6 ms·

What Microsoft did was completely different: They coerced OEMs to not include Netscape Navigator or they wouldn't license Windows to them. They prevented users

by euyyn 12y ago

What Microsoft did was completely different: They coerced OEMs to not include Netscape Navigator or they wouldn't license Windows to them. They prevented users from uninstalling IE claiming technical reasons that were proven false. And the reason they did those things was, as proven from internal communications, to protect Windows' monopoly from the threat of portable Java applications delivered via Netscape Navigator, by asphyxiating Netscape to death.

probably_wrong 12y ago
For comparison, here's what Google did in Germany: After a law was passed requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for using "small sections of text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed from search results. Given how much of their traffic and online revenue comes from Google they all agreed, rendering the law moot. That strikes me as a very similar situation.
- Oletros 12y ago
  > After a law was passed requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for using "small sections of text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed from search results Source for that?
  - amatriain 12y ago
    It's been widely discussed http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-google/a-18030444 http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-google/a-18030444 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-sprngr-idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-spr... In the end german newspapers gave Google permission to use snippets of content without paying any royalties. They needed Google News traffic more than Google needed them. Which is the reason why spanish lawmakers made a similar law but with a mandatory royalties clause. Spanish newspapers cannot give an exemption to any company, under the law paying royalties for using snippets is mandatory regardless of the content owner wishes. This law is not currently being enforced, but the consequences are dramatic all the same: Google has shut down Google News Spain, and other content aggregators are under threat of being hit with fines at any moment. And that's why I'm not currently allowing feedbunch.com users to subscribe to RSS feeds from spanish newspaper publishers, until the situation changes. Anti-monopoly legislation is fine, but sometimes it can be a hammer that the big players use to hit each other instead of a tool to help new players get in the market.
    - Oletros 12y ago
      Yes, I know that the law was passed. What I asked for was about the claim about the ultimatum Google offered to publishers
      - amatriain 12y ago
        This is the best link I've found with a quick search http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-cave-grant-google-free-permission-use-snippets-search-results/ http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-c...
        Oletros 12y ago
        But is still the same, this link doesn't talk about Google given any ultimatum to publishers.
        amatriain 12y ago
        Germany passed a law intending to make Google pay for using news snippets. Google simply stopped including snippets from german newspapers. German newspapers reluctantly gave an exemption to Google so that it would publish snippets from their websites again. What more evidence do you need? Perhaps only a letter written in blood and signed "give us an exemption or else" accompanied with a horse head would convince you about Google's negotiation tactics here?
        Oletros 12y ago
        > What more evidence do you need? What evidence? An evidence that it is not a law that forbids putting snippets,. The ones doping ultimatum were the German government and the publishers > Perhaps only a letter written in blood and signed "give us an exemption or else" accompanied with a horse head would convince you about Google's negotiation tactics here? Perhaps not the bend of reality that you're doing I suppose that you also think that in the Spanish case the one doing an ultimatum is also google.
  - probably_wrong 12y ago
    I wrote a similar comment once[1], check those that replied to me. Also, here's an article from Reuters[2] with some details. I'm on mobile, so sorry I can't provide better sources. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8667309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8667309 [2] http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105?irpc=932 http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105?irpc...
    - Oletros 12y ago
      Those links doesn't support your claim about "Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed from search results" What Google did was what the law required. And, by the way, nothing of royalty-free access to all of the content
      - probably_wrong 12y ago
        Here's an extract from the German Wikipedia: "Before the [law] came into force on 1 August 2013, Google Germany had written to the press publishers in June 2013. They should tell Google whether they waive all rights under the law on Google News and grant [it] free license. Otherwise, their content would no longer be listed from 1 August in Google News" [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht_f%C3%BCr_Presseverleger https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht_f%C3%BCr_...
        Oletros 12y ago
        From your quote: > "they waive all rights under the law" Really, stop, what you're linking is what the German law says, there is no ultimatum from Google. Google asked the publishers if they will give the right to publish the snippets without paying or not, nothing less, nothing more. Just what the German law was
        Dylan16807 12y ago
        What exactly are you objecting to here? "Either you do X or we shut down Y" is an ultimatum. Are you confusing ultimatims with blackmail? It doesn't have to be phrased as a demand. As a friendly opportunity it's still an ultimatum.
- yohui 12y ago
  Google News shows headlines and small snippets, but if users are interested in a story, they have to go to the newspaper to read it. It's to the newspapers' own benefit. Google doesn't make money from News directly (no advertising). What German publisher Axel Springer tried to legislate was the equivalent of forcing Google to pay for sending them traffic: have your cake and get paid to eat it, too.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Given how much of their traffic and online revenue comes from Google they all agreed, rendering the law moot. I think "revealing the law was based on a false premise" would be more accurate than "rendering the law moot". The premise of the law was that by showing snippets, Google was taking something away from the newspapers. If that were true, Google's "give us what we were 'taking' for free or we'll stop taking it" deal would have been rejected out of hand. The fact is, Google was providing the newspapers a valuable service by showing the snippets, which is why, given the choice between Google not doing so at all and Google doing so without paying anything, they chose the latter.
  - azakai 12y ago
    But the value of that service is because of Google's monopoly position in search in Germany (where its market share is in the 90's last I heard; much higher than in the US). In other words, the newspapers have no choice but to take whatever terms Google offers them. That's a very bad state of competition in the search market. A search monopoly in Germany gives Google a huge amount of power over not only search but other industries, even the news media.
    - shakethemonkey 12y ago
      You either have snippet-royalties or you have viable and useful search engines that operate without a paywall. They are mutually exclusive. If royalty negotiations were required for all content before a snippet could be used, either the search engine will index only a few major players (only the head of the long tail), or the cost of obtaining agreements would exceed any potential revenues. It's not because of a monopoly player in the market, the dysfunction applies to all potential search engines. And the minor players in such a regime would be even at a greater disadvantage, lacking the resources to come to arrangements. Be careful what you wish for.
- dntrkv 12y ago
  In my opinion that's a totally valid response. What was Google's other option? Pay to index their websites? That's ridiculous. Now if Google asked them to pay or else they wouldn't be indexed, that would be a different story.
  - babuskov 12y ago
    Now if all sites in the world would join up and ask all the search engines to pay them for indexing, that would be really interesting. Never going to happen though.
ethbro 12y ago
I'm of the opinion that even if you don't think Google has been evil with Google Apps / Android licensing so far, there's ample legal room for them to do so. For example, having prevented anyone from developing high quality mapping alternatives by freely (with license agreement) offering Google Maps to OEMs, they decide that in order to install Maps on Android your device must now do the following: - include additional tracking information and report same to Google - include a facility to prevent the user from uninstalling or disabling this tracking functionality ... if you do not agree to this then, we're sorry, you'll have to find another mapping provider. Or ship a mobile device without a mapping solution. Have they deliberately distorted the market in a way that's beneficial for them in the long term by destroying competition? You'd better bet your ass. They've just done it more insidiously than 90s Microsoft. After all, how evil can something that's given away freely (as in beer) be?
- Oletros 12y ago
  > having prevented anyone from developing high quality mapping alternatives by freely (with license agreement) offering Google Maps to OEMs, Do you have any proof of this? > - include additional tracking information and report same to Google > - include a facility to prevent the user from uninstalling or disabling this tracking functionality Any source for this?
  - ethbro 12y ago
    I believe you missed the legal hypothetical wording of my post. Although your first question doesn't really need an answer as I'd expect it to be self-evident. E.g. this Google blog post on the matter: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-free-antitrust-issue.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-free-antit... "It is true that if a company has a dominant product, it may run afoul of antitrust laws if it "ties" that product to another -- for instance, by requiring customers who buy that product to buy another product as well. When a company provides products for free on a stand-alone basis, however, it's not requiring anyone to buy anything. It may take business away from other companies trying to charge users for similar products, but that's hardly an antitrust issue." Which is to say they (surprise!) concluded in 2009 that there can't be anti-trust concerns because anti-trust laws don't cover free products, and Google is giving the things in question away for free. Which to me is a clever way of saying "anti-trust laws weren't designed in a digital age where the per-unit production costs of a product (ex-development and up-front costs) can feasibly be zero".
jasonlotito 12y ago
> What Microsoft did was completely different: FTA: "The report lodged several complaints against Google, such as its practice of displaying content from sites such as Yelp and Amazon on its own competing services. “When competitors asked Google to stop taking their content, it threatened to remove them from its search engine,” That doesn't sound completely different.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  They did the same thing with Google News, too.
- euyyn 12y ago
  Notice that what I was responding to is not what you said: > Microsoft said the same back in the day. And it is true - in the immediate term, consumers benefit from a single vendor integrating all their products and limiting competition. Microsoft's actions that lead to its conviction did not benefit consumers in the immediate term. It hurt consumers both immediately and in the long term. And their intention was, as proven in court, to harm competition in the OS market; not to integrate stuff for a better user experience.

by euyyn 12y ago

probably_wrong 12y ago

For comparison, here's what Google did in Germany: After a law was passed requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for using "small sections of text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed from search results. Given how much of their traffic and online revenue comes from Google they all agreed, rendering the law moot. That strikes me as a very similar situation.

Oletros 12y ago
> After a law was passed requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for using "small sections of text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed from search results Source for that?
- amatriain 12y ago
  It's been widely discussed http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-google/a-18030444 http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-google/a-18030444 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-sprngr-idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-spr... In the end german newspapers gave Google permission to use snippets of content without paying any royalties. They needed Google News traffic more than Google needed them. Which is the reason why spanish lawmakers made a similar law but with a mandatory royalties clause. Spanish newspapers cannot give an exemption to any company, under the law paying royalties for using snippets is mandatory regardless of the content owner wishes. This law is not currently being enforced, but the consequences are dramatic all the same: Google has shut down Google News Spain, and other content aggregators are under threat of being hit with fines at any moment. And that's why I'm not currently allowing feedbunch.com users to subscribe to RSS feeds from spanish newspaper publishers, until the situation changes. Anti-monopoly legislation is fine, but sometimes it can be a hammer that the big players use to hit each other instead of a tool to help new players get in the market.
  - Oletros 12y ago
    Yes, I know that the law was passed. What I asked for was about the claim about the ultimatum Google offered to publishers
    - amatriain 12y ago
      This is the best link I've found with a quick search http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-cave-grant-google-free-permission-use-snippets-search-results/ http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-c...
      - Oletros 12y ago
        But is still the same, this link doesn't talk about Google given any ultimatum to publishers.
        amatriain 12y ago
        Germany passed a law intending to make Google pay for using news snippets. Google simply stopped including snippets from german newspapers. German newspapers reluctantly gave an exemption to Google so that it would publish snippets from their websites again. What more evidence do you need? Perhaps only a letter written in blood and signed "give us an exemption or else" accompanied with a horse head would convince you about Google's negotiation tactics here?
        Oletros 12y ago
        > What more evidence do you need? What evidence? An evidence that it is not a law that forbids putting snippets,. The ones doping ultimatum were the German government and the publishers > Perhaps only a letter written in blood and signed "give us an exemption or else" accompanied with a horse head would convince you about Google's negotiation tactics here? Perhaps not the bend of reality that you're doing I suppose that you also think that in the Spanish case the one doing an ultimatum is also google.
- probably_wrong 12y ago
  I wrote a similar comment once[1], check those that replied to me. Also, here's an article from Reuters[2] with some details. I'm on mobile, so sorry I can't provide better sources. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8667309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8667309 [2] http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105?irpc=932 http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105?irpc...
  - Oletros 12y ago
    Those links doesn't support your claim about "Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed from search results" What Google did was what the law required. And, by the way, nothing of royalty-free access to all of the content
    - probably_wrong 12y ago
      Here's an extract from the German Wikipedia: "Before the [law] came into force on 1 August 2013, Google Germany had written to the press publishers in June 2013. They should tell Google whether they waive all rights under the law on Google News and grant [it] free license. Otherwise, their content would no longer be listed from 1 August in Google News" [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht_f%C3%BCr_Presseverleger https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht_f%C3%BCr_...
      - Oletros 12y ago
        From your quote: > "they waive all rights under the law" Really, stop, what you're linking is what the German law says, there is no ultimatum from Google. Google asked the publishers if they will give the right to publish the snippets without paying or not, nothing less, nothing more. Just what the German law was
        Dylan16807 12y ago
        What exactly are you objecting to here? "Either you do X or we shut down Y" is an ultimatum. Are you confusing ultimatims with blackmail? It doesn't have to be phrased as a demand. As a friendly opportunity it's still an ultimatum.
yohui 12y ago
Google News shows headlines and small snippets, but if users are interested in a story, they have to go to the newspaper to read it. It's to the newspapers' own benefit. Google doesn't make money from News directly (no advertising). What German publisher Axel Springer tried to legislate was the equivalent of forcing Google to pay for sending them traffic: have your cake and get paid to eat it, too.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Given how much of their traffic and online revenue comes from Google they all agreed, rendering the law moot. I think "revealing the law was based on a false premise" would be more accurate than "rendering the law moot". The premise of the law was that by showing snippets, Google was taking something away from the newspapers. If that were true, Google's "give us what we were 'taking' for free or we'll stop taking it" deal would have been rejected out of hand. The fact is, Google was providing the newspapers a valuable service by showing the snippets, which is why, given the choice between Google not doing so at all and Google doing so without paying anything, they chose the latter.
- azakai 12y ago
  But the value of that service is because of Google's monopoly position in search in Germany (where its market share is in the 90's last I heard; much higher than in the US). In other words, the newspapers have no choice but to take whatever terms Google offers them. That's a very bad state of competition in the search market. A search monopoly in Germany gives Google a huge amount of power over not only search but other industries, even the news media.
  - shakethemonkey 12y ago
    You either have snippet-royalties or you have viable and useful search engines that operate without a paywall. They are mutually exclusive. If royalty negotiations were required for all content before a snippet could be used, either the search engine will index only a few major players (only the head of the long tail), or the cost of obtaining agreements would exceed any potential revenues. It's not because of a monopoly player in the market, the dysfunction applies to all potential search engines. And the minor players in such a regime would be even at a greater disadvantage, lacking the resources to come to arrangements. Be careful what you wish for.
dntrkv 12y ago
In my opinion that's a totally valid response. What was Google's other option? Pay to index their websites? That's ridiculous. Now if Google asked them to pay or else they wouldn't be indexed, that would be a different story.
- babuskov 12y ago
  Now if all sites in the world would join up and ask all the search engines to pay them for indexing, that would be really interesting. Never going to happen though.

ethbro 12y ago

I'm of the opinion that even if you don't think Google has been evil with Google Apps / Android licensing so far, there's ample legal room for them to do so. For example, having prevented anyone from developing high quality mapping alternatives by freely (with license agreement) offering Google Maps to OEMs, they decide that in order to install Maps on Android your device must now do the following: - include additional tracking information and report same to Google - include a facility to prevent the user from uninstalling or disabling this tracking functionality ... if you do not agree to this then, we're sorry, you'll have to find another mapping provider. Or ship a mobile device without a mapping solution. Have they deliberately distorted the market in a way that's beneficial for them in the long term by destroying competition? You'd better bet your ass. They've just done it more insidiously than 90s Microsoft. After all, how evil can something that's given away freely (as in beer) be?

Oletros 12y ago
> having prevented anyone from developing high quality mapping alternatives by freely (with license agreement) offering Google Maps to OEMs, Do you have any proof of this? > - include additional tracking information and report same to Google > - include a facility to prevent the user from uninstalling or disabling this tracking functionality Any source for this?
- ethbro 12y ago
  I believe you missed the legal hypothetical wording of my post. Although your first question doesn't really need an answer as I'd expect it to be self-evident. E.g. this Google blog post on the matter: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-free-antitrust-issue.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-free-antit... "It is true that if a company has a dominant product, it may run afoul of antitrust laws if it "ties" that product to another -- for instance, by requiring customers who buy that product to buy another product as well. When a company provides products for free on a stand-alone basis, however, it's not requiring anyone to buy anything. It may take business away from other companies trying to charge users for similar products, but that's hardly an antitrust issue." Which is to say they (surprise!) concluded in 2009 that there can't be anti-trust concerns because anti-trust laws don't cover free products, and Google is giving the things in question away for free. Which to me is a clever way of saying "anti-trust laws weren't designed in a digital age where the per-unit production costs of a product (ex-development and up-front costs) can feasibly be zero".

jasonlotito 12y ago

> What Microsoft did was completely different: FTA: "The report lodged several complaints against Google, such as its practice of displaying content from sites such as Yelp and Amazon on its own competing services. “When competitors asked Google to stop taking their content, it threatened to remove them from its search engine,” That doesn't sound completely different.

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
They did the same thing with Google News, too.
euyyn 12y ago
Notice that what I was responding to is not what you said: > Microsoft said the same back in the day. And it is true - in the immediate term, consumers benefit from a single vendor integrating all their products and limiting competition. Microsoft's actions that lead to its conviction did not benefit consumers in the immediate term. It hurt consumers both immediately and in the long term. And their intention was, as proven in court, to harm competition in the OS market; not to integrate stuff for a better user experience.