Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

Here are many sub-search sites which doesn't deliver like Google, but are famous because they are more ethical. The question is: Is it real innovation or just an addiction for everything new and shiny.

Disruptive/innovative startups require an "ask for forgiveness" mentality, and not a "ask for permission" mentality which Europe tries so hard to cultivate.

Regardless, the effect is the same. With policies like "Right to be forgotten" and publicized attacks on the posterchild for innovation, "the next Google" certainly won't be European.

Not really, Europeans usually understand the problems of allowing an incumbent in one market to use its position to get control of another market. If the price to pay is slightly less 'innovation' (Whatever that means in this context), that's a price to pay.

I'm happy the regulators are not allowing a huge multi-national business to abuse its power. I'm happy that, to some extent, regulators are trying to make sure large foreign tech companies respect my privacy. If that means we lose Google I think you're overestimating how big of a deal that would be. I use DDG for search, iCloud for email/calendar/contacts, Safari as my desktop browser, BBC for my news, Amazon for my shopping. I don't need Google - it needs me.

You should see how the European Union treats European telcos for example.

Oh you're so funny. As opposed to the US where people overpay for sub-standard local technology?

People in the US still use cheques. And they have to pay (a lot) to print those.

Chip cards? No, let's use our fraud-prone magnetic stripe cards.

It's cheaper for me to call the US using an MVNO from Europe than picking up a phone and calling the US from within with a pre-paid cell phone there.

Talent flight? Sure let me wait for an H1-B (that you might not get after all). Meanwhile a non-EU worker visa takes about a month to process (sometimes less).

No (of course I only can speak for myself).

Are Americans not upset that the absence of regulations creates the conditions for corporations to be above the law, where individuals rights are trampled in the name of corporate profit ?

I guess not, and I'm fine with it, to each his own.

The article doesn't mention tax.

European here, the exact opposite actually: we are upset that the US is trying to sneak in less regulation through TTIP and similar deals.

None of them are or (most likely) will be from EU. Europe has a declining population, too much bureaucracy, hostile business environment and many other problems. This investigation is an attempt to get some money from Google (combined with raid in France & Spain over taxes) and fund the bureaucrats in Brussels.

[1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/277483/market-value-of-th...

See, we like regulation, we like for the people to be forced to contribute to a better society since we know that if we just let people be greedy, they WILL be greedy and we will end up with a de-humanizing society as you have in the USA.

If you don't like our rules, it's simple, just don't come here, we will and always have found an alternative even if it takes us a bit longer.

But it means that you're not getting the full picture when it comes to the actions of EU competition authorities. How do you know whether or not US conglomerates are specifically targetted if you know next to nothing about their other rulings?

That said, I also think that competition policy is mostly misguided (and not just in Europe). It's ineffective and they often try to fix things that fix themselves over time anyway. Browser choice on Windows? Was that really something that needed regulators to step in? I don't think so.

But there are other areas where I think Europe is right to take a harder line. Privacy is one of those things. I actually want services that only work if they can spy on everyone completely unimpeded to be sub-standard.

The EU claims that Google with its >90% search market share bundles/prefers its own sub-standard comparison shopping service to displace better ones.

I can't say I know enough about the matter to tell if the allegations are true. But the EU's case has nothing to do with forcing sub-standard technologies on anyone. On the contrary.

I'm not sure the Google issue is the best example of Europe's regulatory issues.

- To some extant at least a little of the aggressiveness, or at least the political will and approval, relates to the US implementing and enforcing US regulations on Europe's banking sector. This was not a small nor inconsequential.

- I personally thought Google was going to get hit by fairly big US regulatory anti-trust actions back in 2008-09 but it never happened. I never bought Google stock specifically because of this and I was completely wrong - so I could be very wrong about other conclusions I am making now.

- Ben Edelman provided convincing evidence that not only was Google hard coding certain results for their own products in their favor but explicitly lying about it publicly. There are a few analogies for this, but it basically involves consumer deception which is as bad or worse than not labelling ads or sponsored content because of the monopoly position Google holds. Kind of like if a company owned a GPS 90% of cars used and redirecting directions to businesses they owned. http://www.benedelman.org/hardcoding/

- No evidence but I am fairly confident that the Alphabet corporate reorganization was a pre-emptive action to losing an EU anti-trust case. Google will split apart a "Google Europe" entity which follows whatever rules the EU tells them. It is plausible it could be 3 or 4 entities depending on what the EU finally decides - Goole Search Europe, Google Ads Europe, Youtube Europe, etc. I don't know anything about the legal aspects of this, but it is similar to re-arranging assets while anticipating a future bankruptcy.

- A good example of everyone being way behind the curb is Google News mobile switching to favoring AMP and basically usurping all previous ad revenue sources news organizations had.

- There is a lot of discussion of price discovery and market discovery, but much of tech's innovation in recent years has involved regulatory discovery. The EU stuff absolutely could have occurred 5 years ago. The amount of money Google made by ignoring potential regulatory action likely far offsets the end punishment thanks to compounding growth. Regulators in all countries should think really hard about the line between really bad stuff and shades of grey because tech entrepreneurs are watching Google, Uber, and AirBNB and are behaving accordingly.

Personally I am really happy that we have someone watching over our privacy, and that the use of our personal data is regulated.

A regulatory race to the bottom benefits nobody [1]. Europe has plenty of experience with monopolies and cartels abusing their political and economic power.

I frankly would be more worried about US antitrust law abandoning competition as its guiding principle [2]. Which doesn't mean that everything in Europe is hunky-dory, but Google primary trouble stems from allegations that it is abusing a dominant market position. If that is true, then the EU is completely in the right to smack it down; the short-term benefits of allowing such behavior to persist are more than offset by the long-term downsides.

Keep also in mind that Google – or other American companies – are not being singled out here. European giants such as Siemens and Phillips had to eat major antitrust fines as well.

[1] I am not counting local stupidities such as ancillary copyright laws in Germany and Spain. That wasn't regulators running wild, that was legislatures enacting broken domestic laws at the behest of lobbyists.

[2] https://newrepublic.com/article/131412/important-2016-issue-...