital service like search unless you buy up all the ISPs and or DNS services and redirect all search requests to your own engine. Or you could buy up all the other search engines (though I doubt MS is willing to sell Bing to Google and the underdogs in the field probably wouldn’t either since some of them are idealistically opposed to the big players).
This is a failure of people to understand the internet, not some nefarious action by Google. There are other options. You can search Google for other options. Some people being information illiterate isn’t Google’s fault. It literally will provide you with anti-Google search results on their search engine. How much more neutral can you get?
No, but I am willing to give them a chance. Beyond killing some good services that I enjoyed like iGoogle and SMS messaging in Hangouts, Google hasn’t screwed me over. Project Fi is half as expensive and has better terms than the mainstream cell providers. Google gives away free G Suite for Education to educational institutions with unlimited storage space and is FERPA compliant with their main services. Of all the giant corporations, Google seems to be one of the least evil ones.
That said, when they actually betray that modicum of trust, I’m fine with flipping on them. Contingent trust isn’t the same as blind trust.
No, there I’m specifically questioning your characterization of a particular head of state and before I commented on the action of a specific (unelected) EU institution, not the institution itself.
The image of a giant grey PM Merkel stomping on Berlin is just silly enough to set me giggling like a fool!
@CarlMud made some very good points on this in his reply to this question. What I can add to that as to why I dont see Google as a real monopoly digital service is that the existence of other search engines has been pretty common knowledge for a very long time now. Beyond that, it is quite easy to change the default search engine in any browser and a large percentage of the install base of browsers already defaults to Bing.
Given those factors and the very narrow charge the EU commission focused on, I dont find the concept of monopoly credible here even given the traffic drops to rival websites.
Furthermore, the size of the penalty appears to me (opinion not statement of fact) to be once again attempting to punish an American company excessively in an area where European companies failed to compete even given the search result demotions on the part of Google. Thus my initial characterization of the ruling as a cash grab.
This I think gets towards the difference in viewpoints. You appear to approach it on the basis that the ‘monopoly’ is determined by whether the consumer has a choice in using Google or not.
Clearly they do. As you point out though, people don’t actually choose to use other search engines much. They use Google (and why not, it’s very good).
The vice which the regulator is trying to combat is in a different area. Why consumers choose to use Google and the fact that they could choose to use other search providers is not germane to the issue the regulator is concerned with here.
The issue they were concerned with is that because Google have access to all those eyeballs, they do effectively control access to those consumers for any business (or anyone else who wants to show anyone anything on line). Therefore as far as a business wanting to sell things on the internet is concerned, Google has enormous power.
Some people (me among them) take the view that if they have that power, there need to be some constraints on that power.
If there are constraints, some one has to decide what is acceptable and what isn’t. So far the best method we have found is democratically elected governments deciding the rules and appointing officials to police them. This is fairly standard I believe.
Again, the issue is not whether there are other search options out there or what actions Google takes or doesn’t take to show you them (I would point out that the main reason they show you other options is because competition law requires them to in the same way that Microsoft has to offer you other search engines than Explorer if you get Windows).
It doesn’t matter that there are other search providers out there. Google is still dominant. It doesn’t matter why they are dominant. What matters is what they do with their dominant position.
Whether people could find the other options if they looked better is irrelevant. The fact is that they don’t. Because they don’t Google can potentially skew the results to ensure its product is the one people use and thereby destroy other possibly great, possibly crap businesses.
That is what they have allegedly done here.
We take much the same view of our governments over here 
the way that particular head of state treated Angela Merkel, “my” particular head of state (and I am not even a CDU voter), when he “hosted” her, not to mention he behaved at the NATO summit, changed the rule book on flamboyant language in describing heads of states. When I think of trump, various African dictators flash by my inner eyes, then add white privilege on the world stage and I can’t think straight.
EDIT to add: I will leave this here. Hot of the press from the aforementioned head of state. If this doesn’t change the rule book, no idea what would.
Below is a head of state talking about a citizen of that state in public:
Yes, by the choice of the consumers who give Google those eyeballs…
If consumers are choosing to use Google, it’s absurd to pretend that they aren’t looking for Google’s services. And since Google also supplies results that include their competitors, you can’t say that Google is stopping them from finding competitors.
If I walk into a bakery and I ask to see some cakes I can purchase, I expect that the bakery is going to try to sell me cakes that they made. I had that expectation because I walked into their bakery and not someone else’s bakery.
There’s some kind of an absurd expectation here that a search engine should be absolutely neutral and the results shouldn’t benefit those who provide the results, but that is not only impossible to achieve (since every search engine is created by humans and the criteria used necessarily involves biases and assumptions and preferences), it’s also not an expectation placed on other service providers. My local government doesn’t require my electricity provider to install solar panels on my house. My local government doesn’t require my preferred grocery store to carry the store brand from one of their competitors. My local government doesn’t require my pizza delivery guy to bring me Chinese food.
As I said in reply to @CarlMud (for whose reply I’m very grateful) the existence of other search engines is only relevant if people actually use them in any significant number. A monopoly does not have to be absolute to exist.
They are of course also not necessarily eternal. A company which had a monopoly (or at least an overwhelmingly large market share if you prefer) at one time, can be dead in the water at another (see Kodak for example).
If Google’s share of the search market is now smaller, that wouldn’t make what they did at the time they had a larger share any less reprehensible. Assuming you think it was reprehensible at all of course - I suppose that’s what I’m trying to find out here.
Do you think that what Google is acceptable business practice or something that should be prevented? So far all the arguments I’ve seen are to the effect that Google doesn’t really have a monopoly or if they do, it’s because consumers are too stupid or lazy to use the internet properly. Both of those arguments, to me, miss the point entirely. If they are not beside the point, why not?
I have no difficulty with anyone wanting to quibble about the size of the penalty. There’s obviously room for differences of opinion on what sort of penalty should be imposed, how and why.
The penalty may well be politically or economically motivated but then again I hardly think the EU would have a monopoly on that.
More or less off topic aside behind summary:
I think we actually tend to do less of that than the US does if only because the people setting fines here and making those sorts of decisions don’t tend to be elected officials. No one cares whether so-and-so set record fines, they’re not up for re-election, they don’t have a base to pander to (which is of course one of the reasons given for Brexit).
But again, I can see why someone would argue with the size of the penalty but the principle of the thing?
Then it seems you believe you are justified with your description of the current POTUS.
Sorry but I simply do not agree with your justifications, comparisons to dictators of a certain area nor your near Godwining of the topic earlier.
We obviously approach this matter very differently and lets leave it at that please.
