back to article Culture minister rejects calls for UK probe of Google search biz

Culture minister Ed Vaizey has rejected calls for UK regulators to investigate Google's search business practices. Tory MP Dominic Raab asked Vaizey to comment on why the Office of Fair Trading or indeed the Competition Commission hadn't undertaken their own probes into Google's search product, which currently has a 95 per …

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  1. gerryg
    FAIL

    Is that a bandwagon I see rolling past?

    First off - IIRC the European Competition Commission has competence here, I find the idea the Foundem is Bracknell based and this is solely a UK issue to be slightly ludicrous.

    I also find the sudden interest in parallel markets and tying to be all part of the fun: software licences and hardware, anyone? iPlayer and Windows media player, ergo Windows OS?

    Then there are operating system and application dependent public services.

    So many places that someone in the legislature could have started if they really gave a shit about net neutrality.

    1. MrCheese
      FAIL

      Net Neutrality?

      This had got nothing to do with net neutrality it's good old fashioned "monopoly abusing it's position" case. And yes t hey all do it, but most of them have also be fined, or are under investigation.

      1. gerryg

        @Mr Cheese

        While we're arguing among ourselves, no "it's about using a dominant position in one market to control another"

        The MP raised the issue in a debate about net neutrality - which of course does have a technical meaning concerning traffic shaping - my point being there are many ways in which the net isn't neutral and in which the MP in question appears to have shown no interest.

  2. Jeff 11
    Thumb Up

    It'd be pointless either way

    Asking UK.gov to do this would, at best, result in a spurious multi-million pound report produced by £1k/day legal consultants, which would have few feasible recommendations and contradict the EU's own legislation when they form theirs anwyay. And since every instance of government plus technology equals absolute disaster, I'm happy for them to leave it to the EU. We pay for them to do this sort of thing.

  3. piemonte pete
    WTF?

    You scratch my back I'll scratch yours

    Of course it wouldn't have anything to do with Google helping Vaizey out over blocking digital "piracy" sites( Digital Economy Act) . See Jeremy Hunt's answer (q15) at the 30 March meeting of the Culture, Media, Sport Committee (taken from the uncorrected transcript)

    "Jeremy Hunt: Yes, but the other point I would make is that there may be other ways to do this. One of them, for example, is making it harder to find those sites on search engines like Google. One of the encouraging things that has happened as a result of roundtables that have been set up by Ed Vaizey has been that Google is co-operating in a way that has not happened previously. It is now much harder to find many of those sites than it has been before, but I am sure there is much more work that can be done.

    Q16 Ms Bagshawe: That is a tremendous achievement for the Minister for the Arts, which the industry is very grateful for. …"

    Can't post HTML but see http://scibella.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/the-lion-the-lamb-shall-lie-down-together/ for links to the transcript etc..

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