BBC News reports that, following a 5-year investigation, the EU have filed an official anti-competition complaint against Google:
The Commission is responding to complaints that Google, which accounts for more than a [sic] 90% of EU-based web searches, favours its own products in search engine results.
The European Commission has investigated the antitrust allegations - made by Microsoft, Tripadvisor, Streetmap and others - since 2010.
They object to the fact that the firm places reviews from Google+, directions from Google Maps, music and videos from YouTube, and adverts from its AdWords platform ahead of others' links in relevant searches.
Google have not officially replied to the complaint yet and have ten weeks to do so, although they have informed staff they have "a very strong case" and that competition to its search business was "thriving". Competition commissions in India, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan and Canada have opened investigations - the US commission dropped its probe in 2013 after Google agreed to several non-binding commitments. Competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager has also launched an investigation into the Android operating system.
Google Search Senior Vice President Amit Singhal has published an unofficial response to the complaint. The Register has additional coverage (article from yesterday), reactions from interested parties, and a longer analysis by Andrew Orlowski. Bloomberg has a timeline of key events spanning the 5-year investigation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:05PM
Google featuring Youtube certainly smacks of the sort of thing Microsoft did, e.g. when they made IE the default browser for Windows.
OTOH there was a structural reason for MS' Windows monopoly - it simply made financial sense for ISVs (independent software vendors) to develop to the Windows API and UX first, and (maybe) to Mac OS later. OS/2 and other OS's were usually completely ignored - b/c that would take concentrated effort from the ISV's 'A' team of engineers, and the 'A' team had a long list of features to work on.
I don't see how that applies in Google's case. Sure, it's expensive as heck to have data centers around the world with 10**6 rack mounted servers, but that's just a matter of investment, not industry structure.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kadal on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:18PM
Man, I read your comment and remembered seeing links to DailyMotion et al in my search results a long time ago (I use DDG now). But, I just typed "animals as leaders" into Google, clicked "Videos" and all you get are youtube results for ten pages!
Changing the string to "animals as leaders dailymotion" gets me a bunch of accurate DailyMotion results. There's clearly something wrong here.
(Score: 1) by kadal on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:19PM
Forgot to mention that I didn't look past the tenth page, it didn't show signs of ending.
(Score: 3, Funny) by kaszz on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:22PM
Try the last page?
I think I got an idea for a filter... :->
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:22PM
Dailymotion: 60 million views per day.
YouTube: 1,200 million views per day.
PageRank promotes pages that are linked to more often.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:28PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday April 16 2015, @02:07AM
Man, I read your comment and remembered seeing links to DailyMotion et al in my search results a long time ago (I use DDG now). But, I just typed "animals as leaders" into Google, clicked "Videos" and all you get are youtube results for ten pages!
Whether it means anything or not, the first search result using "animals as leaders dailymotion" had 1129 views on Dailymotion, while the last result on page 10 of Google using "animals as leaders" had 1161 views on YouTube. I also found no presence for the band on Dailymotion while the first results on YouTube/Google were postings by their record label for the band. Possibly a bad choice for testing searches.
(Score: 1) by kadal on Thursday April 16 2015, @01:57PM
OK. I stand corrected. Searching for "state of the union" returns a whole bunch of results from other sites even on page 1.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:12PM
I think the probe into computer phone OS Android will have the most merit. But then, iOS will also be probed.
Giving preferential treatment to their own services in searches is easy to fix. So perhaps they should just quit doing it.
(Score: 1) by wisnoskij on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:40PM
I don't know if it is anti-competitive or not, but I sure would prefer there to be a law preventing search engines from messing with the results in anyway. Other than maybe some algorithm used to give unpopular results a chance to be occasionally seen and a chance to get popular. definitely not in anyway to promote specific products, ideas, or politics.
From what I understand, corporations are allowed to campaign for a particular ideology/political party? So Google could legally choose to redirect all searches for "Republican" to anti-republican websites? And filter out all negative feedback from "democrat" searches?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:45PM
It's the subtle, probabilistic changes that could be more problematic. Most users do not click past page 1 of search results.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:49PM
I only vote for Repucrats the party for us Grey people! ;^)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:56PM
This reminds me of net neutrality: the ISP should not fuck with the traffic depending on content, a similar logic should apply to search results.
I lolled hard when I read "the US commission dropped its probe in 2013 after Google agreed to several non-binding commitments." The US sure spanks its megacorps...
I myself won't touch anything google with a barge pole.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday April 16 2015, @02:15AM
From what I understand, corporations are allowed to campaign for a particular ideology/political party? So Google could legally choose to redirect all searches for "Republican" to anti-republican websites? And filter out all negative feedback from "democrat" searches?
I believe it was AOL that got caught doing this years ago, although it was the opposite with searches for issues and political parties all coming up Republican.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday April 15 2015, @04:00PM
> that Google, which accounts for more than a [sic] 90% of EU-based web searches, favours its own products in search engine results.
So what?
If I ever walk into Walmart or Target, I expect their store-brand to be front and center everywhere. But while there are towns with only a Walmart, and PC tools with only Win support, Duckduckgo, Bing, and a few dozen others are just a click away (Google search isn't even in Mint's Mozilla out of the box, and Google stopped paying to be Mozilla's default), ready to lead you into the same internet. You're not being forced to install an alternate browser, it's just a different address. People are idiots, but there's a limit to how much we need to protect the average joe/jane from their own laziness.
If you think you're more likely to find what you need in $bigBox, you expect that their stuff will be preeminent, and they will push some of the rest based on their customer's likely consumption. I didn't hear that anybody is forcing Target to reduce the footprint of their store brand...
If my ISP did that, sure, sue their ass to the ground. But at last check even my Android phone didn't force me to Google search. And the dummy G-account, created just for it, isn't setup for anything else.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by wantkitteh on Wednesday April 15 2015, @04:36PM
I think you inadvertently hit the nail on the head right there - "If I ever walk into Walmart or Target" suggests you have a choice of equally good stores to visit. Google have excellent quality search, that's undeniable, and no-one else even touches their search result relevance or index rate / breadth. That's why they have a monopoly and there's nothing wrong with that, it's their primary product and it kicks ass. Whether Google have taken advantage of the integration of their products to push their own services over other services on an un-level playing field as far as search result prevalence is concerned is up to a team of professional hair-splitters to decide.
No sympathy for Google from me - can't pay your taxes? Have a few billion a year in recurring fines instead, all the same to my economy.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @07:29AM
They don't, really. They used to, but nowadays Google search results are getting close to what Altavista used to be. Remember Altavista? Altavista used to be the big search provider that nobody could touch. Until a couple of guys made a search engine that found what you were looking for in the first hit, rather than somewhere in the thousands of pages like Altavista. They did this by creating a better search algorithm, but also by using AND rather than OR - with Altavista, if you wanted usefull search results you had to add a + in front of every freaking word to get it to AND rather than OR. A few years ago, Google changed so that you had to add a + in front of every freaking word, and then a little later replaced + with double quotes.
What we need is two guys in a Garage.
Oh, I'm sure Microsoft could do better, if they really tried, but as it is right now, the only reason the rapid downwards direction of Google Search hasn't yet taken Google below Bing is that Microsoft has been working hard to make sure Bing is even crappier.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Wednesday April 15 2015, @07:14PM
If I ever walk into Walmart or Target
That's a neat way of looking at the issue. Walmart has a store in your town. Consequently, you often find yourself shopping at Walmart. This means Walmart makes more money, which leads to them having enough money to open another store in another town. Can't fault them for that... and thus the cycle continues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @06:21AM
If I ever walk into Walmart or Target, I expect their store-brand to be front and center everywhere. But while there are towns with only a Walmart, and PC tools with only Win support, Duckduckgo, website, and a few dozen others are just a click away (website search isn't even in Mint's Mozilla out of the box, and website stopped paying to be Mozilla's default), ready to lead you into the same internet. You're not being forced to install an alternate browser, it's just a different address. People are idiots, but there's a limit to how much we need to protect the average joe/jane from their own laziness.
Sure, but when Microsoft did it, you were up in arms, right? After all, IE was their store-brand and you didn't like it when *it* was front and center.
But at last check even my Android phone didn't farce me to Google search. And the dummy G-account, created just for it, isn't setup for anything else.
More pertinently: *DO YOU* use Google search? Do you perhaps use it because it's the default and you never got around to installing another search app?
If so,their ploy was successful and their position has been used to exploit you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @07:31AM
Windows was their grocery brand. IE was their car brand.
What we didn't like was that every time we bought something to eat, we had to buy a new car also.
This was made even worse by IE being less stable than a Reliant.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday April 15 2015, @10:55PM
"Now see here, Google. You don't hire enough employees in Bananastan so unless you do, we're going to declare you a monopoly and fine you."
So Google hires some local people, they pay taxes, and the government is happy.
I think the key thing Google got right (excluding the great search results) was the plain, simple, lightweight homepage that would be pretty quick to load on a 56K connection. Even on weak PCs with high-speed connections, users consider Google "faster" because it takes less time to load/render than MSN-Bing and Yahoo's atrocity.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]