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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday April 28 2015, @01:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-search-engine-sees-all dept.

Reuters has revealed 18 of the 19 official complainants forming the basis of the European Union's anti-trust case against Google. Yelp's public policy director Luther Lowe told Reuters that "It's been clear from our meetings that U.S.-based companies have helped lead the charge by providing substantive evidence of Google's harm to consumers." The Register has this handy list:

  • BDZV, an organization of German newspaper publishers
  • Ejustice, a French legal search engine
  • Elfvoetbal, a Dutch football (soccer) news site
  • Euro-Cities, a German provider of city maps
  • Expedia, a US travel site
  • Foundem, a UK price comparison site
  • Hot-map, a German mapping firm
  • ICOMP, a UK-based organization for online businesses
  • Microsoft
  • Nextag, a US price comparison site
  • nnpt.it, an Italian online news aggregator
  • Odigeo, a group of travel sites headquartered in Spain
  • Streetmap, a UK road mapping service
  • TripAdvisor, a US travel site
  • VDZ, a German magazine publishers association
  • VfT, a German business listing site
  • Visual-Meta, a German lifestyle shopping aggregator
  • Yelp, a US business rating and comparison site
  • An anonymous complainant

[More after the Break]

In related news, eBay CEO John Donahoe told the Financial Times that the company is a major competitor to Google in the online shopping space, potentially supporting Google's case that it is not dominant in that market. However, "one of the first complainants to the European Commission, Shivaun Raff, founder of price-comparison service Foundem, told El Reg that the FT may be overstating the case":

"I suspect the FT has got the wrong end of the stick and misinterpreted a nuanced comment about the extent to which different kinds of services compete with each other," she said.

Less than two weeks ago, the search monster was slapped with a Statement of Objections (SO) by the EU Commission for abusing its dominant market position in search by directing users to its own Shopping service. Such a move is usually the first step on the road to punitive measures.

Google's argument is that is is not abusing dominance in the online shopping market because it is not dominant in that market – this is where Donahoe's comments will help Eric Schmidt sleep well at night.

However, complainants argue that merchant sites like eBay and Amazon are distinct from price-comparison sites such as Moneysupermarket.Com, Nextag and Twenga.

According to its own rules, the Commission's first step in a so-called Article 102 investigation is to assess whether the undertaking concerned is dominant or not. "Defining the relevant market is essential for assessing dominance, because a dominant position can only exist on a particular market. The relevant product market is made of all products/services which the consumer considers to be a substitute for each other due to their characteristics, their prices and their intended use," according to Commission rules.

Given that an SO has already been issued, it is likely that Vestager has already thought about this and come to the conclusion that Google is abusing dominance.

According to Raff, "Google is putting a brave face on it, but there is no question that this is the beginning of the end... Not even Google's formidable PR machine can put this genie back in the bottle."

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 28 2015, @03:36PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 28 2015, @03:36PM (#176107) Journal

    That's all well and good to conjecture, but brief pseudo-random digging suggests they're mostly not.

    They're all competitors to Google in one field or another, and that's both expected and tricky. Their motivations are suspect because every one of them would benefit from Google sinking. But they're also the ones(other than consumers) who are most affected by anti-competitive practices.

    There's no easy shallow analysis here. The only way to make any serious inference is to look at the claims they're presenting to the courts and assess those on their merits.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @03:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @03:45PM (#176117)

    Their motivations are suspect because every one of them would benefit from Google sinking.

    Isn't that pretty much the definition of legal standing?

  • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @04:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @04:29PM (#176135)

    Their motivations are suspect because every one of them would benefit from Google sinking.

    Kid: "Please make that bully stop punching me. He punches me every day."

    Principal: "You're only saying that because it would benefit you."

    Kid: "Well, yeah. That's the point."

    • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 28 2015, @05:52PM

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 28 2015, @05:52PM (#176178) Journal

      You noticed the sentence that followed that one. The one that qualified that by also implying their relevance towards anti-compete investigations?

      No?

      Well then the final sentence of my post is the thesis: that motivations and financial incentive aren't enough to digest the situation and we need to look at the evidence.