Report: Google back in Europe's crosshairs over web domination claims Regulators in Europe are about to rewrite a settlement with Google and expand their anti-competition probe into the web giant, it's claimed. The company was already under the microscope for allegedly screwing over its rivals in web search results. The Wall Street Journal cited the proverbial "person with knowledge" in …
Seems like every few months, it is announced that Almunia, under pressure, will reexamine once more the complaints of the competitors. As if there was anything new to the debate. So far, he's always decided to go ahead, though. It's impressive he's still willing to fight for this settlement, considering the quantity of people, regulators and politicians, who dream of sticking it to the Google.
It's the sort of thing that when I hear from people at this sort of position, and the phrase 'it's on my desk for review' is uttered, I hear the 'and I'll be accepting various offers for my opinion' even when it's not said out loud.
Perhaps this guy leaving is waiting to find out who's offering the best job after he leaves this post.
By all means, tie up Google and bring it down to the mediocre level of Yahoo! and Bing. That way all can suffer equally poor search results rather than being compelled to choose a provider. The obvious solution is to compel all DNS providers (at least in Europe) to randomly return an IP address for yahoo, bing, or google when the target is "google".
This is skulduggery. Microsoft puppet groups will whine that people choose Google because it is good. Their own training materials and court documents show this. Google needs to be regulated to the point that it is not so good that it is everyone's first choice.
What if oatmeal vendors could get food regulators to ban bacon, or at least make it bitter? Bacon would then be less popular and oatmeal sales would soar. And pancakes.
This is not regulation for the benefit of the breakfaster. It is a war on bacon.
I can understand why people who are not capable of creating a product that the world takes to like geese to my fucking sandwiches when I'm in the park are a bit annoyed at the success. But it's not something that needs to be regulated. Google are the market leader in online advertising and search and trying to knobble them with a swift iron bar round the knee isn't going to stop their run away worldwide success.
What it might do, eventually, is make the European market unprofitable for Google, when that happens who are we going to be left with? I certainly want to keep using YouTube and Chrome, so just let them get on with things. If they take over the world, great, the new world order would do better if it was run by new money rather than old anyway.
Should put some political/economic students on this to observe this stuff. What's going on here is raw political techtonics. For the first time in ages new territory, with significant power, is breaching the surface and The Powers are all jostling to a) grok b) control this new thing.
I mean, at the bottom of all of this, it's just someone's website, containing their opinions of stuff (in the context in which this particular squabble is taking place). And world governments are fighting over that. That's pretty f**king nuts :) Would our past selves have believed this if we'd told them? :)
Looking at the moves on the board as this one plays out will tell us a lot about how many players there are and what their basic strategies are when moving into unconquered terrain. This will be of use to anyone in future who wishes to be the next Google, or wants to avoid being the next Google.
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