Comment by Brakenshire | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Brakenshire | Hacker News Reader

To copy from the previous discussion. These are the issues that are up for debate:

>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

In my opinion, there's zero chance of Google being broken up, what's more likely is that limited regulations get introduced for services as they are provided in Europe. I recall there being a great hoo-haa about the EU breaking up Microsoft, what actually happened were regulations that they unbundle Media Player and Internet Explorer, and provide some networking specifications to allow for third party clients to interface with Windows. I imagine something similar will happen here.

The intention was never to break them up. MEPs calling for it is just to show the EU Commission that they have the political support to take the gloves off.

If you actually want to know the justification for the EU doing this you should read this paper by Ben Edelman.

http://www.benedelman.org/publications/google-tying-2014-10-...

He's consulted for various Google competitors but he's also a professor at Harvard Business School, and the argument he makes is sound.

If by "consulted", you mean that Ben has been paid to come up with papers exactly like this for various anti-google lobbies, many many times over the past 10 years, then yes, he has "consulted".

Ben has literally no legal training in antitrust law that i'm aware of, so his opining on it is somewhat interesting.

(I edited this comment because Ben does have a JD from Harvard law that I forgot about, so he does have legal training, just not anything related to antitrust law)

When he's not writing antitrust papers, he's busy writing scare papers about click fraud, or online ad deals.

There are plenty of people who have views i disagree with, and respect. But folks like Ben, whose views seem to change entirely with who is paying him (i've watched him argue the same thing both ways depending on whether MS was doing it or Google was doing it), are not even worth arguing with.

You only have to look at his testimony list to see where his views lie, and have since 2006.

> Ben does have a JD from Harvard law that I forgot about

A major omission when attacking someone's legal qualifications.

> When he's not writing antitrust papers, he's busy writing scare papers about click fraud, or online ad deals

Yes, and they're scary because they are true. The insidious thing about click fraud is that consumers are the mules who do the work but generally are only indirectly harmed. Advertisers and merchants really get screwed. Ben has been exposing those situations for a decade.

> You only have to look at his testimony list to see where his views lie, and have since 2006.

Actually I worked with him in 2005 and his views were consistent then as well. If he works on behalf of people who share his views, that's not a bad thing is it? It's fully disclosed, which is more than I can say for many of his attackers.

FWIW: Ben is not fully disclosed by a longshot

See, e.g., http://mumbrella.com.au/google-adwords-benjamin-edelman-3700...

Do you actually have a rebuttal to anything he wrote in his paper?

> In my opinion, there's zero chance of Google being broken up

In 2004 when the European commission fined Microsoft €497m, I thought the company had good enough lawyers and lobbies to overturn it. This case and the next one in 2008 finally resulted in more than $2bn in fines [1], more than 3% of its global revenue [2].

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_comp...

[2] http://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global-...

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