Europe opens full probe into Google The European Commission has opened a formal probe into allegations that Google has abused its dominant position in online search by illegally favouring its own services. Formal proceedings follow complaints from search providers that Google's sponsored and unpaid search results showed preference to Google's own services. …
It's about Google abusing their market dominance in search to promote their other services above their competitors. Much like Microsoft abused their desktop dominance to make IE the most used browser Google can abuse their control of search to promote their services.
If you have a good internet product and Google decide to launch a competing one are you just going to give up? How will you compete if you're suddenly relegated to page 2 of a google search for "your product" and Google's offering is at the top of page 1?
(And you don't need gumption to understand something....)
"The European Commission has opened a formal probe into allegations that Google has abused its dominant position in online search by illegally favouring its own services.
Formal proceedings follow complaints from search providers that Google's sponsored and unpaid search results showed preference to Google's own services." ..... Err, excuse me but, is that not what RSS Feeds and Search Engine like Google's Virtual Money Machine are designed to do for you ...... Generate Leading Trails. ....... or Follow them into Virgin Fields where the Virtual Machinery and Central Processing Units have a Primed Consciousness and Basic Rudimentary Immaculate Conscience.
Although that may be way above European Commission pay grades, and thus Beautifully Free from the Meddling of the Middle in Esteemed and Exhalting Matters.
The European Commission may discover that US National Security Interests, requiring National Security Letters reinforcement, will render critical investigation fruitless and counter-productive.
People still get the run-around from vendors about how "this product needs Windows" when (1) the product in question could quite easily run a completely different operating system, and (2) the purchaser might already have Windows and doesn't need another copy of the software.
The IE bundling case is just a distraction from the illegal tying of Windows to hardware products. Unbundle Windows!
You search through Google and the Google search favours Google results? Of course they will, isn't this stating the bleedin' obvious? I'd expect Bing searches to favour Microsoft products. Drive the internet, don't let the internet drive you, are we taking too much for granted and accepting the first thing that pops up in front of our eyes now?
If you go to a shop and ask for advice on a new TV the salesman will favour the TVs sold in their shop. You don't expect the bloke in Currys to tell you there's a much better deal on at the local Sony Centre, and especially put it at the front of the things he has to say for the sake of fairness and impartiality.
... whereas Google most likely is. If Google is found to be an effective monopoly in the online search and ad serving business, and if it is doing what it is accused of doing, then it is an anti-trust abuse and they will be forced to change their business practice to help increase competition. What is permissible for a lesser business - because it will always have little to no real-world impact on competitors - is not permissible for a monopoly business, where it very much will.
'are we taking too much for granted and accepting the first thing that pops up in front of our eyes now?'
Yes, some people are. I recently had to oversee a 16 year old lads work experience placement (Bosses idea, I said I didn't want the pain in the arse). I asked gave him the symptoms of a problem that we were having with an HP printer and asked him to find the support document that would tell him how to fix it. It wasn't a difficult problem and I already knew how to do it, but I wanted to see if he could research a problem.
I watched him as he went to google, put in his keywords and then look at the results page. He saw the first result, turned to me and said 'it doesn't tell you how to fix it'. I kid you not, that is exactly what he said. I scrolled down the page for him and the answer was about result 6 on the page.
The complainants say all there is to know about the case: two damn American outfits who couldn't make the complaint stick in the U.S. and a Frog outfit who has cultural differences with the predominance of what is, in reality, a pretty good search facility ... for the price - free.
Pay for it and they might have a case.
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