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I always thought that anti-trust laws kicked in when the power was abused, so to speak.

• tomp 12y ago
  Power is abused here, though. Google is using it's monopoly/dominant market position in search to build up it's market share in maps/local/social/whatever.
  • Oletros 12y ago
    > Power is abused here, though Can you link to the EU ruling stating that?
  • mike_hearn 12y ago
    That's a highly controversial and tricky argument to make, though. Is Google Maps a separate product that's being illegal tied to web search? Or is it actually a search engine for physical places, an integrated part of the one unified Google Search Engine? It could be argued either way, but if you try and imagine what it'd take to make Google Maps "pluggable" in google.com search .... well, that would be a tremendous technical challenge. Competitors would have to be able to process every web search Google does, to decide if it contains a location. That's a lot of traffic. And they have to respond as fast as Google's own servers, despite not being in the same buildings. This sort of thing suggests they're really one unified product, but I doubt such technical details would have much impact on what is a fundamentally political process.
  • tomjen3 12y ago
    No, search is also for things like positions, local businesses, etc. And no I don't want to be prompted to customize my google experience by choosing any of X providers for maps, etc. I want the answer to my gooddam search query, stat.