8 ms·

Reporter totally misses the point. The point is that google provided google maps for free. That is great. except when all other competition dies (because who ca

Reporter totally misses the point. The point is that google provided google maps for free. That is great. except when all other competition dies (because who can compete with a better, freer version of your product?) google starts charging pretty rediculous rates. That move in itself is what contributed to the ruling. OSM is free for everyone. It is a wiki. If OSM destroys google, bing, etc, and then decides to go on a charging spree (it can't) then it would also face similar decisions. Kudos to the french for this.

Tichy 15y ago
OK so lets shut down Wikipedia next.
- freehunter 15y ago
  As soon as they start charging for access. See, this is the problem with deceptive headlines, they make people argue points that don't exist.
  - Tichy 15y ago
    So what if I have a company that sells information and Wikipedia ruins my business by offering information for free? Edit: even if Wikipedia is non-profit, what if their secret main sponsor is some news outlet, for example?
    - freehunter 15y ago
      That doesn't matter. There is no law nor any court ruling even in France against providing free services. Here is the entire key to the issue: >Bottin Cartographes argued that Google was only planning to give away the service for free until all the competitors had been driven out of business and then they would start charging. It's not about free services, it's about willfully plotting to gain marketshare via free services with specific intent on charging for the service once the competitors have been driven out. While I believe the French ruling is faulty (where is the proof?), this isn't an issue of free vs paid. The analogy only works if Wikipedia has specific intent to begin charging for access once your business is gone.
      - Tichy 15y ago
        How did they prove that Google was plotting that scheme?
        freehunter 15y ago
        I have no idea. Like I mentioned, I'd like to see the proof before I believe Google was planning this. Obviously it was enough to convince the courts, but I know courts can be deceived and biased (especially when it's local companies vs foreign companies).
        potatolicious 15y ago
        I don't know the specifics of this case, but Google did start charging for Maps last year for commercial users, at least in the US. That may be enough to prove intent?
        Tichy 15y ago
        But they were sued for not charging. So if they are actually charging... It just doesn't seem to make any sense at all.
- uniclaude 15y ago
  Well, either you did not understand the comment you are replying to, or you believe that Wikipedia will charge for its access. What does make you think such a thing ?
  - Tichy 15y ago
    So Google is only made to pay because they have a paid version of Maps? If Maps were completely free, they would be good? Who guarantees that Wikipedia never starts charging, as soon as all other information services have been pushed out of the market? Sorry but yes maybe I missed some tidbit in the article?
    - cooldeal 15y ago
      I think the big difference is that Google is using the money from it's monopoly search to artificially subsidize maps below cost. OSM and Wikipedia etc. are doing no such thing.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      Who guarantees that Wikipedia never starts charging, as soon as all other information services have been pushed out of the market? The fact that anyone can make an exact Wikipedia clone thanks to the free licensing of their software and content?
      - zmmmmm 15y ago
        > The fact that anyone can make an exact Wikipedia clone thanks to the free licensing of their software and content? Wikipedia could change that at any time. Old versions of Wikipedia could be distributed but they wouldn't be up to date any more.
        nitrogen 15y ago
        Actually, Wikipedia can't change the license on existing articles to a more restrictive one, as copyright in the articles remains with the mass of editors that wrote them. In fact, they had to get FSF to add a special exemption just for them to an updated version of the GNU FDL so they could add the less-restrictive CC to their set of licenses.
- vlasta2 15y ago
  There is a difference. Wikipedia and many open source projects cannot forcibly switch to paid model, because they are currently giving their content away under CC-BY or GPL and you can keep a copy of it. If they started charging, you can fork the project and continue charge-free. Google maps API is a service controlled by Google. You cannot replicate it and keep using it if Google changes its mind about the licensing.
  - nknight 15y ago
    What makes you think a irrationally protectionist French court isn't going to issue an order changing the licensing terms of Wikipedia's content?
yanw 15y ago
Didn't they start charging because they started getting sued for offering it free of charge? And according to other reports it's apparently illegal in France to offer something for free if it costs money to develop. But what about those who enjoyed using the free stuff and even built businesses on top of it?
- lloeki 15y ago
  The law says it's forbidden to sell something at a loss. While it's straightforward to evaluate when you resell a physical good as-is, it's quite more shady when you do some transformation (maybe at least the sum of its components?) and outright undefinable for intangible goods, let alone a service. That's the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law is to prevent undercutting your competitors to death. I bet all of this is tied to IGN (France's national mapping agency) offering GéoPortail, a free but absolutely crappy service and a paid yet just as crappy service and dying a horrible, deserved death. They should have kept doing what they do right: providing map data and securing a deal with Google or Nokia for the aerial and street shots, and the maps.
  - hessenwolf 15y ago
    I think this comment should be somewhere at the top. There was a similar law for a long time in Ireland, precisely to prevent companies with a large capital base from pricing their competition out of the market and then raisin their prices afterwards. If this is the reason they were sued, then it's not as big a deal as I thought from the headline.
forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
"That is great. except when all other competition dies (because who can compete with a better, freer version of your product?) google starts charging pretty rediculous rates." This is what happened with big malls in Europe, small retailers could not compete in price so they got out of business. Now some of the malls have bigger prices that what small retailers had, as they have way less competition. E.g Carrefour bought all the malls here so all them are Carrefour now.
- ekianjo 15y ago
  Actually, this kind of law does not make any sense. In the case of carrefour, since they are charging such high prices nowadays, what prevents a bunch of farmers to associate themselves and open their own mall to sell cheaper and regain market share? Nothing, absolutely nothing. They just can't be bothered. Lack of competition is not only about big brands killing small ones. It's also part of the culture. It's been a long time that entrepreneurship is dead in France. I know what I'm talking about, I AM french.
  - kolinko 15y ago
    Isn't this what game theory is about? Smaller competitors won't open up, because even if Carrefour has high prices, the chain can lower prices any time to wipe out the competitors again. So, the monopolist can have arbitrarily high prices because nobody will invest in opening shops. This is one of the situations in which free market fails to deliver the optimal (for consumers) solution.
    - ekianjo 15y ago
      It's not just about prices. It was only about prices, then there would be McDonalds everywhere and nothing else. If farmers were to open their own stores, they could still manage to have reasonable prices, and make their point on "best quality", "organic food", plus offering some plants / species you would never be able to find in a big supermarket. You can't go head to head against Carrefour by just providing the same service. They would have to differentiate. That's how free market works. There are always needs that the big competitor will not be able to cater to.
thematt 15y ago
That's ridiculous. How can they be punished for something you think they might do?
- tylermenezes 15y ago
  They did that. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/27/google_maps_api_no_longer_free/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/27/google_maps_api_no_l...
  - yanw 15y ago
    They did that as a response to those lawsuit (in France and elsewhere) It's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.
- fmueller 15y ago
  Maybe naive thinking but you could let them sign a contract which doesn't let them sell google-maps in the future. If they don't sign you know what their intentions are...
oh_sigh 15y ago
Why couldn't competition spring up once google starts charging ridiculous rates? It's not as if competition dies forever. It dies until someone else figures out how to do it better.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  Certain markets have high barriers to entry. If the local sandwich shops start charging ridiculous rates, it's not very difficult for someone to move in and do it for cheaper. When Google owns all the cartographic data, how exactly do you intend to compete as a newcomer? Where are you going to get the 8-figure investment to even begin to make the smallest dent against the massive dataset you need to collect? This is the problem with the perfectly laissez-faire view: it discounts the fact that there is, in many cases, a huge barrier to entry for all new entrants once someone has the market locked down.
  - shmulkey18 15y ago
    I fail to see how you can own all the cartographic data, does Google have a special power which allows it to prevent people from drawing maps? Also if the barrier to entry was so high you would think that mapquest or bing maps wouldn't exist, but magically they do. I would be surprised that someone who is active on a tech site would find it odd that a startup could raise millions of dollars in funding.
    - ericd 15y ago
      I don't think that "Google Maps Competitor" is a very attractive pitch to VCs. At least, I certainly wouldn't invest.
toyg 15y ago
So the answer to a monopolist commoditizing a market is... to introduce a cartel? Because this is basically what this judgement argues: Google should charge something in line to what its competitors do, and forget about any downward pressure on prices. I'm not a free-market zealot, but this sort of ruling is really bad for small players. Googlers understand the internet and so they make money while lowering prices for consumers, why should we punish them for this? Then we might as well say the copyright mafia is right and the internet should be tightly regulated and controlled by cartels.
- ceol 15y ago
  From the second paragraph of the article: "In a ruling Tuesday, the Paris court upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographes against Google France and its parent company Google Inc. for providing free web mapping services to some businesses." It looks like the issue isn't that it's free; it's that Google provided free maps services to some businesses while charging others. That's the gist I got from the article, anyway.
- wmf 15y ago
  This issue reminds me of French and German price controls on books, which appear to support small bookstores by damping the economy of scale of large chains. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/arts/24book.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/arts/24book.html?pagewante... If Google is forced to charge the same prices as small mapping companies, those companies should have less of a disadvantage. It's not really a cartel if anyone can join. There are plenty of reasons why this is a bad idea, but at least I understand why France is trying it.
mlinsey 15y ago
Google maps includes sponsored locations when you search for things on the map. Are we going to also prosecute Google for providing free web search, making it impossible to make a competing search engine that charges users 10 Euro cents per query?
- potatolicious 15y ago
  You've missed the point entirely. If Google provided free web search, killing off all commercial competitors, and then started charging fees for searches now that all competitors are dead, then yes, they would probably be prosecuted. If GMaps had remained free this whole shebang might have been avoided.
  - myko 15y ago
    Wait, I thought Google charging for Maps was a direct result of being sued by a French company? http://www.techspot.com/news/35632-google-sued-in-france-over-google-maps.html# http://www.techspot.com/news/35632-google-sued-in-france-ove...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jhancock 15y ago
I agree, except with your OSM component. I'm not sure it matters that OSM is non-profit. They still can produce similar effects as a for-profit version.

Tichy 15y ago

OK so lets shut down Wikipedia next.

freehunter 15y ago
As soon as they start charging for access. See, this is the problem with deceptive headlines, they make people argue points that don't exist.
- Tichy 15y ago
  So what if I have a company that sells information and Wikipedia ruins my business by offering information for free? Edit: even if Wikipedia is non-profit, what if their secret main sponsor is some news outlet, for example?
  - freehunter 15y ago
    That doesn't matter. There is no law nor any court ruling even in France against providing free services. Here is the entire key to the issue: >Bottin Cartographes argued that Google was only planning to give away the service for free until all the competitors had been driven out of business and then they would start charging. It's not about free services, it's about willfully plotting to gain marketshare via free services with specific intent on charging for the service once the competitors have been driven out. While I believe the French ruling is faulty (where is the proof?), this isn't an issue of free vs paid. The analogy only works if Wikipedia has specific intent to begin charging for access once your business is gone.
    - Tichy 15y ago
      How did they prove that Google was plotting that scheme?
      - freehunter 15y ago
        I have no idea. Like I mentioned, I'd like to see the proof before I believe Google was planning this. Obviously it was enough to convince the courts, but I know courts can be deceived and biased (especially when it's local companies vs foreign companies).
      - potatolicious 15y ago
        I don't know the specifics of this case, but Google did start charging for Maps last year for commercial users, at least in the US. That may be enough to prove intent?
        Tichy 15y ago
        But they were sued for not charging. So if they are actually charging... It just doesn't seem to make any sense at all.
uniclaude 15y ago
Well, either you did not understand the comment you are replying to, or you believe that Wikipedia will charge for its access. What does make you think such a thing ?
- Tichy 15y ago
  So Google is only made to pay because they have a paid version of Maps? If Maps were completely free, they would be good? Who guarantees that Wikipedia never starts charging, as soon as all other information services have been pushed out of the market? Sorry but yes maybe I missed some tidbit in the article?
  - cooldeal 15y ago
    I think the big difference is that Google is using the money from it's monopoly search to artificially subsidize maps below cost. OSM and Wikipedia etc. are doing no such thing.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Who guarantees that Wikipedia never starts charging, as soon as all other information services have been pushed out of the market? The fact that anyone can make an exact Wikipedia clone thanks to the free licensing of their software and content?
    - zmmmmm 15y ago
      > The fact that anyone can make an exact Wikipedia clone thanks to the free licensing of their software and content? Wikipedia could change that at any time. Old versions of Wikipedia could be distributed but they wouldn't be up to date any more.
      - nitrogen 15y ago
        Actually, Wikipedia can't change the license on existing articles to a more restrictive one, as copyright in the articles remains with the mass of editors that wrote them. In fact, they had to get FSF to add a special exemption just for them to an updated version of the GNU FDL so they could add the less-restrictive CC to their set of licenses.
vlasta2 15y ago
There is a difference. Wikipedia and many open source projects cannot forcibly switch to paid model, because they are currently giving their content away under CC-BY or GPL and you can keep a copy of it. If they started charging, you can fork the project and continue charge-free. Google maps API is a service controlled by Google. You cannot replicate it and keep using it if Google changes its mind about the licensing.
- nknight 15y ago
  What makes you think a irrationally protectionist French court isn't going to issue an order changing the licensing terms of Wikipedia's content?

yanw 15y ago

Didn't they start charging because they started getting sued for offering it free of charge? And according to other reports it's apparently illegal in France to offer something for free if it costs money to develop. But what about those who enjoyed using the free stuff and even built businesses on top of it?

lloeki 15y ago
The law says it's forbidden to sell something at a loss. While it's straightforward to evaluate when you resell a physical good as-is, it's quite more shady when you do some transformation (maybe at least the sum of its components?) and outright undefinable for intangible goods, let alone a service. That's the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law is to prevent undercutting your competitors to death. I bet all of this is tied to IGN (France's national mapping agency) offering GéoPortail, a free but absolutely crappy service and a paid yet just as crappy service and dying a horrible, deserved death. They should have kept doing what they do right: providing map data and securing a deal with Google or Nokia for the aerial and street shots, and the maps.
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  I think this comment should be somewhere at the top. There was a similar law for a long time in Ireland, precisely to prevent companies with a large capital base from pricing their competition out of the market and then raisin their prices afterwards. If this is the reason they were sued, then it's not as big a deal as I thought from the headline.

forgottenpaswrd 15y ago

"That is great. except when all other competition dies (because who can compete with a better, freer version of your product?) google starts charging pretty rediculous rates." This is what happened with big malls in Europe, small retailers could not compete in price so they got out of business. Now some of the malls have bigger prices that what small retailers had, as they have way less competition. E.g Carrefour bought all the malls here so all them are Carrefour now.

ekianjo 15y ago
Actually, this kind of law does not make any sense. In the case of carrefour, since they are charging such high prices nowadays, what prevents a bunch of farmers to associate themselves and open their own mall to sell cheaper and regain market share? Nothing, absolutely nothing. They just can't be bothered. Lack of competition is not only about big brands killing small ones. It's also part of the culture. It's been a long time that entrepreneurship is dead in France. I know what I'm talking about, I AM french.
- kolinko 15y ago
  Isn't this what game theory is about? Smaller competitors won't open up, because even if Carrefour has high prices, the chain can lower prices any time to wipe out the competitors again. So, the monopolist can have arbitrarily high prices because nobody will invest in opening shops. This is one of the situations in which free market fails to deliver the optimal (for consumers) solution.
  - ekianjo 15y ago
    It's not just about prices. It was only about prices, then there would be McDonalds everywhere and nothing else. If farmers were to open their own stores, they could still manage to have reasonable prices, and make their point on "best quality", "organic food", plus offering some plants / species you would never be able to find in a big supermarket. You can't go head to head against Carrefour by just providing the same service. They would have to differentiate. That's how free market works. There are always needs that the big competitor will not be able to cater to.

thematt 15y ago

That's ridiculous. How can they be punished for something you think they might do?

tylermenezes 15y ago
They did that. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/27/google_maps_api_no_longer_free/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/27/google_maps_api_no_l...
- yanw 15y ago
  They did that as a response to those lawsuit (in France and elsewhere) It's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.
fmueller 15y ago
Maybe naive thinking but you could let them sign a contract which doesn't let them sell google-maps in the future. If they don't sign you know what their intentions are...

oh_sigh 15y ago

Why couldn't competition spring up once google starts charging ridiculous rates? It's not as if competition dies forever. It dies until someone else figures out how to do it better.

potatolicious 15y ago
Certain markets have high barriers to entry. If the local sandwich shops start charging ridiculous rates, it's not very difficult for someone to move in and do it for cheaper. When Google owns all the cartographic data, how exactly do you intend to compete as a newcomer? Where are you going to get the 8-figure investment to even begin to make the smallest dent against the massive dataset you need to collect? This is the problem with the perfectly laissez-faire view: it discounts the fact that there is, in many cases, a huge barrier to entry for all new entrants once someone has the market locked down.
- shmulkey18 15y ago
  I fail to see how you can own all the cartographic data, does Google have a special power which allows it to prevent people from drawing maps? Also if the barrier to entry was so high you would think that mapquest or bing maps wouldn't exist, but magically they do. I would be surprised that someone who is active on a tech site would find it odd that a startup could raise millions of dollars in funding.
  - ericd 15y ago
    I don't think that "Google Maps Competitor" is a very attractive pitch to VCs. At least, I certainly wouldn't invest.

toyg 15y ago

So the answer to a monopolist commoditizing a market is... to introduce a cartel? Because this is basically what this judgement argues: Google should charge something in line to what its competitors do, and forget about any downward pressure on prices. I'm not a free-market zealot, but this sort of ruling is really bad for small players. Googlers understand the internet and so they make money while lowering prices for consumers, why should we punish them for this? Then we might as well say the copyright mafia is right and the internet should be tightly regulated and controlled by cartels.

ceol 15y ago
From the second paragraph of the article: "In a ruling Tuesday, the Paris court upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographes against Google France and its parent company Google Inc. for providing free web mapping services to some businesses." It looks like the issue isn't that it's free; it's that Google provided free maps services to some businesses while charging others. That's the gist I got from the article, anyway.
wmf 15y ago
This issue reminds me of French and German price controls on books, which appear to support small bookstores by damping the economy of scale of large chains. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/arts/24book.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/arts/24book.html?pagewante... If Google is forced to charge the same prices as small mapping companies, those companies should have less of a disadvantage. It's not really a cartel if anyone can join. There are plenty of reasons why this is a bad idea, but at least I understand why France is trying it.

mlinsey 15y ago

Google maps includes sponsored locations when you search for things on the map. Are we going to also prosecute Google for providing free web search, making it impossible to make a competing search engine that charges users 10 Euro cents per query?

potatolicious 15y ago
You've missed the point entirely. If Google provided free web search, killing off all commercial competitors, and then started charging fees for searches now that all competitors are dead, then yes, they would probably be prosecuted. If GMaps had remained free this whole shebang might have been avoided.
- myko 15y ago
  Wait, I thought Google charging for Maps was a direct result of being sued by a French company? http://www.techspot.com/news/35632-google-sued-in-france-over-google-maps.html# http://www.techspot.com/news/35632-google-sued-in-france-ove...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

jhancock 15y ago

I agree, except with your OSM component. I'm not sure it matters that OSM is non-profit. They still can produce similar effects as a for-profit version.