Google should be broken up, say European MPs | Hacker News Reader

Google should be broken up, say European MPs

bbc.com

90 pointsalexbash149 comments

I know a lot of people kind of scoff at the idea of breaking up Google because they happen to offer the best product, but here are the 4 points mentioned

>The manner in which Google displays its own vertical search services compared with other, competing products

> How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - to include within its own services

> The exclusivity Google has to sell advertising around the search terms people use

> Restrictions on advertisers from moving their online ad campaigns to rival search engines

First point is kind of hard to fight in my opinion, since a company has the right to publish its own services.

I don't see how Google gets away with the second point for non-CC'd material. This definitely doesn't fall under fair-use (people don't land on the website of the copyright owner because it's copied by google => devalue the work)

Third point is... don't know what precedent there is for forcing a company to open up its network apart from ISPs/telecoms.

The fourth point seems like huge abuse of monopoly. I wasn't aware of these restrictions before, and definitely seems to go against "don't be evil".

First point is kind of hard to fight in my opinion, since a company has the right to publish its own services.

That changes once a company becomes a monopoly, specifically because it leads to market distortion. We've got rules against this sort of thing for a reason…

I always thought that anti-trust laws kicked in when the power was abused, so to speak.

Power is abused here, though. Google is using it's monopoly/dominant market position in search to build up it's market share in maps/local/social/whatever.

> Power is abused here, though

Can you link to the EU ruling stating that?

That's a highly controversial and tricky argument to make, though.

Is Google Maps a separate product that's being illegal tied to web search? Or is it actually a search engine for physical places, an integrated part of the one unified Google Search Engine? It could be argued either way, but if you try and imagine what it'd take to make Google Maps "pluggable" in google.com search .... well, that would be a tremendous technical challenge. Competitors would have to be able to process every web search Google does, to decide if it contains a location. That's a lot of traffic. And they have to respond as fast as Google's own servers, despite not being in the same buildings. This sort of thing suggests they're really one unified product, but I doubt such technical details would have much impact on what is a fundamentally political process.

No, search is also for things like positions, local businesses, etc. And no I don't want to be prompted to customize my google experience by choosing any of X providers for maps, etc. I want the answer to my gooddam search query, stat.

> First point is kind of hard to fight in my opinion, since a company has the right to publish its own services.

Microsoft was forced to include a browser choice screen and not use IE by default on Windows computers sold in the EU. The same happens here - you have different responsibilities when you're in a dominant position.

Problem is Microsoft is no longer dominating the market of operating systems, especially if you're counting mobile devices and absolutely every OS now comes with a bundled browser that you cannot uninstall. So apparently, if the US would have decided to break Microsoft, it would have been a huge mistake, potentially killing a big software company that was disrupted by newer technology anyway.

So you know, abusive companies should be punished. But lets be honest here, politicians are targeting the likes of Microsoft, Google or Apple not for our own good, but because they see a huge pie that isn't theirs and want a piece of it, with people forgetting that these companies have defined the huge markets they are dominating in.

And I'm saying this as a European citizen that had plenty of diatribes against all 3 companies mentioned here - but I do not believe in government interventions when it comes to software and yes, I don't believe in net neutrality either.

I believe net neutrality is important because telcos are not the same as software companies. Anyone can theoretically compete with a software company; if you're a telco with billions of dollars worth of infrastructure and you're the only option for a huge chunk of the country, the only people who even have a chance of competing are companies of similar size (like Google).

For many people in the US, they're completely stuck with Comcast or Verizon and likely will be for decades to come (Google Fiber's complete roll out will obviously take a very long time). They either have to move, or suck it up.

Yeah, the idea of actually breaking up Google is in my opinion foolish, but the idea of introducing limited regulations to try to lessen the impact on other markets from its monopoly position in search, seems perfectly reasonable.

For instance, if there was a rule which legislated minimum standards for transferring services elsewhere, as per your last point, that seems to be something it would be difficult to complain about.

Also, I want to see the text of the adopted statement, because the comments in the press release, and in previous stories, have only said, to paraphrase "regulation may be necessary to unbundle search from commercial services". That doesn't scream "wants to break up the company" to me. Is that really being proposed?

I believe the fourth point was something that has already been changed in the AdWords API Ts & Cs almost two years ago, as a result of the FTC settlement. http://googleadsdeveloper.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/updates-to-...

> I don't see how Google gets away with the second point for non-CC'd material.

This is how I've been told it went by in Germany: there was a law drafted[1] that said publishers should get compensation for snippets of their articles in search results. This was a law apparently drafted directly in response to Google's practices.

So Google sent a letter to most publishers, asking for royalty-free access to their content, or otherwise they would not show up anymore on Google's services. All publishers agreed to sign that, because being removed from Google means losing a decent amount of your ad income.

That's how they get away with it.

[1] https://gigaom.com/2013/03/01/german-parliament-passes-googl...

The law was passed, not only drafted! But it was pointless:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/23/kapitulation/

The German government made themselves look like fools. They were easily manipulated by a literal handful of newspaper magnates (primarily the boss of Axel Springer) whose positions were nonsensical - they were complaining about being in Google News without compensation, but didn't use robots.txt to take themselves out of it. Surely that would have been the start of any normal business negotiation? Why would any change to the law have been needed at all?

So after wasting vast amounts of time in changing the law, the German government learned a hopefully important lesson - they were being used as pawns in a game to try and extract free money from a foreign company and the actual complaints were meritless. A tiny amount of technical literacy would have gone a long way.

This law makes me angry. How could have anybody been so stupid? Did the publishers really think Google would just hand them over money? Google announced even before it passed that they'd drop the content. They underestimated what power Google has and if they drop you from the index then you lose not them.

Now they are all handing over royalty-free access to Google. But all other companies and people still have to pay. I mean the publishers think they can make at least a bit of money that way. But they again don't seem to realise that this only strengthens Google because all (potential) competitors have to pay...

The Google folks must be really celebrating over this. A law specifically designed to target Google has only strengthened them.

> How could have anybody been so stupid?

We are talking about the people publishing "Bild", here. It's not actually about being stupid, it's about being blinded by their own evilness.

Would you expect anything different from, say, Murdoch?

> Google has around 90% market share for search in Europe

It's a complete monopoly and the barrier to entry is huge. Might be a good thing to break them up.

I agree that its a monopoly, though I find it funny that serious time & consideration is being given to discuss breaking them up.

Google are a company who have a product (search, among many). Their product is successful (many people use search). Competitors obviously find it hard to break into the market, and want to make that easier. Is this not how business works? A company creates a product and tries to make it as popular and widely used as possible? Also, is Google not at liberty to decide how it ranks search results? Surely if they want to hide results from competitors they are allow to do that?

If my company made car tyres, and 90% of car owners in Europe used my tyres, I'd find it absolutely ludicrous if my competitors tried to break up my company because its "unfair" that I have the market share.

Google has the market share for search, whether its "unfair" or not. Competitors should work hard to push them off with their own products, not by trying to break up the organisation. Seems somewhat petty to me.

There are other arguments which are valid such as:

> How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - to include within its own services

Disclaimer: I don't use Google products.

You're misunderstanding the issue here – monopoly isn't a problem, but abuse of it is.

To use your example – your company makes car types, and has a monopoly. You then branch out, and start making cars as well. And you redesign your tyres such that they're only compatible with your car. Oh, and the roads everywhere only work with your tyres.

That's an abuse of monopoly, and that's what the target is. Look at that fact that Google products are starting to demand Chrome, or to push their other services through their monopoly search engine.

I don't think the problem is that bad yet, but we have to be super vigilant about that stuff or we end up with AT&T, Microsoft, or Standard Oil.

Fair point. I didn't pick up on this from the article. It's this exact reason that I use Firefox & DuckDuckGo.

I based my statement on this:

> The European Parliament has voted in favour of breaking Google up, as a solution to complaints that it favours is own services in search results.

The key part there being ..it favours its own services in search results. In my opinion they are free to rank search results in whatever manner they wish.

In my opinion they are free to rank search results in whatever manner they wish.

I get what you are saying. The problem arises when something like Google is the front page of the Internet for so many people – a monopoly, essentially becoming similar to a public service.

Let's say they decide to rank their own services high, and push competitors down the list. That's a real problem, because it artificially raises the barrier to entry to other market participants.

I can very easily see this becoming a problem with Google as they move into more areas. And it's quite possible that breakup isn't the best solution, but we really should look at what the answers might be before it's too late.

Microsoft was beaten by technological disruption and while they are still big, they are no longer a problem. So I don't get this line about being super vigilant. You served it as an example, so I guess something really bad must have happened there.

It's been 10 years since I stopped using Microsoft's products and now I've switched off many of Google's products, plus I just received an iPhone 6 as a gift and I'm giving it away because I refuse to use it. Yes, 10 years ago it was painful moving off Microsoft's stuff and right now it is painful moving off Google's or Apple's stuff, but so what?

Governments intervening in such matters are doing more harm than good and what really works is voting with your wallet and technological disruption. So while I applaud vigilance, I don't really get this attitude.

"That's an abuse of monopoly, and that's what the target is. "

Actually, the situation you describe is not abuse of a monopoly unless you were the one who made the roads everywhere only work with your tyres.

"Look at that fact that Google products are starting to demand Chrome, or to push their other services through their monopoly search engine."

Assume for a second this was true. This is not monopoly abuse because it's not related to the area in which they have significant market share (unless you plan on trying to argue that in mail, maps, or whatever you also believe they have high market share).

You can't say "well, they have a popular search engine, so if they do unrelated thing x, it's abuse". Monopolies and their abuse are related to specific markets. The abuses take very specific forms, with very specific requirements. The law is generally very careful, because often things like "tying" is actually pro-competitive to a market (or so economists think :P).

" or to push their other services through their monopoly search engine."

Also not a recognized form of antitrust harm :) There is no ban on "pushing", only "tying" (IE actually requiring, and requiring in a way that competitively harms the market).

Even then, the tying generally has to be between products not naturally related. So your example above fails anyway.

(The things you are thinking about, that MS did, was bundling and tying. Google is doing neither in a market which they may be considered to have monopoly market share)

> If my company made car tyres, and 90% of car owners in Europe used my tyres, I'd find it absolutely ludicrous if my competitors tried to break up my company because its "unfair" that I have the market share.

Let's assume you do both sell tires and BMW. And whether your clients would ask a quote for BWMs, details or services - you would always advise them to buy your tires.

And if they would explicitly ask, what else tires I could buy, you would hesitate to admit (e.g. 30 minute length discussion over the phone wire or 30 emails back and forth) what there are any you could recommend / satisfy specs / requirements. That would be quite the same: e.g. people have to redefine their search queries to get non google results, or scroll down, or go to second page results etc..

What gives?

Regardless of your feelings, various countries have thought it a good idea to set up antitrust law and competition laws for just such situations (see [1], [2]).

The logic is that with a large enough market share, a company can keep perpetually dominating the market purely based on status quo, to the detriment of consumers. Related is anti-competitive practices, e.g. where a company might strong-arm "partners" into dropping competitors, or otherwise coercing them into a highly unfair situation for the competitor. This is particularly applicable to companies which try to use their monopoly in one area to leverage a huge advantage in another area (e.g. the famous case of Microsoft using their OS advantage to gain advantage in the browser space - again, you may have different feelings about the issue).

So basically, what we're talking about is a situation where a company is effectively and practically un-challengable primarily due to its current market share, and many countries recognizing this as a problem, and having laws against this type of thing.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law

>Is this not how business works?

Yes, and the society/lawmakers deciding to take your business down or make it illegal is how society/law works.

Quick (and perhaps stupid) question; how is Google a monopoly?

There are other alternatives to search available. If people really wanted to, they could use Bing. It's not like Google is using some horrendous anti-competitive practices to prevent other search engines from gaining market share.

Two characteristics of monopolies (as per wikipedia) are "High barriers" and "Single seller" both of which don't apply to Google in my opinion.

Google does have an absurd market share but that's mostly due to a good product. Why should they be punished for producing a quality product?

Some of the complaints listed in the article don't even make sense to me. Why is it a problem that Google has exclusivity to sell advertising on its own website? It's their website!

What is the alternative to Google Adwords, that has anything like the same reach?

Google isn't a monopoly for the users of the search engine - you're right, they can move to whichever search engine they like - many which are almost or as good as Google.

The problem is for advertisers and website owners. If you are advertising on search engines and you don't have your adverts on Google, you're missing out on 90% of users. That's why they're a monopoly. Moving your adverts to Bing just isn't an alternative.

True but those users aren't stuck on Google and can easily move on to Google. Also why have you restricted yourself to advertising on search engines?

It's like complaining that if I'm advertising on basketball games and I don't have my adverts on NBA games then I'm missing out on 90% of people who watch basketball games. Should we break up the NBA?

By the way, I don't mean to be argumentative. The closest reason I could comprehend is the abuse angle mentioned by tomp but I don't really see Google as being abusive as compared to say a corporation who has complete control of a natural resource and begins to set prices extremely high.

Google has Search, Valve has Steam, Apple has the App Store. They developed these products, have a extremely large market share and are reaping the rewards of developing a successful product. That on its own doesn't make them a monopoly worth breaking up.

This is nothing to do with the users. The entire reason this has come up is because Google is allegedly using their monopoly to place their products above the products of other companies. Users aren't locked in but website-owners/advertisers are. This is a problem they can't get away from, switching provider just isn't an option.

Your NBA example doesn't really work because it's missing the abuse of power (not really sure how you could alter the analogy to fit). Talking of the App Store, if Apple had 90% of the marketshare and then started altering search results so that when you search for, say, "Microsoft Word" the first result is "Pages" instead, I'm sure the EU would have something to say about that, too. (I actually think that Apple is probably overall quite pleased that it doesn't have majority marketshare as it gives it a lot more flexibility.)

By the way, I'm not saying I necessarily agree with breaking up Google but I can understand why the EU is considering this.

I think I've figured out the reason I don't see this the way you do; I believe Apple has the right to alter the search results of their App Store because it's their freaking store.

Guess the only solution to this problem is to have some sort of legislation decreeing whether the Google's actions is legal or illegal.

I actually lean more towards your way of thinking - I'm just trying to explain how the EU feels and why they're doing it.

Nobody is complaining that Google is a monopoly/has a huge market share in search. The problem is that they're (ab)using their monopoly in search to boost the market share of their other services. Is Google Maps really that better than OpenStreetMap or Apple Maps or Bing Maps, or do people just use it because it's a default result in Google?

That sounds like a good point on the surface but then I wonder why shouldn't Google have a right to order their search results however they wish.

Isn't every search results listing ordered based on essentially Google's opinion anyways?

>Is Google Maps really that better than OpenStreetMap or Apple Maps or Bing Maps, or do people just use it because it's a default result in Google?

I think its more nuanced: In-line maps are a better search result to location queries than a plain blue link, but to some degree the only way to offer that UX is to control that functionality from the ground up. Explicit integration comes with reliability/speed/technical costs while implicit integration comes with fair use/scraping costs.

While search boosts the integrated properties (Maps, News, Finance etc) much of the value to Google may actually be the reverse: integrated verticals give people less reason to switch away from Google's generalized Search to more specialized, domain-specific search engine.

There's an argument to be made that there's utility in a Jack-of-all trades engine.

yes, because breaking up a monopoly does so well in ending name recognition.

you cannot monopolize search, you might just be able to monopolize being good at it - so then what,force them to license it out?

Really is the answer to "our national industries/companies are fail, lets force others to be fail too" all that they have to go on?

How do you monopolize search, you claim it, tell me.

It's not going to break up on account of the European Union. It's a fairly large market today, but one with only decline in its future. Europe's relative share of the world economy will not increase again during the lifetime of anyone alive today.

I also question whether Google isn't already more powerful than the EU. If it threatens to suspend services to the EU, it would cause a massive backlash among inhabitants, and not one that would be directed at Google. In most member states, popular support for continued EU membership is already dangerously low. Cutting 90% of the people off from their email can be the final straw.

Remember when the EU wanted to break up Microsoft. What they ended up getting was a crippled version of Windows for the same price. Everyone bought the full version instead.

> It's a complete monopoly and the barrier to entry is huge. Might be a good thing to break them up.

The actual vote is for breaking ALL the search engines, despite of the size or if they have abused or not.

I was blocked indefinitely from Adsense by Google's faulty algorithms (without explanation and with appeals rejected without explanation). I lost the revenue I'd earnt that month, and soon realised Google holds a monopoly in this space, and no one else offered a comparable service.

I'm all for Google's stronghold to be broken. reply

same happend to a buddy of mine, they've lost around ~50k because of this. Without explanation Google blocked them from using AdSense and withheld the money.

There are other text brokers. You just couldn't find one that paid as much as Google. That's not a monopoly problem. A problem is if Google kept Adsense payouts artificially low or charged advertisers too much because of their market power.

(Also, a monopoly on the buy side is called a monopsony.)

That's the thing. And the "open web" doesn't help at all. At least in mobile/PC there is an option to move between App Store, Play Store, Windows Store and Steam.

Google's grip on search is absolutely enormous, especially in Europe.

They literally decide lives of thousands of people when they change their algorithms. With one update, they kill thousands of websites someone lives off and then they replace them with big brands or their own services.

This isn't healthy for anyone and I wish there was more competition. It would do a lot of good to everyone.

But there is competition. Bing, DuckDuckGo, even Yahoo's still hanging in there.

There are no technological or commercial barriers to switching search engines: no-one is making people use Google search (except I guess maybe on Android devices or Chromebooks -- I don't have and have never used either, so I don't know).

People use it because either (a) it returns better results or (b) inertia.

If it's (a), using it is a rational choice (though one that could be trumped by privacy or ethical concerns).

If it's (b), eventually they'll be knocked off their perch by a better search engine.

I would say that the technological barrier exists for google just like with IE and MSFT: Google is the default browser in Firefox + Chrome.

The IE solution was to offer an explicit browser choice in EU versions of windows. A similar one could be imagined here. The "solution" would be to disallow Google from making an exclusivity agreement with FF and to have a choice screen in Chrome. Unfortunately this would cause immense harm to Mozilla...

Firefox has just switched its default search engine to Yahoo:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2850152/yahoo-dethrones-googl...

So maybe not so much harm to Mozilla.

Only in the US. In the EU it sounds like the default is still Google.

> The IE solution was to offer an explicit browser choice in EU versions of windows.

And what did that solve, really?

> to disallow Google from making an exclusivity agreement with FF

They do not have an exclusive agreement with Firefox and in Firefox Google's Search is only the default, not the only one. Mozilla is also switching to Yahoo as the default in the US, Yandex in Russia and other local search engines where it applies. That doesn't sound exclusive to me.

It is broadly true that people have a choice with search, and clearly Google's position is down to the quality of service rather than the sort of trap-in you see with physical monopolies like ISPs. But I don't think the point or aim of all of this is to do anything about search, it's to prevent Google from using that position to favour its other commercial services. The monopoly issue is by proxy, it's not search itself.

> But there is competition. Bing, DuckDuckGo, even Yahoo's still hanging in there.

Only if you are English speaker and are looking for English sites (which is the case only for minority of Europeans). Apart form Google other search engines are localized either poorly or not at all.

Which sounds like a great service that Google provides that greatly differentiates it from its competition, not a monopolistic barrier.

Sounds like a market opportunity for someone. In Russia there is Yandex, in China there is Baidu. The EU has a larger population and much higher GDP (~market size?) than Russia, and a higher GDP than China. (Actually, a higher GDP than the US, according to Wikipedia.)

Even if we have to break it down by language, Germany, France, and the UK have larger GDPs than Russia. Italy's not far behind.

So why is there no European competitor -- or multiple EU competitors -- to Google?

(Apart from the obvious snarky "someone might start one but then they'd have to worry about being hamstrung by EU Parliament resolutions once they got too powerful" reason -- Russia and China are hardly bastions of libertarian capitalism.)

I believe the parent comment is talking about website owners. A quick check of a website I run says 96% of hits come from Google. If Google decide to block that site or put it on page 10, the site is dead.

Why is this already on the second page?

  Google should be broken up, say European MPs (bbc.com)
  55 points by alexbash 1 hour ago | flag | 107 comments

This story is currently on the first page:

  Inside the Dynomak: A Fusion Technology Cheaper Than Coal (ieee.org)
  39 points by ohaal 2 hours ago | flag | 16 comments

This story has 2:1 comments:points. The other you link has 1:2 comments:points. A high comment:point ratio is considered an indicator of an unproductive flame war.

Hm... well that's weird, to say the least. I mainly go to HN for the comments. A lot of comments doesn't meant that there is a flame war, or that it's unproductive. In this case, the story, as written, isn't that remarkable, but the ideas behind it, and the comments, are.

I generally go to https://news.ycombinator.com/active when I'm in the mood for discussions over articles, and this is currently #1 there.

Thank you, I didn't know about this feature of HN. Bookmarked for future reading.

How did you find out about it, I'm not seeing it linked from the places I'd expect.

There was a post about it some time back. I've always wondered why it's not linked anywhere.

I don't know a lot about the requirements of these operations; how can the European Union guarantee that each Subgoogle does not agree with the rest to provide services to each other that I can't access to?

I don't see how they can enforce that any company can be playing a level field against another subgoogle competitor...

That would be an oligopoly and illegal. They could no more do that than oil companies could (legally) conspire to fix prices.

That's the real problem; they don't know what to do about it, but they'll rather do anything instead of nothing. Either it's gonna be a lot of hot air or turn out for the worse.

What's funny is that Google already operates as separate legal entities in different European countries (though some countries share one HQ and hence legal identity).

How they plan to further "break it up" I can't imagine.

I don't think HQ location has much to do with legal entities - don't you need a local legal entity in a country if you actually have any "operations" there (offices, staff etc.) as you need to comply with local statutory reporting etc.

It says it right there: break the search engine component from the rest of the company. This would mean that Gmail and Yahoo Mail would be on the same playing field if someone searches for "free webmail client".

I can't even begin to imagine the engineering nightmare that would be though, especially now that accounts are unified.

I don't think the aim is geographic boundaries, but functional boundaries. eg, Google Advertising is the only ad network allowed on Google Search.

To use a loose analogy with the Microsoft trials; msft having a monopoly on the desktop wasn't the problem. They earned it. Using that monopoly to create a second monopoly in the browser space, was the issue. Hence the unbundling.

In this case, Google having a monopoly in search isn't the problem - again, they've earned it fairly. But using that monopoly to prop up additional monopolies in, eg, advertising, is problematic.

I don't think they'll actually try to split Google up. It's so-far sabre rattling, and this decision just ensures they actually have a sabre to rattle.

But if, eg, third-party advertisers were allowed to compete with Google on Google's own properties? That'd be interesting.

That's not what it's really about. It's going to end up being about the fine, which the article suggests could amount to five billion dollars. That buys a lot of limousine tires and office chairs.

What unsubstantiated, loaded dross. Sorry but what point is there in saying what you have? How does progress any discussion at all?

If Google is broken into parts, then each parts will be owned and operated by different people, and different people will have different interests. In addition, people generally don't willingly cede their power for the common good. That is why they will probably not cooperate.

Of course, your imagined scenario could totally happen. But I think the opposite is more likely.

Sometimes things change, Google search is so big in Europe (the article sites 90%) that perhaps we should no longer view it as a private company.

A good Internet search engine has a huge impact on less tech-savvy people. My parents have never ever used anything but Google, and don't even understand that there are _other_ search engines out there. As such perhaps we should view it as a public utility. Just like the public transit system brings people to real destinations google search brings people to virtual destinations.

At the same time this shouldn't deprive Google of its revenue. So an approach should be taken which enforces neutrality in search results but also leaves room to serve adds.

I think that recent actions from Google are partially to blame for this attention from the European council. There have been warnings thrown Googles way. As it stands I believe Google is even breaking privacy laws with the fusion of Youtube and Google+ behind the scenes. There was also criticism from the Council about google blurring the distinction between adds and real results. So this can't come as a surprise to Google.

Then Microsoft. Now Google. History repeats.

Microsoft pays taxes AFAIK, unlike Google.

Barely [in the UK at least].

Here is the link to the original press release:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/2014...

Having a monopoly is not a good reason to break them up. Being a monopoly is not a crime in itself, because as a fact of nature, monopolies happen.

Microsoft was accused of having a monopoly that abused its power contrary to the Sherman Antitrust Act, however they went through a lawsuit for this. Therefore as an European I'm disappointed by how the European Parliament is handling this, especially because some of their reasoning I'm reading about in this article are flawed. So where's the lawsuit in this case?

If the EU wants to ensure a level playing field for rivals, then maybe the EU should lower its taxes instead and do more to encourage startups. Because really, it's not the presence of Google in Europe that prevents rivalries from happening.

If they actually knew what they were talking about, they would be voting to decentralize the internet, not break Google up. I don't think trying to break up Microsoft or fine them for bundling internet explorer achieved a whole lot.

They are looking at the problem the wrong way.

> I don't think trying to break up Microsoft or fine them for bundling internet explorer achieved a whole lot.

I don't know. Is Internet Explorer still the most used webbrowser?

> Is Internet Explorer still the most used webbrowser?

Your point is moot.

Are you implying it's not because it is (hopefully was) crappy?

I think you are a bit blind if you think that decision is why people started to use other browsers.

'Decentralising the internet', if considering the web as an important part of that, pretty much is an effort to break apart Google. Google is a centralised web made reality.

Disagree. Not everything that works without or around Google is an effort to break apart Google.

The strange thing is that Microsoft got hit for bundling IE while the two big mobile/tablet OSs both not only ship with their own web browser but also (for iOS) grant the platform-preferred browser powers that no other application is allowed (JIT compilation).

The question of "a market" versus "two distinct markets" is a vexed one. Is "phone browser" a seperate market from "phone"?

There was no follow through to back up that decision and it was merely a "get at microsoft any way that we can" scenario. The precedent was set that you can't bundle a program in a program but yet nobody else has ever been called up on it. I think the decision was ridiculous at the time, the fine achieved nothing and firefox achieved temporary dominance not because of that decision but the poor implementation of internet explorer.

Ideally the EU would figure out a way to prop up its own IT companies instead of being wholly reliant on US based ones and then coming up with threats of lots more paperwork whenever they find their backs against a wall.

This is what is happening here. Lots of smallish companies depend on ads in the EU and they are obviously being hurt by Google's monopoly. Realistically, breaking up Google just means lots more paperwork for Google. It won't actually mean new competition in search.

Despite all this, whenever a government entity is in need of some IT infrastructure it's always Microsoft, HP and other US based companies that get the contract.

I am puzzled regarding the various rants (by politicians and others) of the type "we must break up Google"... Let me mention a couple of points which I never see addressed by people pushing this idea:

1. There exists a well established protocol/convention (robots.txt) that can be used to indicate to search engines that "these pages should not be indexed", thus preventing copying content from those pages. As far as I know, Google respect robots.txt. Companies (most often, news related organizations) that complain about Google copying their material can make use of robots.txt to prevent Google from indexing their content. Are they saying that Google does not respect this? ... or that complaining companies are clueless about this?

2. How do they think a pure Google Search company, without ad revenues, could generate revenues to sustain its operation? Search (for microsoft, yahoo and google) [and free email services] are most likely something akin to loss leaders / promotional tools.

Legislating against anti-competitive behaviour (e.g. restrictions on advertisers to move their online ad campaigns to rival companies) is something that should be done if indeed it is occuring. However, everything else appears to be without logical foundation to me.

But perhaps I am missing something...

1. robots.txt is not a replacement for copyright law, it is a "protocol" used by most crawlers.

2. A pure Google Search company could show ads, by being a client/distributor of ads from a (pure) Google Ads company. Just like how ads on your blog get you money.

I don't think they're suggesting Google search results should not display ads. They're saying Google shouldn't control the network that decides which ads get displayed.

The allegation

> How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - to include within its own services

Has nothing to do with robots.txt - I don't know what Google does, but if it e.g. copies reviews from Yelp and includes them in Google Maps, that's not completely OK (it might benefit the users, but it also boosts Google's market share).

Sigh, the number of people here who think they understand antitrust law because they followed the news of the Microsoft case is sad. It kind of makes having a serious discussion about it really hard, because people don't understand the legal requirements for being a monopoly, various forms of antitrust harms, etc, and so end up simply disagreeing because they have a "wrong" view of what the law says.

I'd put together an "engineer's guide to not sound silly when arguing about antitrust law on the internet", but i'd get raked over the coals for my affiliation.

In fairness to the great unwashed (which I guess includes me), anti trust law manages to seem quite vague and more importantly enforcement of it appears to be highly political and selective.

It's impossible for people to learn all the laws they need to follow in depth these days, there are just far too many and they are all far too complicated and subjective, so people learn by example. When we look at anti-trust law there's really one big, comparable example in the tech sector, which is Microsoft. And there they were found guilty but then Bush got elected and nothing was done. And anyway the crux of the matter was bundling of a browser, but this is now standard for all operating systems. So it's very hard to figure out what people are meant to learn from all this.

I guess there is also the Intel/AMD case that I remember. That one seemed more clear cut and obvious.

Curiously this story (formerly #1 on front page) has been buried on HN in favour of a dupe that has less votes. What's going on PG?

Are there laws on monopolies in the EU?

Yes. Extensive details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law

Thanks

> long-running anti-competitive dispute with Google

Freudian slip.

Not that it'd ever happen, but I would very much enjoy watching what would unfold if Google ceased to provide services to these nations.

Can you imagine the backlash?

That would result in a backlash about Google going bankrupt rather than ceasing of services from EU.

"Bwaah, we'll take our oddly-shaped football and go home" is a common knee-jerk response from Americans, but it makes as little sense as MEPs suggesting to break up Google.

The way to solve these issues is dialogue. Google tried long and hard to reason with the Chinese Communist Party, after all. Compared to the CCP, the European Parliament is a paragon of transparency and democracy.

I seem to remember that I used Altavista before google.com. I guess I would move on to another search engine. DuckDuckGo might be good enough, I guess, and there's also Bing (I guess DDGo uses Bing?). Most people would use whatever search engine that the browser than defaulted to. Maybe they'd still find what they want.

People would have to find other video sites to procrastinate and entertain themselves than YouTube. I don't know if there are any video sites which are competitive when it comes to providing content compared to YouTube. If so I guess people would go back more to professionally made entertainment (yes, of course not all or perhaps even most of YouTube is amateur).

People would replace Google+ with... oh that one doesn't matter.

The European alternative to Youtube would be Dailymotion, a French company part-owned by Orange.

People are used to getting the occasional "This video is unavailable in your country" failure from Youtube; this might be less of a problem with a local operator.

It's local to France, at least.

This would be very difficult legally.

That's kind of underhanded to do that on a day when most people in the US are on vacation and aren't available to respond.

Why did Google deviate from "Do No Evil"?

Sorry, not picking on you. Someone says this in practically every Google post. The answer is: "Evil" is subjective.

The European Union should be broken up.

When debating pro-against EU, we should never forget how pre-EU Europe looked like. We've been incredibly good at killing each other. I'd pick a huge beauracracy over arms races any day of the week.

Not only was Europe more violent then, but it was also hugely bureaucratic, probably more than today. You couldn't sell a product in more than one country without dealing with the bureaucracy of each of them independently. Today a company registered in Denmark can sell products in Sweden and Germany without having to register corporations in three separate countries. And they don't have to wait hours at the border to go through a customs checkpoint anymore either.

Don't they still subsidize their agricultural sector, and dump stuff on the international markets and hurt non-EU farmers? I consider that to be very uncompetitive.

The common agricultural policy is largely an ecological and humanitarian disaster. However, it's only one aspect of the EU, and most of the member states would have similar subsidies if they were outside the EU anyway. Even the anti-EU parties in European nations tend to favour maintaining the subsidies (e.g. UKIP policy is to maintain the single farm payment after an EU exit). The US isn't in the EU and still has a significant program of agricultural subsidies.

The USA subsidises its agricultural sector, I agree that the EU does do it more. But then Japan puts in more direct subsidy to its agricultural sector than the whole of the EU. Still, whatever your view on subsidies, it is a much better thing for people to be complaining about than Europe being on fire. Again.

Yes, although the US does exactly the same thing in different fields. Most countries have some sort of national protected agriculture.

It's not nearly as bad as it was when payout was still strictly by production. Nowadays, farmers are paid to let fields fall fallow so there's no insane overproduction, hence less market crashing abroad.

Some sort of CAP is a necessity: The point is to keep local farmers in business as to keep local production capacity (not necessarily production) alive so that when shit hits the fan when it comes to imports, Europeans won't starve.

Yes, there should be further fixes. But it's much better than in the past, and I think the fishing policy should be dealt with first.

I'm not sure I'd actually call the EU a "huge bureaucracy" - it has 33 thousand staff:

http://ec.europa.eu/civil_service/docs/hr_key_figures_en.pdf

That's about twice as much as the Scottish Government - which is for a much smaller population.

The bureaucracy is indirect; all the regulatory requirements are implemented nationally and handled by national staff. Or impose requirements on businesses that don't correspond to enforcement staff at all, like CE marking.

So you think that if the EU disbanded, there would be more wars (and/or arms-races) in Europe? Between which nations?

1. Yes.

2. Don't know - we're good at surprising people!

How enlightening.

My only bets are that this time Norway would be in the middle, they are sitting on a shitload of money, and Germany invades Poland, just for keeping traditions.

There are still arms races in Europe. They are just a lot quieter and are mostly battleship envy.

Yes, this often put forward as a case for why the EU is a good thing but the reality is we probably stopped killing each other because we finally had a war that was large enough to put many people off war for life.

Those who repeat the line that the EU prevented wars in Europe seem to forget what happened in the Balkans

Those who repeat the line that the EU prevented wars in Europe seem to forget what happened in the Balkans

They were not part of the EU. The reasoning is that if you form a union where there is a large amount of economical interdependence, you think twice about starting a conflict with other members of your union. The collapse of their economy means the collapse of your economy.

According to your reasoning, WW2 should not have existed at all, since it came on the heels of another devastating conflict.

If anything, it's the post WW1 that was taken as a lesson: instead of further afflicting the defeated, fomenting nationalism and isolationism, a more conciliatory path was taken.

The union has its warts and boils, but the fact that the member nations have been at peace between themselves for the longest time span ever is hard to attribute to other factors.

> "We've been incredibly good at killing each other."

No, what you mean is that Germans and Austrians (and only Germans and Austrians) have recently been rather fond of invading neighbouring countries and also genociding their own populations.

The other European countries, Balkans excepted, have actually got along rather well for the past 150 years.

So why should Holland, Belgium, France, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark and the others be erased as nation states? This is the way things are going.

You are only looking at recent history. And even that's not true. Italians invading Albania and Greece? Italians invading France? Soviets invading Finland, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania? Hungarians invading Romania and Czechoslovakia? Romanians invading the USSR? Soviets invading Hungary and Czechoslovakia?

And out of the list your have there, many of those "nation states" were too busy "genociding" their colonies in the last 150 years, to care about "genociding" their neighbors. And all of those were "genociding" their neighbors as well, before they got colonies.

Plus all those nation-states are too small on today's geopolitical arena. Only the "state" bit will be going away, the nations will be there, sitting nice and pretty as they do right now :)

All the countries with empires were proxy-warring it around the globe. The first and second world wars were wars of empire coming home.

Of all the different EU institutions the EP is one of the most democratic. Unfortunately they don't have a lot of influence.

Google is using its cash cow, search to fund lots of new innovative projects. If you break it up, you lose lots of innovation.

I do think that they should prevent Google from killing nice startups by copying their services (hardly ever happens but it does)

Ugh, not this again. The only real monopolies are those which are protected by government regulation or control.

Google is out there on the freewheeling internet competing. It has a broad portfolio of products, but their main revenue stream - ads from search engine - has about the lowest switching costs of any product known to man.

Google is far from an angel, and the days of 'don't be evil' are a quaint memory. But these European Regulators should look in their own backyard, and perhaps spend some time dismantling their own regulatory mess. You never know, undoing some of that red tape might even get their economy to grow. Stranger things have happened.

If a monopoly forms through natural means, is it not still a monopoly?

The only real monopolies are those which are protected by government regulation or control.

This is utter, objective nonsense. Look at Microsoft as a case in point, which had a near 100% market share of desktop operating systems. Nobody would claim that wasn't a monopoly.

It does, but the question is whether Google—which has a 90% market share—is unfairly using the power that brings to promote their other services. That's a perfectly valid question, and is pretty much the entire reason for the existence of antitrust rules.

But these European Regulators should look in their own backyard, and perhaps spend some time dismantling their own regulatory mess. You never know, undoing some of that red tape might even get their economy to grow. Stranger things have happened.

Currently, in Europe, Google has a share of the market that apparently Europe-level government feels is doing harm to the industry through abuse of monopoly. Isn't this exactly the sort of area we want government to intervene in?

You mean the unelected officials who decide these matters in non-smoke filled rooms in an organisation that hasn't been passed by its own auditors in more than 13 years (a business would have been taken to court by now) and has a current black hole of £34 billion which has willy-nilly to be filled from national coffers - no questions asked. All irrelevant to the subject under discussion? I don't think so.

I'm sure it is relevant, and the EU has serious issues that need to be fixed. But that doesn't affect the question of whether or not Google has a monopoly which is causing market harm.

Indeed, and besides that, this vote was by the European Parliament, which is directly elected by EU citizens.

Yes you are right (I got a bit carried away there!) but let's note "The ultimate decision will rest with EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager." - an unelected official.

And while I'm on the irrelevancy track (apologies) - how about an unelected foreign minister with, as reported by observers, no demonstrable talents and certainly no mandate. What are we coming to?

I don't think she has ever been Foreign Minister, she's been an elected Danish MP for 13 years, serving as Minister of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Economic and Interior Affairs before being nominated to serve as Denmark's EU Commissioner by Denmark's elected government.

I'll note that the public in Denmark did not vote for her to be Deputy Prime minister, they voted for her to be an MP, being a Deputy Prime minister is a nominated position. There are lots of nominated positions in representative democracies. In this case, the position is nominated by the elected government of a host country, then the selected nominations get voted on by the elected EU parliament. It is a bit like the process of nomination to the US supreme court, only the whole set gets voted on.

There is an argument for the Commissioners to be initially selected by election in member states rather than through nomination and that was raised in 2010 by European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, though I don't know how it is progressing.

She couldn't be a foreign minister though, if you meant it in the other sense, as she is definitely from Europe and is in an EU post.

You're talking about European Commission, not the European Parliment. This action is being initiated by the directly-elected[1] Members of the European Parliment.

For readers more familiar with the US, the closest analogy is European Parliment == Congress, European Comission == Executive Branch [2]. Far from exact, but will give you a flavour of the reason the parent comment is so off base.

[1] In the countries I'm familar with they're all directly elected. Not sure if that's the case in all member states.

[2] Structure of the EU: http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en-390500.htm

Had a near lock on desktop operating systems. For a brief period of time. Which was quickly eroded by better, cheaper, more agile competition. If that is the definition of a monopoly you'd wonder why it is the bogey man. A monopoly is supposed to be enduring and accrue endless profits and competitors, not just be a successful business.

You ask whether this is what we want the government to intervene in? Quite frankly, no. Whatever ham-fisted attempts they make to try and 'intervene' will end up making things worse, as it usually does.

The market will sort google out sooner or later. They have an operating overhead budget that makes your eyes bleed and an extremely low switching cost product.

Switching costs are low but the barriers to entry into the market are massive - Larry and Sergi starting out today wouldn't be able to build a competitive search engine.

The more interesting question (to me at least) is whether search will be as important going forward as it has been for the past 20 years. As more data and activity moves into apps, more stuff is being silo-ed off from Google. Sure apps might be a blip before stuff moves back to the web but if they're not then Google may remain dominant in search but search itself may become a smaller part of the whole.

> The only real monopolies are those which are protected by government regulation or control.

Not according to the law. Any one who basically controls the market is a monopoly. Microsoft faced antitrust charges before as well and they were not protected by government regulation or control either.

Monopoly itself is not a crime, though. Abusing the power of monopoly is, which is something the European Union has to prove.

Controlling the market would mean excluding competitors and capturing all the profits. Microsoft is a poor example of a monopoly as any long term shareholder will tell you, because they have little power in the market, a scant ten years or so after they peaked in market share. That is an extremely lame monopoly if it is one.

All businesses are subject to market forces and cannot sustain a monopoly, Microsoft and Google included. Neither really meet the definition of a monopoly, which is generally the exclusion of all competition in a market.

A real monopoly is something like control over a city transportation network, something like taxi licensing. Which can only happen through government control.

> All businesses are subject to market forces and cannot sustain a monopoly

This is a very old view of free market, and perhaps only the proponents of classic economics can agree with you. Market forces have a natural tendency for monopoly, which is why monopoly laws are needed in the first place. For example, oil companies and ISPs are all monopolies naturally formed.

Now, the IT companies may be different. As you say, the technology in this area advances so rapidly that a monopoly at one time soon becomes irrelevant at another time. Still a monopoly Microsoft is in the area of desktop operating system, but the power of such monopoly has faded away.

But I don't think the European regulators would take this into account.

I kind of feel sorry for Europe, that their leaders can't see the enormous positive impact Google is having on the world.

And in general I hate behemoth corporations. Google is different. The moment they start behaving like other Fortune 100 companies is the moment I stop rooting for them.

There are still too many complacent monopolies in the world to break up Google. Unfortunately Google is the only one with the money and the balls to fight them.

The 'there are other worse things so we can ignore this' argument? Really?

Forgive my ignorance. What are we ignoring?

And of course we should change the taxation just to make them stop evading?

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...

I definitely don't believe in doing illegal things. If they're doing illegal things they should be prosecuted. If what SHOULD be illegal is NOT illegal, then IMO that's on the law makers.

> the enormous positive impact Google is having on the world.

They're having a lot of negative impact as well. They're not the paragon you believe they are.

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