French search engine seeks multi-million euro damages from Google A French search engine is demanding damages of €295m from Google, in a legal spat over Mountain View's dominance of the market. 1plusV, a local rival to Google in France, alleged that Mountain View's command of the search engine biz had blocked the development of services offered by competitors in the country. The French …
If someone comes into MY store and ask for a product I offer, I'm going to show them MY wares first. If businesses were run by telling people to go elsewhere, we'd have a great big mess of random CRAP. In EVERY sector. A hot chick hits on you, are you going to start talking about how great your mates are?
Who much more crap they are may be an issue, but it has to be said that monopolies are bad and Google is close to being one.
Monopolies always work to maintain their position. This is rarely beneficial to their customers or society in general. Monopolies exploit their position to inflate their profits at everyone else's expense. Monopolies lock out innovation if its not in their own interests. Monopolies use unfair practices to stomp on smaller competitors. That is why authorities will, usually, act to disable monopolies and everyone does their best to avoid looking like one.
If 1plusV can show that Google is acting like a monopoly, regardless of how good their alternative service is in comparison, then it is bad news for Google, but probably good news for everyone else. And if they can't prove they're a monopoly, then that's good news too.
It's all win as far as I can see.
just *are* natural monopolies, eg: water supply, postal services, and (arguably) betting exchanges. In such cases, competition is merely wasteful. Maybe search is like that and Google is just guilty of having seized a critical mass of the search market before anybody else, mainly by doing a better job. Do 'the public' want inferior search services just so that somebody they have never heard of can be handed some of that business?
Hi.
Have any of these vertical search engines ever done anything worthwhile? Most of the time they just seem to present a variation of results that Google has already presented that just leads to user frustration and research going around in circles.
They seem to thrive on drawing traffic by claiming relevant content, only to present a page "no results for <whatever>".
Frankly, some of the time, I think some of their webmasters do not deserve oxygen.
Regards, Iain.
If \vertical search engine" means that I ask Google to show me pages about Samsung Galaxy Tab and one of the high ranked results is something like "Le aggregate of les other web pages about Samsung Galaxy Tab", then I personally am delighted for the constructor of le aggregate to be removed from the Google result. Google is supposed to show me meaningful material and that isn't meaningful material, it is taking up space where meaningful material should be.
If it's about le aggregate page builders being either not allowed to sell advertising space on their page to Google Ads, or not allowed to buy paid placement on Google's own results page, I'm a bit less sure, although I don't want to see 'em there when I've chosen Google search instead of their search.
From http://www.ejustice.fr/result.php?theme=presse
"French company 1plusV developed VSearch, a technology which links a traditional research algorithm with the knowledge of independent experts in each sector. This hybridisation of “man and machine” increases significantly the relevance of the search results. With the use of this technology, a series of vertical search engines have been created. These include Ejustice.fr in the field of French law, Eguides.fr in the field of Business to Consumer and Business to Business Themes (Automobile, Finance, Gastronomy, Home,…) and Culture (Press, Books, Cinema,…) or E-Musicpro.com dedicated to the field of music. 1plusV’s actions are entirely self-financed."
Based in Versailles and described as "local", presumably meaning French interest only, so the notion that it may -not- be a load of rubbish doesn't interest me greatly - does anyone do what they do in English?
As microsoft suing Google because it is better known than bing.
We could all be binging, or yahooing ...or even asking Jeeves. The fact, unfortunate for some, is that, Google got its market by being the best.
We choose to use them. Even if they are /just a little bit/ evil!
So let me get this right, i am assuming 1plusV wants to take googles search results, strip away the google ads and put there own ads around it? and then moan when their sites are black listed by google?
There is no legal right to be included in google's search results, just as if you have a product for sale there is no legal right that the shops have to stock it. Google spends millions on server farms, staff and technology to try and make their services the best yet some French idiots who can't make a viable business now want to sue?
The scary thing is that with the French courts they will probably win the case, as the French courts always seem to find on the sides of French businesses in these type of cases.
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