The EU vs Google

[paulrockliffe]

Just seen some EU nutter talking about breaking up Google because when you search the Google website for stuff to buy they try to sell you stuff that they are financially connected to.

Thing is, if I search for stuff to buy on eBay or on Amazon or anyone else's website, they only show me things they have a financial interest in selling me too. That's just the way these things work.

So why are the EU trying to fk about with something that works very well for us consumers? Are they just after a few billion quid to give to Greece, or is there more to it than that?

[paulrockliffe]

hornetrider said:

BlackLabel said:

"EU hits Google with record £2.1bn fine for abusing internet search monopoly"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/06/27/e...

Blinking eck.

They should turn it off in the EU for a week and then ask whether they really need to pay this nonsense.

[paulrockliffe]

fido said:

paulrockliffe said:

They should turn it off in the EU for a week and then ask whether they really need to pay this nonsense.

.. but after we've left thanks!

I'm sure it would be left on in the UK because Google know the score.

Imagine all those Android phones suddenly becoming useless because the EU don't understand business or their citizens.

This is exactly the same as when Sky were told they couldn't have all the football games, consumers then had to shell out another £10 a month to get access to the games that they'd had the year before. Then since then what's happened to the cost of Sky TV and all BT Services? They've gone up dramatically as both pay ever more for Premier League rights to head off the other. Who does that help apart from Footballers?

The issue for consumers isn't Google promoting stuff sold by Google ahead of stuff sold by others on their own platform, it's all the other shady stuff that goes on in the background that means when I look for certain brands I can't find them on Amazon and others aren't on eBay. No one in their right mind searches for something on Google and expects to get the best deal at the top of the page where it says "Google Shopping", or "Sponsored Add".

Google can sidestep this anyway, all they need to do is change the platform so that the shopping bar is purely auctioned adverts, like the promotioned results below, then Google Shopping can out-bid the price set by their rivals. Added bonus is that they'd create a well evidenced market that would allow them to place Google Shopping in the local market and shift profits to the Google Service provider in a lower-tax jurisdiction.

[paulrockliffe]

hyphen said:

paulrockliffe said:

Imagine all those Android phones suddenly becoming useless because the EU don't understand business or their citizens.
ion.

Say what? Android is open source (and its origins are from outside Google, they bought a company).

paulrockliffe said:

Google can sidestep this anyway, all they need to do is change the platform so that the shopping bar is purely auctioned adverts, like the promotioned results below, then Google Shopping can out-bid the price set by their rivals. Added bonus is that they'd create a well evidenced market that would allow them to place Google Shopping in the local market and shift profits to the Google Service provider in a lower-tax jurisdiction.

Google are not going to run a loss on this. If they want to outbid others, google shopping will need to charge more to it's affiliates.

Edited by hyphen on Tuesday 27th June 13:01

You've not understood either of those points you've quoted. Android is Open Source, but who do you think controls "Google Play Services" and defacto, all of the apps that rely on that for data, to work? If Play Services goes down the phone still works and you might be able to find some other apps to replace some of the ones that use Play Services, but you'll need to start with an alternative method of getting those apps on. Because the Play Store just happens to be run by Google too. And chances are you don't have a list of app options to hand and will need a search engine to find those.....

Google wouldn't run at a loss, because they'd be selling the advertising space to themselves, they'd just be moving money around. Actually, they probably already do this, they just need to open the Google Shopping bar bit to their competitors and then price them out again to comply with this daft complaint.

[paulrockliffe]

greygoose said:

Indeed, similarly people struggling to see the problem with monopolies.....

Some monopolies are bad, some are good, it's tricky balance. A monopoly is bad where it leads to higher costs because you can't get the thing anywhere else and you have to have it. The EU position is that it's also bad if you don't have to have it because in a competitive market you could have it cheaper. I can understand that point to an extent, but I think you have to pay more attention to the wider economy around the activity and the consumer experience, which I think is where the EU are failing their citizens with the current approach.

I gave the example earlier of the Sky TV monopoly on TV rights that was ended; in that case the consumer went from being able to pay £30 a month to one service to watch all the games, to having to pay £40 a month to two services. Then the two services competed with each other for the rights packages and pushed cost to the consumer up. It's now vastly more expensive if you want to watch all the football and you have to jump through hoops to get both services on one viewing box.

The Google 'monopoly' is slightly different in that the service and all of the value are created by Google for Google, it makes no sense that for Google to be able to sell their stuff on their own platform they also have to let other companies use the platform or treat those as equivalents. So long as the advertising isn't misleading, then there is no issue in my mind. Google Shopping isn't a price-comparison service that fakes the results to get you to buy from Google, it's simply serving a list of things Google would like to sell you that they think you might be interested in based on your immediate search and the data they hold about you.

As a consumer I have no problem with that being the service Google offer up and I'm perfectly used to going to multiple vendors to find the best product to meet my needs as that's how retail works in the real world. I don't expect Debenhams to tell me that BHS are selling something similar for £10 less anymore than I expect Google to not put their interests to the fore when I'm using their services. All perfectly normal.

The most succinct comment I read on this was that these sorts of fines explain why there are no EU tech giants.

[paulrockliffe]

wsurfa said:

Under EU rules it's abuse of a dominant position and can occur in multiple ways - in this case google was demoting search results that were not from it's own price comparison/shopper program. As price comparison services are driven by traffic, this is an excellent way to kill off any competition given their dominant position in search. As far as I know this was not a case of dropping from the top 3 to the top 10, but often to several pages back and done based on the google search algorithm that was not applied to the google product.

A previous employer of mine had a dominant position in a number of product areas and had to be much more circumspect in it's dealings than smaller competitors would.

This wasn't anything to do with search results, it was to do with the placement of adverts in the Google Shopping part. The part that is clearly advertisement. You still get the 'right' search results below, well below the ones marked as promoted, which are free for anyone to buy. What Google is doing is only letting Google advertise on one bit of their own website. It's laughable that this isn't allowed in the EU.

The definition of Monopoly here is so narrow to be ridiculous, it's akin to saying Apple have a monopoly on selling the iPhone. Of course they do, they own it. Google don't have a monopoly on advertisements, not even when you restrict it to online only either.

[paulrockliffe]

Except that's not what Google are doing, the case related to Google Shopping, not the normal search results that you get when you type stuff into the Google search button.

[paulrockliffe]

The case is around google shopping, not normal google. When you use Google shopping you see predominately results form people that have paid to sell their stuff through Google Shopping. Which is what you'd expect.

Part of the reason for that is that Google are warranting the trust worthiness of the sellers to some extent, so it protects the customer from fly-by-night scammers as well as making Google money.

Perhaps the distinction could be clearer, but you're not asking Google for the best prices for x y or z, you're going into Google's shop. Where you would expect Google to exert influence over what you buy, just as every other retailer does. Amazon don't list anything from anyone that hasn't paid to be there. Funnily enough, eBay don't do that either.