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Comment by matthewmacleod | Hacker News Reader

I have absolutely no framework for understanding this attitude.

I've got to assume you're aware of things like unfair competition, antitrust laws, market distortions and so on. The idea is that a disproportionately influential market participant can cause the market to become less free by virtue of inhibiting competition – competition being a vital part of a free market.

Rules against abusing a dominant market position are there specifically to try and prevent abuse from happening.

I could understand the reasonableness of arguing about the specifics of Google's market dominance or the degree to which this activity was a problem. But "increasingly specious violations and terms" and "absolutely sickening" seem to suggest you haven't really considered the validity of such rules.

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Unless I've misunderstood what the fine was for. Fining a private business €2.4bn for promoting its own affiliates over other networks, how is that in any way an abnormal business practice? I'm not trying to be controversial, I just don't understand how that warrants such a hefty fine.

It's because there are additional regulatory requirements on businesses that have disproportionate market influence.

Promoting your own services in general is fine. But when a huge, huge majority of the market uses your service for discovery, your decision to promote your own services over competitors' damages competition in the market — users end up with less choice in practice, even though they could theoretically switch to another service.

Those rules exist to try and prevent this sort of abuse happening.

According to the press release, Google went into the product comparison sector and took about 80% of the pie without competing with other product comparison engines, instead they just used their dominant position in search.

If they had competed and won this share fairly, they wouldn't get a fine.

Remember that EU, during these years was consistently the largest, or the second largest, depending on year, economy of the world, so this 80% is huge and justifies the size of the fine.

I get that competition is vital for a free-market to function, unless Google gained power in this scenario through external influences such as government, then surely it has gained its position through market competition?

Yes, but the method of it gaining power is irrelevant – what matters is how that power is used.

There's nothing wrong with Google having a huge market share. But when that market share is used to essentially hide knowledge about competitors, isn't it obvious that the market becomes less free?

That's very true, I think Google are in a very unique position where the normal understanding of monopolies perhaps don't apply, or are even more serious as they essentially control the flow of information to such a large degree. Very good point.

And if you invited people into your house, and they came of their free will, then you surely got them into your house legally?

Yes, you did. And now you have the de-facto monopoly over the key for the front door. So, what could be wrong with asking for half their life savings if they want to be let out?

I don't think a shopping comparison channel, which actually doesn't command a particularly large share of price comparison sites, is comparable to life savings. Surely, you'd take these results with a pinch of salt and 'shop around'?

That's besides the point. It's simply that the fact that you got de-facto power over people by doing legal or even fair things does not necessarily entitle you to use that power however you like.

And at least the EU commission seems to have come to the conclusion that Google has used its power that it got due to its successful search engine to promote their price comparison site more than it did competing sites, and that not solely based on merits of the site itself.

Whether people could potentially evade the manipulation if they cared enough is irrelevant, just as it is irrelevant whether a fraud victim could have figured out they were being defrauded if they had cared enough.

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