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The destinction is that amazon is not using it's position to enter another market, which is what this whole thing is about. The EU argues that people use the g
by SCHiM 9y ago
The destinction is that amazon is not using it's position to enter another market, which is what this whole thing is about.
The EU argues that people use the google search function to search for items to buy (but not necessarily from google itself), google has a monopoly on search so this is a reasonable assumption.
The problem is then twofold, google shows it's own (and, argued by the EU, inferior) results above that of established competitors. And that's the rub.
Amazon does not abuse it's monopoly in the sense that people who go there explicitly go there to shop already, amazon itself is already an established seller.
- amelius 9y agoTrue, but on the other hand, Amazon uses third party sellers. These are just shop owners trying to sell stuff, just like the shop owners that use Google for discoverability.
- alansammarone 9y agoBut Amazon is essentially a market place. Google is a search site.
- icebraining 9y agoMore specifically, Google Search is a search site. I'm sure the EU has no problem with Google Shopping, as long as it remains a separate product.
- IanCal 9y agoYes, the problem was Google Search treating Google Shopping (formerly froogle) differently to competitors. Froogle was doing badly (from internal memos), and then when google started treating it differently it started doing well and other competitors started losing market share. Being in a dominant market position wasn't a problem, and nor was them creating Google Shopping. It was using their dominant market position to give Google Shopping a benefit nobody else could get. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-1784_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-1784_en.htm
- s17n 9y agoThose are arbitrary categories. You could argue (as Google does) that buying products and discovering web sites are both just subcategories of "search". Conversely, you could argue that buying books and buying clothes are completely separate businesses.
- merb 9y ago> google has a monopoly on search so this is a reasonable assumption. it does not, especially not in european law. a monopoly is defined in the eu as the only possible provider. but the eu comission see's them as a quasi-monopoly, which uses their market strength to weaken other market participants
- dagenleg 9y agoApart from semantics, what's the difference?
- merb 9y agobasically a lot of people believe the written word of some news outlets. however the semantic is totally wrong and people started to think that there is no competitor to google, besides the fact that this is not true.
- eksemplar 9y agoI don't think you understand how EU law works. There are multiple interpretations and the courts decide which one is "right. I recently worked on a project concerning the fee you employer pays you if you have to use your own car for a meeting, and the taxation involved. 8 different cities wanted a digitized solution, the law text involved is around 10 lines of easily understandable text. Wanna guess how many ways the law was interpreted? 9. 9 because in one city the city council decided to go with their own interpretation rather than what their own legal department advices.
- merb 9y agofirst of all, I wanted to correct that the eu never said that google is a monopoly. second I actually said something wrong. basically there is no "european law" (https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/overview-law-making-process/applying-eu-law_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/overview-la...). Basically they create directives, regulations and make decisions. The countries than need to comply them as a law. However if any nation does not comply they will get "punished", but most of the time the punishment is a joke, so that's basically the biggest problem of the eu and that's what happend in your case. Btw. what I basically meant with my text had nothing to do with the above. It's just that the Monopoly word under law means that Google would be the only market participant, which of course is wrong and the EU never said "monopoly", they only said Google has market dominance, however most news outlets written monopoly, which in fact is wrong. Btw here is the official text: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-17-1785_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-17-1785_en.htm You can even look up what different news outlets written about google, they claimed google as a monopoly, which is nowhere stated by the press information.
- hinkley 9y agoWell, except they don't sell Apple TVs anymore...
- s17n 9y agoAmazon used its dominant position in books to enter a whole lot of other markets.
- reacweb 9y agoand kill concurrency (a bit like microsoft in the 90s)
- bryanrasmussen 9y agoconcurrency?