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back to article Google versus the EU: Sigh. You can't exploit a contestable monopoly

So, the EU Commission is going to call Google in and give it a really hard talking to for offering what Google's users rather like to have. And if they decide that, well, Google has been giving the consumers what the consumers desire, good and hard, then they're going to fine the Chocolate Factory up to 10 per cent of global …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If there's a case to be made against Google, surely that case is on behalf of the advertisers NOT those using the search. Search is free and users can chose any result returned. Advertisers though pay for ranking, and if Google is manipulating the rankings to be other than what they claim when selling advertising, then they would be guilty of misrepresentation.

    As users though, you have no interest in regulating, if the results offend, use an alternative. You can do so freely, and you use Google if you do because it provides benefits that you pay only very indirectly for.

    4 0 Reply
  2. Gannon (J.) Dick

    Wohoo

    "We'll be incrementally creepy and you just tell us when to stop, OK?" is not a monopoly it is blame shifting in preparation for contestability.

    Like, you mean we gotta pay Taxes like everybody else ? etc., etc., etc.

    1 0 Reply
  3. Ilmarinen
    Devil

    Nibbled to death by an okapi

    Too BIG, too sly, too money - In the words of The Dammed: Smash It Up!

    0 0 Reply
    1. Dan Paul
      Reply Icon

      Re: Nibbled to death by an okapi

      "Too BIG, too sly, too money - In the words of The Dammed: Smash It Up!"

      You mean like the European Union and the corrupt EUC????????

      0 1 Reply
  4. Sam Adams the Dog

    Rockefeller and Amazon?

    "Rockefeller was a shrewd cookie. He continued to push the price of kerosene and other oil products downwards, even when he was the dominant player."

    Just like Amazon with AWS....

    0 0 Reply
  5. Richie 1

    There is an argument that Google's search business is non-contestable

    The article rightly points out that competitors don't provide results that are of the same quality as Google's, and that if they did, consumers would move to the alternate service. This is the argument for it being a contestable monopoly.

    However, the quality of search is to a large part determined by the quantity of data available to the service, which is determined by the number of existing users. (The algorithms for generating search results are mostly documented in journal papers and implemented in open source software, so they are available to all players; there is some skill involved in creating the search engine from these, but quantity of data is a huge factor.)

    The fact that the size of the existing userbase determines the quality of the product leads towards a search market with a single dominant player. So there is an argument that Google should be regulated as a monopoly (though probably not to the extent that a natural monopoly is).

    You can see a similar thing with eBay and auctions: more buyers and sellers makes selling and buying respectively more attractive on that platform, and the market again tends towards a dominance by a single player.

    0 0 Reply

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