9 ms·

Google’s Internal Response to Imminent E.U. Charges

90 points by virtuabhi 12y ago

michaelt 12y ago
If those graphs are supposed to show that Google Shopping is an unpopular also-ran that users don't like or use, you have to wonder why they keep putting it in a big box with pictures at the top of search listings, like http://imgur.com/N3aGIVy http://imgur.com/N3aGIVy
- Oletros 12y ago
  Perhaps to try to make it more popular?
  - sasidharm 12y ago
    By stealing data from competitors?
    - Oletros 12y ago
      What data steals Google Shopping?
- jacquesm 12y ago
  According to Google in the early days 'paid inclusion' was one of the original sins, and Google would never stoop that low. I personally think that paid inclusion is actually less evil than promoting your own crap products over the legitimate listings.
  - pliny 12y ago
    Isn't promoting your own crap just dogfooding paid inclusions?
vidarh 12y ago
It's fascinating that their memo dismisses their search position so easily, but focuses on graphs for shopping and travel that shows them in a weak position in those areas, as either the memo is hiding their real arguments (which might not be unreasonable - given its audience and the odds it would leak), or they have not thought this through. What the graphs show is that there are a number of strong competitors in the shopping space, which may create a strong public interest in ensuring Google is not being allowed to use it's perceived search monopoly position to muscle into the space and limit competition by giving itself better positions in results. If the EU Commission finds that Google has a sufficient near monopoly on search and that their practices with respect to expanding their reach in shopping is anti-competitive, then Google's current weak position in shopping is entirely irrelevant unless they're hoping to show that being given such a prominent position in their search results does not give a business any advantages (their ad sales people ought to start hyperventilating if Google makes that argument). And in fact the existence of a healthy, competitive eco-system in shopping would make any anti-competitive behaviour by a powerful monopolist far more damaging and important to curtail in the eyes of the EU Commission. It should not be something you'd want to draw attention to. A much better argument would be to highlight far more the breadth of niche search engines, and how e.g. searches on Amazon and Ebay and others should also be included in any assessment of search market share, and that this would show that Google's market power is not as great as it would seem if you only look at "general purpose" search engines.
- Jugurtha 12y ago
  Right on.. There are two points: 1. "Recode obtained an internal memo". If I were Google, I'd leak that on purpose. A polished internal memo that is leaked is more powerful than explicit PR, because of its supposed "internal" nature. "They didn't write it thinking others may read it, so it's probably honest and pure." 2. As I read, I thought exactly the same thing as your first paragraph: Search, making themselves look weak. I also remembered something Peter Thiel said in a PandoMonthly.. That non monopolistic companies try to look big and monopolistic, and that truly huge monopolistic companies downplay it to the point you worry about their survival. He gave the example of Google, of course, and did the exact same thing as in the internal memo (talked about the other markets and how competition is so fierce, nothing is granted). That was one of the best interviews I've seen, by the way..
blfr 12y ago
Those graphs are so sad. It's all American companies competing among themselves: Twitter, Bing, DuckDuckGo... Even on our home turf, even with natural advantage (not so much in search but definitely in shopping), local competition is at the bottom, far behind Amazon and Ebay. And this doesn't seem to worry anyone here. We continue to tack on more regulation, tax rules detrimental to small businesses in their complexity, and now surveillance that would make Obama blush[1]. Oh, but we will show these evil monopolists with this formal complaint. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9379299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9379299
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  >tax rules detrimental to small businesses It's quite a common schtick among big businesses (including the aforementioned monopolists) to blame the lack of small business competition on tax rules. The tax rules they refer to actually do nothing to small businesses, but they are usually detrimental to their own bottom line. This is how Google/Microsoft/Amazon ended up reaping such huge profits and paying such pathetically low taxes. It didn't happen by accident, and it also didn't help any small businesses along the way. Quite the opposite.
  - davidw 12y ago
    As an American living in Italy, there really are more taxes and "death by a thousand cut" fees and rules here than in the US, from what I've seen. Everyone treats their Fords and Fiats well, but for smaller companies, it's all the red tape and small stuff that's most annoying, not even the overall tax level.
    - danieldk 12y ago
      As an American living in Italy, there really are more taxes and "death by a thousand cut" fees and rules here than in the US, from what I've seen. I like to pay a little more tax and actually have a decent healthcare system, social security net, and retirement. One of the problems is that many of the large US corporations legally avoid tax via one of the tax havens (including my country of origin, The Netherlands). It creates an uneven playing field. There is no reason why European companies couldn't compete. Taxes may be higher, but wages are lower, and costs may be significantly lower if you are in east Europe. I also don't completely agree with the sentiment that started this thread, there are also plenty of European startups/ex-startups doing well: Booking.com, Spotify, Rovio, Mojang (Swedish) was just bought by Microsoft for 2.5 billion, Skype was also a European before it was purchased by Microsoft.
acqq 12y ago
EU: "Google, you use your de facto search monopoly attempting to win new monopolies." Google: "But look, we still haven't destroyed all the competition. Why don't you please wait until we do?"
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  Courts generally hear actual and not hypothetical controversies. If the competition can't yet show harm, there isn't a crime yet.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Courts generally hear actual and not hypothetical controversies. The relevant EU Commission is not a court, and this isn't an adversarial proceeding between Google and competitors, even for all that Google competitors lobbied the EU for action. > If the competition can't yet show harm, there isn't a crime yet. The issue here isn't crime, or something that competition has to show anything, and plenty of crimes do, in fact, exist when harm cannot be shown, anyway.
    - spacemanmatt 12y ago
      > The relevant EU Commission is not a court True, but the principle is a common one. And it is adversarial in that the Commission is prosecuting and Google is defending. This isn't a cooperative investigation. To the extent that courts do not try hypothetical controversies, they also depend on actual proof and not unproven harm. How do you suppose a company would be found guilty of about-to-violate-antitrust-laws?
      - dragonwriter 12y ago
        > True, but the principle is a common one. Its actually not as common as you might think; the principle in the US legal system that courts do not address hypothetical situations and issue advisory rulings distinguishes courts in the US system from courts in many non-US systems and many non-court adjudicative bodies (in the US and other systems.) > And it is adversarial in that the Commission is prosecuting and Google is defending Its more inquisitorial than adversarial, since there is not a separate prosecuting entity from the adjudicating entity, but the key point was that it wasn't between Google and its competitors, so its competition doesn't need to show anything, contrary to the suggestion made that the competition needs to show harm. > To the extent that courts do not try hypothetical controversies, they also depend on actual proof and not unproven harm. Only if the legal standard relevant to the controversy requires concrete harms. A prosecutor doesn't, for instance, have to show any harm when prosecuting attempted murder. > How do you suppose a company would be found guilty of about-to-violate-antitrust-laws? Antitrust laws very frequently prohibit conduct undertaken with the intent of monopolizing an industry, though the degree of actual harm is often relevant to the zeal with which antitrust authorities prosecute offenses, and the remedies imposed. Actual harm is often relevant in antitrust analysis, but may not be essential for a violation to occur -- just as the case for many other kinds of violations of law.
pja 12y ago
It ought to have been transparently obvious to Google execs from when Google became utterly dominant in the web search space that the risk of anti-trust violations was very high and if they wanted to avoid being censured they needed to consistently take the high road & avoid using that dominance to force entry into other fields at the expense of competitors. It has always looked to me that Google was consistently stepping over that line in search & advertising often enough that they were inviting anti-trust suits. The agreements they force phone vendors to sign up to if they want to ship Google Play services with Android phones also stink to high heaven & are an anti-trust suit waiting to explode in Google’s face - that self-imposed banana skin appears to be next on the EU commission’s agenda. Google can afford to pay any fine the EU is likely to impose of course. The greater cost may be in exec time & loss of face, plus the generalised malaise that seems to go along with losing an anti-trust suit.
- IBM 12y ago
  More than the fines is the ability to impose changes on their business practices. Imagine if Google could no longer require OEMs to bundle various Google products in order to get the Play store.
  - ocdtrekkie 12y ago
    This is, to me, the big one. The OHA is a huge agreement across an entire market segment not to compete with Google on a ton of products and services. There's no way Google gets out of an investigation with that practice intact.
    - exelius 12y ago
      I disagree, and a large reason of that is the open source nature of Android coupled with the fact that Google services don't cost end users anything in most cases. Also, Google's goal in this is to commoditize an adjacent market (mobile hardware) - which is as good for consumers as it is for Google. There was an argument for antitrust when Google was making hardware under Motorola, and my hunch is that Google divested Motorola when they realized the EU was investigating them. But without Motorola in the picture, it's an easy argument to make that if the EU wants to encourage a competitive handset market (Android) over a monolithic one (Apple), the core product feature set has to be centrally controlled. Too much fragmentation of the platform would lead to the emergence of a dominant vendor (likely Samsung) and actually decrease competition as their competitors will no longer be at sufficient scale to support a differentiated product in both hardware AND software.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
gggggggg 12y ago
Is it just me or does that memo read like it was meant to be leaked. To the point that it was not at all intended for internal.
- gtirloni 12y ago
  There is no such thing as an internal memo anymore. Especially on matters relevant to the public in general. It's a outdated practice of reporters to call it "leaked" but these days it's just to draw some attention. It was probably sent by their legal team themselves to send a message to the EU commission.
  - smackfu 12y ago
    Well, no such thing as an internal all-hands memo. Sending something to "everyone at Google" is basically the same as sending it in public.
sschueller 12y ago
Why is Apple not also in trouble? The way safari runs on iOS compared to other browser is very similar to how Microsoft shipped explorer with windows. Except windows did not prevent other browser from using the full API and your app didn't have to go through a approval process.
- thirdsun 12y ago
  Market share is the differentiator in both scenarios.
  - sschueller 12y ago
    So anti-competitive actions/feature/function is only a problem once you reach a certain market share?
    - grey-area 12y ago
      yep.
    - peterfirefly 12y ago
      Yes, in many jurisdictions that is the case.
    - matthewmacleod 12y ago
      Yes, of course. There's nothing wrong with refusing to interoperate with competitors. The market often works to take care of that to some extent. However, when you have one player which is manifestly more powerful than the competition, you don't have a fair market. The whole reason we have anti-trust legislation is the recognition that this isn't desirable, and that businesses with too much pressure can exert influence which is harmful to the market in the long term.
    - mobiplayer 12y ago
      Yes. Every regulation out there is (should be?) created to protect the weak from the powerful.
    - 12y ago
makeitsuckless 12y ago
Seems to me that Google suffers from the same cognitive dissonance that plagued Microsoft in the past: it still sees itself as the small innovative start-up, when in fact it has become the 800 pound gorilla that crushes the competition.
Sven7 12y ago
Increased competition? Seriously Google. The current count of European Search Engines in your own memo is 0.
- abalos 12y ago
  In Google's defense, they're also an American company. All of these companies are American companies. Thus, they're all competing in Europe.
- nostrebored 12y ago
  And is that a fault of Google or a terrible system for software innovation? Google was created while students in a very successful university collaborated with the means to actually make their vision a reality. Excluding GB, how many schools in the EU fit that bill? I can think of ETH Zurich and that's it.
  - Sven7 12y ago
    The caliber of the schools don't matter anymore. Nobody is capable of accumulating the quantities of data/processing power Google has access too. So search innovation more or less just lies in their hands and hasn't really gone anywhere beyond where they want it to go from lack of competition. Besides ofcourse in China and Russia where local alternatives have the breathing room to exist.
wongarsu 12y ago
>Mobile is changing everything — with the explosion of apps taking people directly to the information they want. Today 7 out of every 8 minutes on mobile devices is spent within apps. How is that any different from people using websites directly? I don't see any change here, except that now 1 out of 8 minutes is apparently spent away from content? >Apps that compete directly with Google such as [...] are easily available to Android users They forgot to mention how you are not allowed to distribute alternative app stores over Google Play and can only be installed after changing the phone settings.
- ocdtrekkie 12y ago
  Yup. Google on Search: "Mobile is changing everything... please ignore the fact that we control the mobile industry too."
AlexMuir 12y ago
Today 7 out of every 8 minutes on mobile devices is spent within apps. That's the most interesting thing here. I'm interpreting it as meaning only 1 out of 8 minutes is spent browsing the internet or using the native SMS app.
- kgrin 12y ago
  I kind of wonder if they're counting "Chrome" as an app, and the 8th minute is actually SMS + phone (quaint, I know). I'd believe it either way, to be sure.
wslh 12y ago
I applaud the EU not because I love regulations but because Google is tasting its own medicine. Any country or group of countries with a shared legislation can be seen as a platform. Yes, like the software platforms we are discussing here in HN. You must obey their rules. People who wants 100% market freedom forget that when companies like Google has an incredible market share THEY ARE THE MARKET, and they impose their own rules (imposing agreements, modifying and limiting APIs, etc) just like the EU is doing now. There is only one thing that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, nobody is innovating enough to really compete with Google in some important fronts such as search. This can't be solved with regulations.
pearjuice 12y ago
I don't understand how an entity can force Google to change their algorithms. They are a private company and with their own hard work they managed to get as many clients as they currently have. So because so many people are using Google as a search engine, they are now supposed to promote competitors of their services because "so many people are using it"? It's like saying "so many people are driving BMW, it's not fair for Audi, BMW should include an Audi advertisement now and then. If they don't, they will have to pay us a big fine!". Isn't Europe a free market?
WhitneyLand 12y ago
In the software space, how much tangible benefit has antitrust actually provided to consumers? Microsoft's power was reduced more by market shifts, failure to adapt, and unanticipated new tech than it was by monopoly sanctions. I do believe absolute free markets are not practical, as evidenced by the fact they mostly don't exist. However, the minimum force principle applies. For every government constraint on tech I thing it's fair to ask, is there no way the market can fix itself in 5 years? How many disruptive shifts will happen during that time? Maybe government could help more by starting first with stronger patent reform?
- blumkvist 12y ago
  Microsoft's power was reduced because of a huge anti trust suite. It was later won on appeal, but they got the cue.
skillsfirst 12y ago
Do no evil (which you may eventually get charged for)!
kbwt 12y ago
I don't think Google should be allowed to get away with clauses like this one from their developer agreement: 4.5 Non-Compete. You may not use the Market to distribute or make available any Product whose primary purpose is to facilitate the distribution of software applications and games for use on Android devices outside of the Market. See: https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_us/about/developer-distribution-agreement/archive.html https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_us/about/developer-distribu...
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  Why not? Apple also won't let you go around their store for content sales in apps.

90 points by virtuabhi 12y ago

If those graphs are supposed to show that Google Shopping is an unpopular also-ran that users don't like or use, you have to wonder why they keep putting it in a big box with pictures at the top of search listings, like http://imgur.com/N3aGIVy http://imgur.com/N3aGIVy

Oletros 12y ago
Perhaps to try to make it more popular?
- sasidharm 12y ago
  By stealing data from competitors?
  - Oletros 12y ago
    What data steals Google Shopping?
jacquesm 12y ago
According to Google in the early days 'paid inclusion' was one of the original sins, and Google would never stoop that low. I personally think that paid inclusion is actually less evil than promoting your own crap products over the legitimate listings.
- pliny 12y ago
  Isn't promoting your own crap just dogfooding paid inclusions?

vidarh 12y ago

It's fascinating that their memo dismisses their search position so easily, but focuses on graphs for shopping and travel that shows them in a weak position in those areas, as either the memo is hiding their real arguments (which might not be unreasonable - given its audience and the odds it would leak), or they have not thought this through. What the graphs show is that there are a number of strong competitors in the shopping space, which may create a strong public interest in ensuring Google is not being allowed to use it's perceived search monopoly position to muscle into the space and limit competition by giving itself better positions in results. If the EU Commission finds that Google has a sufficient near monopoly on search and that their practices with respect to expanding their reach in shopping is anti-competitive, then Google's current weak position in shopping is entirely irrelevant unless they're hoping to show that being given such a prominent position in their search results does not give a business any advantages (their ad sales people ought to start hyperventilating if Google makes that argument). And in fact the existence of a healthy, competitive eco-system in shopping would make any anti-competitive behaviour by a powerful monopolist far more damaging and important to curtail in the eyes of the EU Commission. It should not be something you'd want to draw attention to. A much better argument would be to highlight far more the breadth of niche search engines, and how e.g. searches on Amazon and Ebay and others should also be included in any assessment of search market share, and that this would show that Google's market power is not as great as it would seem if you only look at "general purpose" search engines.

Jugurtha 12y ago
Right on.. There are two points: 1. "Recode obtained an internal memo". If I were Google, I'd leak that on purpose. A polished internal memo that is leaked is more powerful than explicit PR, because of its supposed "internal" nature. "They didn't write it thinking others may read it, so it's probably honest and pure." 2. As I read, I thought exactly the same thing as your first paragraph: Search, making themselves look weak. I also remembered something Peter Thiel said in a PandoMonthly.. That non monopolistic companies try to look big and monopolistic, and that truly huge monopolistic companies downplay it to the point you worry about their survival. He gave the example of Google, of course, and did the exact same thing as in the internal memo (talked about the other markets and how competition is so fierce, nothing is granted). That was one of the best interviews I've seen, by the way..

blfr 12y ago

Those graphs are so sad. It's all American companies competing among themselves: Twitter, Bing, DuckDuckGo... Even on our home turf, even with natural advantage (not so much in search but definitely in shopping), local competition is at the bottom, far behind Amazon and Ebay. And this doesn't seem to worry anyone here. We continue to tack on more regulation, tax rules detrimental to small businesses in their complexity, and now surveillance that would make Obama blush[1]. Oh, but we will show these evil monopolists with this formal complaint. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9379299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9379299

crdoconnor 12y ago
>tax rules detrimental to small businesses It's quite a common schtick among big businesses (including the aforementioned monopolists) to blame the lack of small business competition on tax rules. The tax rules they refer to actually do nothing to small businesses, but they are usually detrimental to their own bottom line. This is how Google/Microsoft/Amazon ended up reaping such huge profits and paying such pathetically low taxes. It didn't happen by accident, and it also didn't help any small businesses along the way. Quite the opposite.
- davidw 12y ago
  As an American living in Italy, there really are more taxes and "death by a thousand cut" fees and rules here than in the US, from what I've seen. Everyone treats their Fords and Fiats well, but for smaller companies, it's all the red tape and small stuff that's most annoying, not even the overall tax level.
  - danieldk 12y ago
    As an American living in Italy, there really are more taxes and "death by a thousand cut" fees and rules here than in the US, from what I've seen. I like to pay a little more tax and actually have a decent healthcare system, social security net, and retirement. One of the problems is that many of the large US corporations legally avoid tax via one of the tax havens (including my country of origin, The Netherlands). It creates an uneven playing field. There is no reason why European companies couldn't compete. Taxes may be higher, but wages are lower, and costs may be significantly lower if you are in east Europe. I also don't completely agree with the sentiment that started this thread, there are also plenty of European startups/ex-startups doing well: Booking.com, Spotify, Rovio, Mojang (Swedish) was just bought by Microsoft for 2.5 billion, Skype was also a European before it was purchased by Microsoft.

acqq 12y ago

EU: "Google, you use your de facto search monopoly attempting to win new monopolies." Google: "But look, we still haven't destroyed all the competition. Why don't you please wait until we do?"

spacemanmatt 12y ago
Courts generally hear actual and not hypothetical controversies. If the competition can't yet show harm, there isn't a crime yet.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Courts generally hear actual and not hypothetical controversies. The relevant EU Commission is not a court, and this isn't an adversarial proceeding between Google and competitors, even for all that Google competitors lobbied the EU for action. > If the competition can't yet show harm, there isn't a crime yet. The issue here isn't crime, or something that competition has to show anything, and plenty of crimes do, in fact, exist when harm cannot be shown, anyway.
  - spacemanmatt 12y ago
    > The relevant EU Commission is not a court True, but the principle is a common one. And it is adversarial in that the Commission is prosecuting and Google is defending. This isn't a cooperative investigation. To the extent that courts do not try hypothetical controversies, they also depend on actual proof and not unproven harm. How do you suppose a company would be found guilty of about-to-violate-antitrust-laws?
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > True, but the principle is a common one. Its actually not as common as you might think; the principle in the US legal system that courts do not address hypothetical situations and issue advisory rulings distinguishes courts in the US system from courts in many non-US systems and many non-court adjudicative bodies (in the US and other systems.) > And it is adversarial in that the Commission is prosecuting and Google is defending Its more inquisitorial than adversarial, since there is not a separate prosecuting entity from the adjudicating entity, but the key point was that it wasn't between Google and its competitors, so its competition doesn't need to show anything, contrary to the suggestion made that the competition needs to show harm. > To the extent that courts do not try hypothetical controversies, they also depend on actual proof and not unproven harm. Only if the legal standard relevant to the controversy requires concrete harms. A prosecutor doesn't, for instance, have to show any harm when prosecuting attempted murder. > How do you suppose a company would be found guilty of about-to-violate-antitrust-laws? Antitrust laws very frequently prohibit conduct undertaken with the intent of monopolizing an industry, though the degree of actual harm is often relevant to the zeal with which antitrust authorities prosecute offenses, and the remedies imposed. Actual harm is often relevant in antitrust analysis, but may not be essential for a violation to occur -- just as the case for many other kinds of violations of law.

pja 12y ago

It ought to have been transparently obvious to Google execs from when Google became utterly dominant in the web search space that the risk of anti-trust violations was very high and if they wanted to avoid being censured they needed to consistently take the high road & avoid using that dominance to force entry into other fields at the expense of competitors. It has always looked to me that Google was consistently stepping over that line in search & advertising often enough that they were inviting anti-trust suits. The agreements they force phone vendors to sign up to if they want to ship Google Play services with Android phones also stink to high heaven & are an anti-trust suit waiting to explode in Google’s face - that self-imposed banana skin appears to be next on the EU commission’s agenda. Google can afford to pay any fine the EU is likely to impose of course. The greater cost may be in exec time & loss of face, plus the generalised malaise that seems to go along with losing an anti-trust suit.

IBM 12y ago
More than the fines is the ability to impose changes on their business practices. Imagine if Google could no longer require OEMs to bundle various Google products in order to get the Play store.
- ocdtrekkie 12y ago
  This is, to me, the big one. The OHA is a huge agreement across an entire market segment not to compete with Google on a ton of products and services. There's no way Google gets out of an investigation with that practice intact.
  - exelius 12y ago
    I disagree, and a large reason of that is the open source nature of Android coupled with the fact that Google services don't cost end users anything in most cases. Also, Google's goal in this is to commoditize an adjacent market (mobile hardware) - which is as good for consumers as it is for Google. There was an argument for antitrust when Google was making hardware under Motorola, and my hunch is that Google divested Motorola when they realized the EU was investigating them. But without Motorola in the picture, it's an easy argument to make that if the EU wants to encourage a competitive handset market (Android) over a monolithic one (Apple), the core product feature set has to be centrally controlled. Too much fragmentation of the platform would lead to the emergence of a dominant vendor (likely Samsung) and actually decrease competition as their competitors will no longer be at sufficient scale to support a differentiated product in both hardware AND software.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

gggggggg 12y ago

Is it just me or does that memo read like it was meant to be leaked. To the point that it was not at all intended for internal.

gtirloni 12y ago
There is no such thing as an internal memo anymore. Especially on matters relevant to the public in general. It's a outdated practice of reporters to call it "leaked" but these days it's just to draw some attention. It was probably sent by their legal team themselves to send a message to the EU commission.
- smackfu 12y ago
  Well, no such thing as an internal all-hands memo. Sending something to "everyone at Google" is basically the same as sending it in public.

sschueller 12y ago

Why is Apple not also in trouble? The way safari runs on iOS compared to other browser is very similar to how Microsoft shipped explorer with windows. Except windows did not prevent other browser from using the full API and your app didn't have to go through a approval process.

thirdsun 12y ago
Market share is the differentiator in both scenarios.
- sschueller 12y ago
  So anti-competitive actions/feature/function is only a problem once you reach a certain market share?
  - grey-area 12y ago
    yep.
  - peterfirefly 12y ago
    Yes, in many jurisdictions that is the case.
  - matthewmacleod 12y ago
    Yes, of course. There's nothing wrong with refusing to interoperate with competitors. The market often works to take care of that to some extent. However, when you have one player which is manifestly more powerful than the competition, you don't have a fair market. The whole reason we have anti-trust legislation is the recognition that this isn't desirable, and that businesses with too much pressure can exert influence which is harmful to the market in the long term.
  - mobiplayer 12y ago
    Yes. Every regulation out there is (should be?) created to protect the weak from the powerful.
  - 12y ago

makeitsuckless 12y ago

Seems to me that Google suffers from the same cognitive dissonance that plagued Microsoft in the past: it still sees itself as the small innovative start-up, when in fact it has become the 800 pound gorilla that crushes the competition.

Sven7 12y ago

Increased competition? Seriously Google. The current count of European Search Engines in your own memo is 0.

abalos 12y ago
In Google's defense, they're also an American company. All of these companies are American companies. Thus, they're all competing in Europe.
nostrebored 12y ago
And is that a fault of Google or a terrible system for software innovation? Google was created while students in a very successful university collaborated with the means to actually make their vision a reality. Excluding GB, how many schools in the EU fit that bill? I can think of ETH Zurich and that's it.
- Sven7 12y ago
  The caliber of the schools don't matter anymore. Nobody is capable of accumulating the quantities of data/processing power Google has access too. So search innovation more or less just lies in their hands and hasn't really gone anywhere beyond where they want it to go from lack of competition. Besides ofcourse in China and Russia where local alternatives have the breathing room to exist.

wongarsu 12y ago

>Mobile is changing everything — with the explosion of apps taking people directly to the information they want. Today 7 out of every 8 minutes on mobile devices is spent within apps. How is that any different from people using websites directly? I don't see any change here, except that now 1 out of 8 minutes is apparently spent away from content? >Apps that compete directly with Google such as [...] are easily available to Android users They forgot to mention how you are not allowed to distribute alternative app stores over Google Play and can only be installed after changing the phone settings.

ocdtrekkie 12y ago
Yup. Google on Search: "Mobile is changing everything... please ignore the fact that we control the mobile industry too."

AlexMuir 12y ago

Today 7 out of every 8 minutes on mobile devices is spent within apps. That's the most interesting thing here. I'm interpreting it as meaning only 1 out of 8 minutes is spent browsing the internet or using the native SMS app.

kgrin 12y ago
I kind of wonder if they're counting "Chrome" as an app, and the 8th minute is actually SMS + phone (quaint, I know). I'd believe it either way, to be sure.

wslh 12y ago

I applaud the EU not because I love regulations but because Google is tasting its own medicine. Any country or group of countries with a shared legislation can be seen as a platform. Yes, like the software platforms we are discussing here in HN. You must obey their rules. People who wants 100% market freedom forget that when companies like Google has an incredible market share THEY ARE THE MARKET, and they impose their own rules (imposing agreements, modifying and limiting APIs, etc) just like the EU is doing now. There is only one thing that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, nobody is innovating enough to really compete with Google in some important fronts such as search. This can't be solved with regulations.

pearjuice 12y ago

I don't understand how an entity can force Google to change their algorithms. They are a private company and with their own hard work they managed to get as many clients as they currently have. So because so many people are using Google as a search engine, they are now supposed to promote competitors of their services because "so many people are using it"? It's like saying "so many people are driving BMW, it's not fair for Audi, BMW should include an Audi advertisement now and then. If they don't, they will have to pay us a big fine!". Isn't Europe a free market?

WhitneyLand 12y ago

In the software space, how much tangible benefit has antitrust actually provided to consumers? Microsoft's power was reduced more by market shifts, failure to adapt, and unanticipated new tech than it was by monopoly sanctions. I do believe absolute free markets are not practical, as evidenced by the fact they mostly don't exist. However, the minimum force principle applies. For every government constraint on tech I thing it's fair to ask, is there no way the market can fix itself in 5 years? How many disruptive shifts will happen during that time? Maybe government could help more by starting first with stronger patent reform?

blumkvist 12y ago
Microsoft's power was reduced because of a huge anti trust suite. It was later won on appeal, but they got the cue.

skillsfirst 12y ago

Do no evil (which you may eventually get charged for)!

kbwt 12y ago

I don't think Google should be allowed to get away with clauses like this one from their developer agreement: 4.5 Non-Compete. You may not use the Market to distribute or make available any Product whose primary purpose is to facilitate the distribution of software applications and games for use on Android devices outside of the Market. See: https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_us/about/developer-distribution-agreement/archive.html https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_us/about/developer-distribu...

spacemanmatt 12y ago
Why not? Apple also won't let you go around their store for content sales in apps.