Let's vote on breaking up Google, say MEPs with NO power to do any such thing On Thursday this week, the European Parliament will vote on whether to break up ad and internet giants such as Google ... even though it has no real power to do so. The so-called Resolution on the Digital Single Market, proposed by German MEP Andreas Schwab and his Spanish colleague Ramon Tremosa, seeks to unbundle search …
"“The increased politicisation of the Google competition investigation is deeply troubling," said Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) an international not-for-profit body dedicated to "enhancing society’s access to information and communications"
Whose members just so happen to contain all three of the major search engine companies.
https://www.ccianet.org/about/members/
This post has been deleted by its author
1) Come up with new search engine brand. Something like 'Euoorle' (pronounced like Google) or 'Findo' ('I find' in Latin).
2) Visit the MEPs with this new european alternative. Argue that europeans need protection from Google by having access to (1)
3) Get them to write a fat cheque
4) Build a search engine with some of the money
5) Trouser the rest.
Anyone else care to join my brave new venture?
The thing is, we've been here before, nearly 15 years ago, when it was decided that by bundling their internet browser with their OS, Microsoft had become a monopoly and were engaging in practices contrary to competition law.
Even now, nearly a decade and a half later, there are many who are all to quick to remind us of how Microsoft took such a massive fall - many of whom are now championing Google.
So not only is the idea of a giant corporation having such access to individuals' data and almost unilateral control of the web a concern to many, but there is also a legal precedent for dealing with a case in which a company in the IT sphere has reached a position where they can effectively prevent any competitors from challenging them.
<quote>The thing is, we've been here before, nearly 15 years ago, when it was decided that by bundling their internet browser with their OS, Microsoft had become a monopoly and were engaging in practices contrary to competition law.</quote>
There lies the rub........there ARE choices. One does not HAVE to type http://google.com into the address bar and press return. With MS, there was no alternative installed. To hit the web you used what you had, which was IE.
"One does not HAVE to type http://google.com into the address bar and press return. With MS, there was no alternative installed."
Key word - "installed". Back in the browser wars era, even with IE bundled, I could have searched for and installed Firefox or Opera.
Similarly, if I were to install Chrome right now, I could type "http://www.duckduckgo.com" into the address bar and search from there. However, if I enter something that isn't a web address, it goes through Google's search.
There were browser choices then, and there are search engine choices now. What there is very little choice in, however, is what happens when you are on the web - and this is the crux of the problem. Regardless of what search engine you use to get there, the chances are that the site you're visiting will have Google analytics and tracking. So regardless of what search engine I've chosen to use, the chances are that Google have data about me.
Hell, the entire SEO industry is founded on the principle of trying to second-guess how Google wants your web page to behave and jumping when they tell you to. I don't hear any talk of Duck Duck Go analytics or rankings...
So - coming back to the idea of choice: there were other browsers available, but because Microsoft had bundled IE with Windows, and so the average Joe didn't bother looking any further. In other words, the reason the issue came about was awareness. Now consider searching the internet for something... except we don't search for it any more, do we? We Google it. Yes, just like "Hoover" for example, "Google" is now part of common parlance as an adjective. So people don't learn about choice, they learn about Google, just like when Windows told them to use Internet Explorer (conveniently bundled) whenever they wanted to get online back in the day.
And so we reach the present: Google has managed to get such a stranglehold on the web that major players are forced to bow to their will, or suffer loss of ranking. Other search engine choices get little publicity (or are tainted by their parent company's past), and even if we do use another search engine, unless we go out of our way to avoid it, our data is Google's property if we want to do anything on the web.
This post has been deleted by its author
Downvoted for cause:
1. Back in the browser wars Microsoft also worked to ensure that other vendors' products did not work as well as the installed default, and made it clear (whether true or not) that removing IE would damage the OS.
2. I have just installed duck duck go as my default-from-the-omnibox search engine. It took about 5 minutes and no special knowledge of Chrome.
Customize and Control Chromium -> Settings -> Search -> Manage Search Engines, and fill out the empty line at the bottom. The hardest part was getting the URL right. It is "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s"
3. Google is presently at the top because it is demonstrably the best, on average, of the leading general purpose search engines. And that has been so long enough that we use "google" as an active verb much as we often use "kleenex" and "hoover" to refer to tissues and vacuum cleaners. In the meantime those who have been unable to compete seek rents from governments.
Microsoft actively tries to get your to use bing. If you don't do anything you get bing.
Most people actively choose Google if they use IE (there are 141 search providers listed in my copy of IE 11), or they download Chrome or Firefox.
With the Microsoft Windows / IE thing they forced Microsoft to offer an easy choice so people could use Firefox if they didn't want IE. Google is not the same thing at all, people chose to use Google, if you make it easier to pick your search provider even more will pick Google.
I think if I were Google I'd be tempted to put a few strategically placed "deny from" statements in my Apache config files. The corresponding 403 error page would say something suitably acerbic, maybe:
"Here at Google we have started employing the same fine discernment in choosing our users as in selecting our results. Sadly you did not make the cut. Please download a copy of webferret circa 1998 which we're sure will suit your requirements just fine."
Gravy.
Google hasn't filled their train with enough of it.
To an even larger extent than nationally elected politicians the sole reasons for the existence of the European parliament are the aggrandisement and enrichment of its (tenuously) elected representatives.
Whatever the merits or otherwise of Google's position (and I do think it's in a position of undue dominance on the wholesale advertising side, though I don't know what could be done that would work) the European Parliament just want a bung.
Self serving, self centred bunch of trough burrowing fat cats.
They bring nothing too the table and yet cost this great nation dearly.
With such a wide economic margin between the have and have-not nations now members of the EC; this is the single greatest cause of unprecedented economic migration which is causing the EC to unravel. I agree with the free movement of the populous based on an EC of "peers". But when you allow less developed nations to join guess what you get "a stampede" for the good life regardless of "state benefits"
Those that presided over the entry of those new nations singularly failed to effectively test their Govt and Macro economic credentials and are therefore to blame for what must surely be the end of the great EC experiment.
Needless to say those that created this nightmare are long since gone having made their €€ millions from the trough and are safely living outside of the EC. feckers.......
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
