6 ms·

kinda interesting that EU law requires you to reduce the usefulness of your products if you have too much success...

by Teknoman117 9y ago

ars 9y ago
It's called janteloven in Nordic countries, I suspect other parts of the EU have a similar idea.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Google isn't being punished for being big, but for how they use their dominant position.
Hermel 9y ago
It is a trade-off between short-term and long-term usefulness. If Google is using its market power to protect its own services from competition, that leads to less consumer choice and less usefulness in the long run, as fewer competitors will survive.
hadrien01 9y ago
Well actually, in that case, Google would be forced to show relevant results and stop discriminating rival sites in favor of its own shopping search service.
- bduerst 9y ago
  Aren't the products in the Google shopping carousel just search ads with images? Not actual product indexing like other sites?
  - hadrien01 9y ago
    According to the article, this fine was about the general search redirecting to Google Shopping, not Google Shopping itself.
Oletros 9y ago
You'll be glad to know that it is not true
Spivak 9y ago
Phrased another way, "you cannot leverage your success and privileged position in one industry (Internet search) to give you an advantage unattainable by a competitor" Neither Amazon, nor any other online retailer, can gain the advantage of being the featured result on Google search.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  So where does it end. Do they remove maps and videos and images too? Google is not a web search engine, it's a search engine. It finds things. The EU's position, taken to its logical conclusion, would push European web search 15 years into the past.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Google isn't prevented from having a product search, just from inserting those results before the regular web results. Similarly, Google wouldn't have to remove images or videos, just not embed them directly on top of the web search results. Seems OK to me, and hardly pushing "European web search 15 years into the past."
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - cromwellian 9y ago
      Which basically means inserting pointless extra clicks into the user flow. And think about how horrible this would be for voice interfaces: "hey google, where can I buy Doritos" "ok, let me redirect you to voice product search. Hi, I'm voice product search, please restate your question."
      - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        Is protecting fair competition "pointless"? I'd argue having one or two clicks extra as something that protects us from a monopolistic corporate overlord to be clicks well spent. But your example is also excessively alarmist and obtuse. A competition-respecting voice search client would be configurable. Aka, that it should perhaps be illegal for Google Assistant to automatically play music from Google Play Music, but that it allow you to choose a provider, including Amazon Prime Music, Groove Music, etc. Once a user has indicated their preference, the regular flow would be automatic. This would likely be for product search as well, you might select that you want to look up products via Amazon or Walmart. Surely piping data from one application into another is not new territory.
kitd 9y ago
How about "if you try to game what should be a free market"?
- icebraining 9y ago
  People will disagree with you that this in any way games the free market. It's just not a useful argument to have, since it mostly revolves around definitions.
elpool2 9y ago
All of the useful little tools that google shows you based on your search could now be subject the same treatment. If I search for "Seattle weather" google shows me a nice weather forecast at the top of the results (courtesy of weather.com). Could Google be forced to stop showing this because it unfairly disadvantages other weather websites?
- kuschku 9y ago
  This is actually an ongoing process, too. The opinion of the EU is that Google should be forced to either allow the user to choose the provider of these widgets (maps, weather, etc), or to require Google to rank these widgets at the same position that they would show up in regular search. For example, in a search for a product, Google returns first a Shopping widget, then the Amazon result (and in it, an amazon widget), then several competitors, and only then Google Shopping. Google should rank the widgets of each provider the same way as search results, without any bias.
  - dlubarov 9y ago
    It sounds good in theory, but since Google's ranking algorithm ranks pages, how is Google supposed to apply it to widgets? Most widgets do have associated pages, such as shopping search result pages, but they're not the same. They have different interfaces and contain different information, and often they have low PageRank because there's little point in linking to them. If I search "My name is Daniel in Spanish", I would probably like to see a Google Translate widget (or at least some kind of widget), even though the associated page https://translate.google.com/#en/es/My%20name%20is%20Daniel https://translate.google.com/#en/es/My%20name%20is%20Daniel isn't ranked highly. And some widgets have no associated pages -- if a user searches "96 tablespoons in cups", Google simply shows the answer (6), with no associated page. Should that not be allowed? It would be unfortunate if Google was forced to send users to some conversion website for that.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      The problem is that Google has a monopoly on search (>96% in EU), and is using that to gain a monopoly in other areas. For example, where I live, Google maps hasn’t updated map data since 2009. They have no transit in it, no integration with taxi or ridesharing companies, nothing. Here maps has up-to-date maps, with all that in it. Yet, people use Google maps, and not even consider that there might be a better competitor – because Google maps is the default, and shows up first in search. A significantly worse product is winning here, and doesn’t even have a market pressure to improve, just because of anticompetitive powers. You surely can see how that’d be problematic if you’d ever try to disrupt an existing market as startup.
rokhayakebe 9y ago
Hard to believe but many times these things do protect consumers.
SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
Yes, and that's a good thing. Runaway "success" in my car's engine doesn't result in my car going fast, it results in my car breaking down. Similarly, success in competitive markets should be lauded as good business, while runaway success should be viewed as a breakdown of competitive markets, leading to suboptimal outcomes. I'm kind of sick of "capitalism" that tells me the most efficient way to stay warm is burning my house down.
hinkley 9y ago
With each day the steer grows more convinced that the farmer has his best interests at heart.

kinda interesting that EU law requires you to reduce the usefulness of your products if you have too much success...

ars 9y ago

It's called janteloven in Nordic countries, I suspect other parts of the EU have a similar idea.

icebraining 9y ago
Google isn't being punished for being big, but for how they use their dominant position.

Hermel 9y ago

It is a trade-off between short-term and long-term usefulness. If Google is using its market power to protect its own services from competition, that leads to less consumer choice and less usefulness in the long run, as fewer competitors will survive.

hadrien01 9y ago

Well actually, in that case, Google would be forced to show relevant results and stop discriminating rival sites in favor of its own shopping search service.

bduerst 9y ago
Aren't the products in the Google shopping carousel just search ads with images? Not actual product indexing like other sites?
- hadrien01 9y ago
  According to the article, this fine was about the general search redirecting to Google Shopping, not Google Shopping itself.

Oletros 9y ago

You'll be glad to know that it is not true

Spivak 9y ago

Phrased another way, "you cannot leverage your success and privileged position in one industry (Internet search) to give you an advantage unattainable by a competitor" Neither Amazon, nor any other online retailer, can gain the advantage of being the featured result on Google search.

peoplewindow 9y ago
So where does it end. Do they remove maps and videos and images too? Google is not a web search engine, it's a search engine. It finds things. The EU's position, taken to its logical conclusion, would push European web search 15 years into the past.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Google isn't prevented from having a product search, just from inserting those results before the regular web results. Similarly, Google wouldn't have to remove images or videos, just not embed them directly on top of the web search results. Seems OK to me, and hardly pushing "European web search 15 years into the past."
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    Which basically means inserting pointless extra clicks into the user flow. And think about how horrible this would be for voice interfaces: "hey google, where can I buy Doritos" "ok, let me redirect you to voice product search. Hi, I'm voice product search, please restate your question."
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      Is protecting fair competition "pointless"? I'd argue having one or two clicks extra as something that protects us from a monopolistic corporate overlord to be clicks well spent. But your example is also excessively alarmist and obtuse. A competition-respecting voice search client would be configurable. Aka, that it should perhaps be illegal for Google Assistant to automatically play music from Google Play Music, but that it allow you to choose a provider, including Amazon Prime Music, Groove Music, etc. Once a user has indicated their preference, the regular flow would be automatic. This would likely be for product search as well, you might select that you want to look up products via Amazon or Walmart. Surely piping data from one application into another is not new territory.

kitd 9y ago

How about "if you try to game what should be a free market"?

icebraining 9y ago
People will disagree with you that this in any way games the free market. It's just not a useful argument to have, since it mostly revolves around definitions.

elpool2 9y ago

All of the useful little tools that google shows you based on your search could now be subject the same treatment. If I search for "Seattle weather" google shows me a nice weather forecast at the top of the results (courtesy of weather.com). Could Google be forced to stop showing this because it unfairly disadvantages other weather websites?

kuschku 9y ago
This is actually an ongoing process, too. The opinion of the EU is that Google should be forced to either allow the user to choose the provider of these widgets (maps, weather, etc), or to require Google to rank these widgets at the same position that they would show up in regular search. For example, in a search for a product, Google returns first a Shopping widget, then the Amazon result (and in it, an amazon widget), then several competitors, and only then Google Shopping. Google should rank the widgets of each provider the same way as search results, without any bias.
- dlubarov 9y ago
  It sounds good in theory, but since Google's ranking algorithm ranks pages, how is Google supposed to apply it to widgets? Most widgets do have associated pages, such as shopping search result pages, but they're not the same. They have different interfaces and contain different information, and often they have low PageRank because there's little point in linking to them. If I search "My name is Daniel in Spanish", I would probably like to see a Google Translate widget (or at least some kind of widget), even though the associated page https://translate.google.com/#en/es/My%20name%20is%20Daniel https://translate.google.com/#en/es/My%20name%20is%20Daniel isn't ranked highly. And some widgets have no associated pages -- if a user searches "96 tablespoons in cups", Google simply shows the answer (6), with no associated page. Should that not be allowed? It would be unfortunate if Google was forced to send users to some conversion website for that.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    The problem is that Google has a monopoly on search (>96% in EU), and is using that to gain a monopoly in other areas. For example, where I live, Google maps hasn’t updated map data since 2009. They have no transit in it, no integration with taxi or ridesharing companies, nothing. Here maps has up-to-date maps, with all that in it. Yet, people use Google maps, and not even consider that there might be a better competitor – because Google maps is the default, and shows up first in search. A significantly worse product is winning here, and doesn’t even have a market pressure to improve, just because of anticompetitive powers. You surely can see how that’d be problematic if you’d ever try to disrupt an existing market as startup.

rokhayakebe 9y ago

Hard to believe but many times these things do protect consumers.

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago

Yes, and that's a good thing. Runaway "success" in my car's engine doesn't result in my car going fast, it results in my car breaking down. Similarly, success in competitive markets should be lauded as good business, while runaway success should be viewed as a breakdown of competitive markets, leading to suboptimal outcomes. I'm kind of sick of "capitalism" that tells me the most efficient way to stay warm is burning my house down.

hinkley 9y ago

With each day the steer grows more convinced that the farmer has his best interests at heart.