According to The Wall Street Journal:
The European Union's antitrust regulator on Tuesday fined Alphabet Inc.'s Google a record €2.42 billion ($2.71 billion) for favoring its own comparison-shopping service in search results and ordered the search giant to apply the same methods to rivals as its own when displaying their services.
[...] If the ruling sets a precedent that holds, these firms might all have to rethink how they make products that—like Google's search engine—have become more than just tools, but dominant gateways to the wider internet.
From The New York Times:
While the fine will garner attention, the focus will most likely shift quickly to the changes that Google will have to make to comply with the antitrust decision, potentially leaving it vulnerable to regular monitoring of its closely guarded search algorithm.
CNBC adds that, based on a filing, Google expects to ultimately pay this fine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @12:44AM (1 child)
https://betanews.com/2017/06/27/europe-guts-google-and-thats-just-wrong/ [betanews.com]
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/googles-amazon-defense-search-giant-cites-rivals-rise-response-2-7b-eu-antitrust-fine/ [geekwire.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @01:15AM
"Temporarily embarrassed billionaires" rush to defend Google. When (when! not if) the hopeful peons strike it rich, they shurely don't want to pay no taxes no fines no fees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @01:32AM (2 children)
If they are not the opportunity for rigging the results is very high, not that this is going to do anything about this problem, but this sort of closed system is endemic in most digital markets
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @02:02AM (1 child)
Coupons don't exist. Group discounts don't exist. Market segmentation doesn't exist. Price discrimination never happens. Extra cheese is two dollars.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @03:25AM
Yes let us conflate at the things that will make things less clear
(Score: 2) by J053 on Wednesday June 28 2017, @02:03AM (5 children)
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:57AM (4 children)
2016 revenues: $89.5B
I figure 11 days. So, yeah, not even 2 weeks.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Wootery on Wednesday June 28 2017, @09:34AM (3 children)
So you're deliberately looking at revenue rather than profit, in order to make the fine look insignificant.
Great work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @02:02PM (2 children)
Doubt he knows the difference tbqh. All money earned by a corporation is equally evil capitalist money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @10:48PM (1 child)
In b4 not if it's an employee owned co-op.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @09:49AM
Employee-owned==ESOP; Capitalist
Worker-owned==cooperative; Socialist
You have the attention span of a gnat.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday June 28 2017, @02:28AM (4 children)
What is this fine costing them, vs what did they gain in market share? Google, er, Alphabet looks long term. This fine could just be a cost of growing your business.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday June 28 2017, @07:40AM (3 children)
As implied in NYT article, the bigger risk for Google is that EU will start looking at its search engine as more of a platform to sell other products and not a product in itself. If this gets established legally, through whatever and however convoluted logic, Google will be asked to ensure that every one is being treated fairly. Kind of a like net-neutrality for search engine. That in itself is fine, but then it opens a legal venue to demand source code. Back in the day there was a lot of talk that Microsoft was going to be forced to open source Windows, so this conclusion is not completely out of the blue. But if I were to guess I would say that it is not going to happen, just like it didn't happen for Microsoft. Government bodies in western societies are more or less designed to facilitate commerce with least restriction (i.e. capitalist) so they will prefer to fine a company multiple times than making business decisions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @07:25PM (2 children)
commerce with least restriction (i.e. capitalist)
That's not Capitalism (the opposite of which is Socialism); both of those are methods of PRODUCTION with different ownership models.
What you are attempting to describe are MARKETS and regulation of those markets.
Markets are a part of -any- economic system.
While the inaccurate term "Crony Capitalism" is often used in this context, the (phony) term that is most often used is "The Free Market" (a Libertarian fantasy).
N.B. There is no such thing as a "Free Market"; markets are a construct of government.
Without a mechanism to set rules, enforce contracts, and settle disputes, what you have is The Law of the Jungle (the guy with the largest, most effective aggressor force comes out on top; see a history of Chicago in the 1920s or modern day Somalia).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Thursday June 29 2017, @03:03AM (1 child)
Thanks. I know that. I didn't mean what you understood. There is also a philosophy part, like a doctrine, that runs through the system. Western capitalist societies have as a rule made it easy to do business. This has got nothing to do with market. They have regulated and deregulated with explicit goal of enabling more transactions and involving more people, with the idea that greater good will follow. Nitty gritty details are different for each country etc., of course. But socialist societies look at greater good at all times without worrying about long term effects or how it will effect market economics. I was talking about that difference. Just as an example, USA bailed out its giant defaulters, while a country like Venezuela will simply nationalize that asset.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @04:44AM
Since you used the plural and indicated large groups of people, go ahead and name 2 such "societies" where ownership of the means of production by The Workers is a thing.
Keep in mind that when -you- "own" something, -you- get to make the decisions about that something.
The closest I can come is Yugoslavia from the 1950s into the 1980s, which had worker-owned workplaces--BUT they had a national dictator who could crush any decision made anywhere in the country.
As such, I reject your terminology.
Western capitalist societies [...] have regulated and deregulated with explicit goal of enabling more transactions and involving more people, with the idea that greater good will follow
...if you go back many many decades, to when that was a bit more true.
...and, oddly enough, those Liberal Democracies are often (incorrectly) called "socialist".
"Involving more people"? Today? In post-Reagan USA? Not so much.
Throw in post-Thatcher UK for good measure.
Economics professor Thomas Piketty in his 696-page analysis of Capitalism concludes that the Capitalist economic system leads to Oligarchy, with the rich buying up the gov't.
The amassing of more wealth than can be spent by the tiny number of individuals holding that wealth serves no logical economic purpose--and that is what Oligarchs do.
If that wealth was instead distributed among The Workers via wages that are proportional with their ever-increasing productivity, that wealth would be spent into the economy, making that stronger.
That's not what's happening and what's happening is the opposite of your claim.
Capitalism is simply another flawed/failed economic system through which we are passing on the way to egalitarian worldwide Socialism.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @02:32AM (2 children)
"Don't be evil" --> "Don't give a fuck"
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @03:28AM (1 child)
alphabets moto is "Do the right thing" whatever that mean in there context
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @05:52AM
Google is deader than Radio Raheem.
(Score: 1) by dbv on Wednesday June 28 2017, @03:27AM (1 child)
to censor and filter information [seekingalpha.com] according to EU standards. Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo [softpedia.com] and others too. Germany is at the forefront [businessinsider.com] of that. I wonder whether this anti-trust action is related to tech industry generally avoiding their diktats.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @03:32AM
It's possible it is all related, the EU's internet and IP regulations are all over the map and problematic to say the least, but that does not mean that they are wrong on this.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday June 28 2017, @10:34AM (2 children)
The original complaints were from various "comparison shopping" sites. IIRC, the very first complaint was from Foundem [foundem.co.uk].
I am personally very happy that comparison-shopping sites do not appear at the top of the search results. There's nothing more annoying than searching for a product and landing on a crappy comparison-shopping site. First, they do not contain any useful product information. Second, they aren't even useful for shopping: the retailers have to "pay to play", and more often than not the prices are not real, but rather some sort of "bait and switch". De-ranking these sites is Google search doing its job.
Google's mistake was placing their own comparison-shopping results on the search page. This genuinely was unfair, even if the results were probably equally crappy (dunno, never used them). They have since moved their results to a separate tab, where they are more easily ignored. That said, a 10-digit fine seems a bit ridiculous, no?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:15AM
Depends on whether they were warned already not to do that, and did it anyway.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday June 28 2017, @07:21PM
The mistake was that they did so to expressly promote their own Google Shopping results.
A couple years after launch, the Google Shopping service was, in Google's own wording(*), 'going nowhere'. From that moment on, rival comparison shopping services systematically turned up on average on page 4 of Google's own search results.
* internal email traffic
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:40AM (3 children)
VW emissions are estimated to have killed people and they were fined 6x more. Can't say that the order of shopping results on Google seems one 6th as important as the extra smog caused by Diesel emissions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @02:05PM
Such fines are handed down on a regular basis to all manenr of companies, just because all those don't get that much publicity doesn't mean they don't happen (all it means is that the tech media is biased toward tech companies). There's a list of such actions on the commission webpage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @02:32PM (1 child)
Not only that, but you should not go by what VW was fined, you need to look at what they will end up paying. HINT: it will be a fucking fraction!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @02:55PM
Also, how much is VW making and how much goog? I think this is similar to net neutrality as pointed above and thus quite important. Google sadly has a MASSIVE market share.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @02:29PM
I don't trust for one bit that this is not politically motivated BS. Google should pay the fine in Series FU non-convertible stock. The EU is a corrupt, authoritarian, regime, that swings it's newly minted dick around to scare all the other tech companies into compliance for their thought-police surveillance super-laws. It's a massive bureaucratic behemoth, and if you go against them, they will try to bury you, you just don't know where the attack will come from.