Give Google a COLD HARD SLAP - web rivals' plea to Euro watchdog The European Commission is under fresh pressure to stop Google from allegedly stifling rivals by favouring its own products in its search engine results. Almost a dozen web companies want Brussels to issue a Statement of Objections, which would be a first step in bringing charges against the advertising giant. In a joint …
They used to but not anymore.
However here is some nice stuff about Expedia:
http://connexionfrance.com/Expedia-Tripadvisor-Hotels-com-false-availability-damages-Synhorcat-Lefebvre-DGCCRF-13057-view-article.html
and here:
http://www.bighospitality.co.uk/Legislation/IHG-hotel-deals-with-Expedia-and-Booking.com-investigated-by-OFT
I suppose the MS DNA must be still there though.
"In addition to materially degrading the user experience and limiting consumer choice, Google’s search manipulation practices lay waste to entire classes of competitors in every sector where Google chooses to deploy them."
Isn't that what businesses are meant to do? To do better in the marketplace than their competitors.
You don't hear Asda complaining that Tesco don't adverstise/promote Asda's products, or that there's some problem with Tesco's advertising/promoting their own products at the expense of other brands.
What is it with the idiots who manager tech companies that they don't understand the word "compete"?
How does one get to be stupid enough to ask lawmakers to draft law to prevent your competitors doing things that are perfectly legal for every other business sector?
How does one get to be stupid enough to think you should have laws passed to cripple your competitors in your favour?
Google have that market share because people choose to use their services.
If you want to compete with them provide equal or better services than them.
Stop asking for the entire system to be bent so that you can stay in business.
@JamesC - Yes, you are forced to use Google, maybe not for search, but have you seen the amount of sites which advertise using Google or which use Google analytics?
Don't suggest I use Adblock, et al, I should not have to use third party software to prevent a company I don't want to deal with having my personal information.
"...have you seen the amount of sites which advertise using Google or which use Google analytics?"
" I should not have to use third party software to prevent a company I don't want to deal with having my personal information."
Your issue is with the site you are using and their choice to use a particular ad network. If the site has a "pay for no ads" option, then you should take it.
But, google analytics is supposedly not linked to their ad business, it's just an easy way for site owners to get metrics that just happens to give all your info to google.
Fact is having 90% of the european search market makes google legally a monopoly. In the EU it's illegal for them to use that to promote themselves in other areas. For example, type maps into Google and you'll see google maps at the top. That's them using their search monopoly to gain advantage in another area. Seems pretty clear cut to me.
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Choosing to live without the goo is something which rapidly leads to a restriction on things you didn't anticipate or expect... and it's part of an experiment I've been running just to see what happened...
Search fine, I get better results as it happens. Analytics - click, off, gone. Youtube - goodbye cat videos. maps - I can live with someone else's.
But it's the little things - For example this week I dropped the banhammer on google api's and couldn't renew my affiliation to my chosen political party. Stackexchange became an ex. Many sites just went dark.
I'm not complaining, I chose to block it but who would expect those sites to be supplying their surfing habits to google through the referrer headers etc? Not many, even of us commentards...
/Anon or google might get me! :)
Yeah. Two things...
1. Let's imagine for a moment that you have no idea what Google's competitors are called, you only know what the de facto monopolies are. You go to BT for phones, you go to Google for search. You might be happy with this, you might not be. But lots of people do this.
2. If you ask one of the de facto monopolies for information about a product or service, you are always pointed towards their own.
If BT did this, would it be anti-competitive? Would they be brought down a peg or two by the regulator?
If you think Google should be allowed to do this but BT can't, why do you think so?
Let's advance the argument a little more than 'Yeah, right, Asda and Tesco innit'.
Even that isn't an accurate analogy. Its more akin to phoning 118 118 (BT's directory enquiry service) and the first option is always BT broadband.
Its also about representation of Google's products. Shopping for example is a service similar to Ciao but is represented as being part of the search engine. This could be viewed as Google abusing its monopoly to take traffic away from competitors such as Kelkoo or it could equally be viewed as Google providing a better service.
Google is a monopoly. Yes, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo all exist; but at 90% use Google is a monopoly.
If Google are favouring their own offerings over others, then that is monopoly abuse and they should be punished. Heavily.
If Google are not favouring their own offerings, but their own offerings happen to be better than rivals' and thus linked to/quoted more which makes it appear higher in the results...well...that's just tough.
Personally I try to avoid using Google and any Google service as I view them like a metastasised cancer; little tendrils and nodes all over the 'Net doing goodness knows what and none of it good for you. I never even use "google" as a verb; one does not "google that", one "web searches". Google, like MS, are a monopoly and never to be trusted.
Go to Google.
Put in a town or city name or post code.
What comes up? A bunch of links and, more importantly, a Google map.
There may be other mapping services available, but who's going to look at those when they can just click on the first offering available?
*That* is a clear abuse of Google's power to stifle the competition.
Go to Bing.
Put in a town or city name or post code.
What comes up? A bunch of links and, more importantly, a Bing map.
There may be other mapping services available, but who's going to look at those when they can just click on the first offering available?
*That* is a clear abuse of Microsofts's power to stifle the competition.
Go to Apple.
Put in a town or city name or post code.
What comes up? A bunch of links and, more importantly, an Apple map.
There may be other mapping services available, but who's going to look at those when they can just click on the first offering available?
*That* is a clear abuse of Apple's...wait a minute...an Apple map?...nah...no one would be that stupid...?
Except that when it comes to search Microsoft is the Apple of the business desktop PC market and therefore not in a position to be ABLE to stifle competition. Besides which, there's a well known Google blog post where they determined Bing uses Google searches to confirm their results, and if Bing doesn't have one, substitutes Google's.
Not according to the European Commission, who boss has stated that they not be pursuing Google on charge of manipulating it search results to make them bias, as it an argument they know they will lose as soon as Google shows the judge all of it products that doesn't appear at the top when using the appropriate search term, for example email doesn't result in Gmail coming top. An probably detail history of how maps or any other products you wish state, that only got to the top in search once it became the most popular use product in the market, I am sure Google got the data to back that argument as well. lots of data.
If their products were either
1) Free
2) Any good
These 3 listed are a great example. Euro-Cities, Hot Maps and Streetmap. They exist purely as a means to push adverts, which is fine, but they do not provide the same level of user experience as Google's own version.
Looking at it objectively, and following Google's own guidelines AND as a searcher. I would not want these monkeys in my search results.
Who are Euro-Cities, Hot Maps and Streetmap? What do they do, do they even exist, how would they help me? Why should I now have to be forced to sit through some guff for something I do not want, with a name like Hot Mapps I guess that it is where stuff is most likely to get stolen, or have I got that wrong. If I am looking for a place in the UK why the $%^&*() do I want someone dealing in failed currency cities?
All users of any search engine sign up to be data-mined.
An awful lot of them choose to let Google do that instead of a different company because Google offer a search engine/interface that they prefer. Not to mention the additions that Google have added like a decent maps system that is integrated with the search engine they made their business providing. etc.
I disagree Dave, I think an awful lot of Google searches are performed by people who don't know that there are other ways to search the internet and haven't even given it a seconds thought. A very similar bunch of people to the people who just used to think the internet was IE. Maybe Google should be forced to put a map service choice screen in front of your first use of Google maps....
How did all them users who used to think IE was the Internet find themselves using Google then? IE defaulted to MSN.
Please stop suggesting Google only have market dominance because of user stupidity. Those users had to choose Google, it wasn't a default on the PC they brought.
Google userd to offer a good service. That's why they got traction, but like many companies they are now going for lock-in i.e. proprietary APIs etc. That's evil right there.
It's also an admission that they cannot compete on ability, and not competing on ability is fundamentally bad for the consumer and for the user.
@Dave Dowell: As far as Antitrust goes, it is of no concern how Google became a de-facto monopoly in the search market. If they are, as most people would agree (and certainly any non-hypocrites who consider Microsoft to have ever had a monopoly on desktop PCs should) and they take advantage of that monopoly position to force their way into other markets, then they're every bit as guilty as Microsoft were.
What'll be really interesting is to see how all those who've derided Microsoft business practices over the years react when Google are inevitably found guilty of exactly the same kind of tactics. Will they still worship at the altar of the chocolate factory then?
"Most of my clients either use Ask, MyWebSearch, HotBar, ReDirectYourSearch or StealMyClicks"
And as a pro, I guess you could tell your clients which one from that list takes its results directly from Google and which of the others uses Bing results. (scraped)
You could also tell us which of those 4 install various forms of addware and which ones could be (have been) classed as spyware in the past.
Ask? I've had spam on my blogs from Ask attempting to get cheesy back-links, this is no longer the year 2000, Ask, Excite, Alta Vista et al were fun, but they don't deserve to call themselves search engines in today's world.
They're all Spy/Adware.
I think the poster is simply having a dig at his clients as their machines being full of said software and they don't understand why that may be a problem. Given this and your previous post on this subject I can understand why you may not have seen this with your head stuck up your arse.
There is some confusion about the role of Google on the internet. Google is not a search engine it is, in fact, an advertising service, that is how it makes its money. There is a conflict of interest when an advertising service is also a retailer and an even greater conflict when it promotes its products above those of its advertisers. The Google advertising service gets its footfall by pretending to be a search engine. The European Commission should consider the behaviour of the monopoly advertising service called Google.
All search engines make money from footfall through their site being able to be mined to target advertising.
So you'll be wanting to dictate to all search engines that they must promote the services of their competitors before their own so that they're not taking advantage of the 'stupidity of' users' who will click the 1st hit.
I get fucked off listening to whiners who constantly whine on about how evil Google are for following proper business practice of doing their best to deliver the best they can to their users, and achieve the best turn over for their business.
As for 90% market share... that's quite an achievement for a company who have have that despite just about every single PC that has been sold in Europe (and the rest of the world) for the last decade, coming preinstalled with an operating system bundled with a web browser which defaulted to MSN/Bing.
You all might want to remember that next time you all come along and tell us about how Google got their market dominance by abusing their market position. They got it because the users you all think are stupid and incapable of deciding to use Google, choose to use Google.
The EU seem to be nothing more than a group of limp wristed pansies if you ask me. Any time someone gets on top they start pandering to less successful interests in order to justify their existence and your tax contributions.
If you want to play capitalism that's fine or you can go the socialism route and that's fine too, but doing a little if each is a big part of why EU member countries are sinking.
Again, the Nazi anti-capitalists of the EU Brussels Cartel want to hobble American Enterprise.
As I said about the Microsoft Browser fines, Google please grow a pair and tell the EU to F Off.
The Brussels Rule:
No company based in America may do business in the EU without being fined for being a Monopoly (having a better product). We will just fine the tar out of them since we cannot tax them.
No because according to what I see; everytime some EU panty waist politician doesn't get his "pound of flesh", Kow-Tow, genuflection, ring or ass kissing from an American company, the EU arbitrarily and capriciously "fine" (TAX) the American company for "anti-competitive behaviour" even though nothing of the kind EVER actually happened.
For the EU court, (just like the Nazi's) it seems that simple accusation is the same as incontrovertable proof.
In my experience, there are no end of accusers in the EU and this is how they compete against each other, the run to Nanny Union and whine.
I am overwhelmed by your skilful and cogent arguments. Such erudition in one so young and all deployed to provide a smokescreen for Google. Why does Google need a smokescreen? It is the "do no evil" monopoly so needs no more defence than the facts. That is the problem for Google, the facts speak for themselves and actions speak louder than words.
I would bet ten quid that the EU is about to issue a statement or even sign an agreement with that is roughly opposite of what Microsoft wants. These statements always magically appear in the media just be proceeding goes against Microsoft and it friends, one almost would think they have a spy or two working at the EC and the FTC.
Google is not a search engine it is, in fact, an advertising service, that is how it makes its money.
If that's true then for advertisers they offer a great search engine, probably the best on the net - and I hate advertisers, to the extent that I will flick TV over to bbc during ad breaks. And I've tried using other search engines (I used to love Alta Vista), Bing etc, and they're all pooh compared to Google (I'm not scared of clicking past the first few pages either).
To stop the paranoid fantasies of being stalked thru cyberspace I use Firefox with Adblock and noscript, but I realise the futility of not wanting governments to watch everything I do online - at least Google only do it to make money.
The FBI and CIA and MI6 suck donkey balls! Just a joke guys, you're doing a bang up job of keeping us citizens safe :-) (you know, from the paedo's, terrorists and pirates).
I set up a web site 9 years ago hosted on an Australian Based Server - the Google Rankings are very, very low - irrespective of the google domain used (eg .com, .com.au, .ca - and so on for the 30-odd google domains) or the location of the person performing the searches (I have asked various of my world-wide clientele to do specific checks every two-three months and their results pretty much tally with mine)
Early last year I set up a different web site with the exact same content and the exact-same server-software (!) but this time hosted on a US Based Server... the current Google rankings are very high - and in a significant number of cases higher than our competition!
Interestingly Google crawls the Australian-Based Server about three times more often than the US-Based Server
Conclusion: Google favours US-based Web Servers...
Now why isn't that sort of bias being investigated?
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