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Don't pretend to speak for "EU citizens". What have we got to do with Brussels and Microsoft stealing money from Google? Google is not a utility, it is a produ

by oskbor 9y ago

Don't pretend to speak for "EU citizens". What have we got to do with Brussels and Microsoft stealing money from Google? Google is not a utility, it is a product company and you are free to use other companies products

literallycancer 9y ago
EU citizens vote in their national elections. EC members are nominated by national governments. If your government appointed someone that you feel doesn't represent your interests and you feel strongly about it, you should vote for someone else in the next election. This is exactly how representative democracy should work.
- adjkant 9y ago
  Yet polls across the world have shown this logic to be very flawed. The citizens often disagree with the actions of their representatives. That's a flaw of representative democracy itself. Point is, representative democracy doesn't mean the action of the representative is the one the population agrees with.
bad_user 9y ago
> you are free to use other companies products It doesn't work like that. Because of their market dominance, there really are no alternatives. This is a combination of companies simply giving up on competing with Google, but also in terms of SEO, Google is the only one that matters for publishers and advertisers drive profits towards Google as well. Mobile? They now own it. And btw, if you'll mention DuckDuckGo or Bing, the there's a high probability you're not living in the EU, since those are really, really bad at local or non-English searches.
- lerpa 9y ago
  > It doesn't work like that. Then don't use any. You are not entitled to it, nobody has any obligation to have a service that does what you want.
  - heavenlyblue 9y ago
    By the same logic Google could also abandon the EU market. But they most probably will not. So Google should stick with what they get. Pure pragmatism.
  - bad_user 9y ago
    Well, if it's my backyard you're talking about, a company doing business in it might as well obey the house rules. Google isn't entitled to doing business in the EU either. If they do, then they need to follow the law.
crdoconnor 9y ago
>you are free to use other companies products I don't have the freedom to use another search engine with the scale and access to user data that Google has because the barriers to entry in this market are staggeringly high. Staggeringly high barrier to entry == utility >stealing money Google has the freedom to not pay the fine and shut down operations in the EU.

by oskbor 9y ago

literallycancer 9y ago

EU citizens vote in their national elections. EC members are nominated by national governments. If your government appointed someone that you feel doesn't represent your interests and you feel strongly about it, you should vote for someone else in the next election. This is exactly how representative democracy should work.

adjkant 9y ago
Yet polls across the world have shown this logic to be very flawed. The citizens often disagree with the actions of their representatives. That's a flaw of representative democracy itself. Point is, representative democracy doesn't mean the action of the representative is the one the population agrees with.

bad_user 9y ago

> you are free to use other companies products It doesn't work like that. Because of their market dominance, there really are no alternatives. This is a combination of companies simply giving up on competing with Google, but also in terms of SEO, Google is the only one that matters for publishers and advertisers drive profits towards Google as well. Mobile? They now own it. And btw, if you'll mention DuckDuckGo or Bing, the there's a high probability you're not living in the EU, since those are really, really bad at local or non-English searches.

lerpa 9y ago
> It doesn't work like that. Then don't use any. You are not entitled to it, nobody has any obligation to have a service that does what you want.
- heavenlyblue 9y ago
  By the same logic Google could also abandon the EU market. But they most probably will not. So Google should stick with what they get. Pure pragmatism.
- bad_user 9y ago
  Well, if it's my backyard you're talking about, a company doing business in it might as well obey the house rules. Google isn't entitled to doing business in the EU either. If they do, then they need to follow the law.

crdoconnor 9y ago

>you are free to use other companies products I don't have the freedom to use another search engine with the scale and access to user data that Google has because the barriers to entry in this market are staggeringly high. Staggeringly high barrier to entry == utility >stealing money Google has the freedom to not pay the fine and shut down operations in the EU.