'Google is present at almost all levels of the supply chain' for online ads: It's time for a competition probe, says EU The European Commission (EC) reckons it's zeroing in on long-running concerns that Google may have an unfair advantage when it comes to online advertising. The commission today opened a formal antitrust investigation to figure out if Google has "violated EU competition rules… to the detriment of competing providers of …
Internet advertising is a bit like selling an anti-elephant candle. You light this in your suburban home and voila!, no elephants. Sure, there are plenty of people who don't have one and don't seem to be plagued by them but they're running an awful risk. Realistically, its an expression of faith, a self-supporting pyramid of believers who suck advertising revenue because they are all True Believers, the sort that daren't even consider the possibility that their entire industry is a waste of resources.
I think that most of us would agree that the entire Internet advertising ecosystem is an infernal nuisance -- and that's being nice about it. It covers our web pages with crap, sucks the life out of our computers and provides ample opportunity for malware purveyors, all on the off chance that we might buy something that is vaguely related to a search we might have done a while back. Its not even real advertising -- actually finding a particular product to buy is often a nightmare of irrelevant search results from vendors of unknown or dubious provenance. Its why Jeff Bezos is rolling in it, it is not his fault that Amazon is one of only a handful of reliable vendors that can usually suggest products that you might use and then reliably deliver them.
I'd guess the reason for going after Google is the same reason people used to rob banks - its where the money is. Its so much easier to shake them down for a hundred million or two Euro than come up with a reliable and fair taxation scheme. There's plenty of others that want a piece of Google's business as well -- why spend big on R&D and facilities when you can get a court to effectively hand over a chunk.
"I'd guess the reason for going after Google is the same reason people used to rob banks - its where the money is. Its so much easier to shake them down for a hundred million or two Euro than come up with a reliable and fair taxation scheme. There's plenty of others that want a piece of Google's business as well -- why spend big on R&D and facilities when you can get a court to effectively hand over a chunk."
Or maybe, just maybe, Google, even with their army of lawyers advising them, are not staying within the rules in every jurisdiction and need to be slapped down. I doubt any fines which may be imposed will be anything more than a token compared to Googles war chest and daily income and I can guarantee none of the fines will go to any competitors R&D departments. Even to the smallest economies in the EU, a few 100 million credit units is a drop in the ocean, so it's not even enough to be called a "tax grab".
Stuff would still get sold, but not the same. An online clothes store like Zappos or Zalando could hardly start existing without advertising — how would you even know they exist? People would essentially keep buying at the same stores over and over, because they wouldn't know the alternatives, and wouldn't bother to look for any. Without advertising, the incumbents have a strong advantage over any newcomer trying to start in the business... Meaning there would be a lot less competition, and that's not generally a good thing for consumers.
One imagines that without Google.advertising stuff would still be getting sold.
FTFY
It should still be possible to advertise (online) without paying Google. Google are merely using the fact that they dominate the market and thus are used by thousands of European businesses as the rationale as to why they are essential and thus should be left alone to continue to build their monopoly...
"Google is distorting competition by restricting access by third parties to user data for advertising purposes on websites and apps, while reserving such data for its own use."
If you parse this carefully, you realize that the stated issue here is not that Google knows too much about users, but that their competitors don't know as much.
So what do you think will happen? Will Google stop gathering so much data? Or will the EU force them to give* the same data to their competitors?
*(or sell, even. Considering the EU's "solution" for online shopping, it's more likely)
Exactly my thought on the article. Targeted advertising is damn near impossible to implement without running afoul of privacy laws. Keep in mind targeted advertising is being sold by marketers also know as salesmen in earlier vernacular. The best of them can "sell a refrigerator to an eskimo", average ones can sell bottled air to you or I. Targeted advertising is the defacto standard for online ads. Targeted ads are not worth the bits they are made of. I have never purchased anything due to an online ad. Yet the targeted ad industry is spying on our every move to have data to develop targeting for ads.
How many probes and investigations have been made into googlies’ business practices now? 20? 30? And how many have resulted in …well …any result whatsoever? 1? 2? And how many of those were of any real consequence? Ah….
It’s a joke. It runs like this…
1/ See blatant and obvious abuse
2/ wait 5 years
3/ launch investigation
4/ wait 5 years
5/ do fuck-all
And it’s not just googlies of course.
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