[kuisch]

As stated in the press release, the fine has been calculated on the basis of the value of Google's revenue from its comparison shopping service in the 13 EEA countries concerned, taking into account the "duration and gravity" of the infringement. What the commission is asking is simply equal treatment between rival comparison shopping services and its own.

[briandear]

When I visit rivalshoppingservice.com then I would expect to see that rival shopping service. When I visit google, I would expect to see google.

Are the rivals going to be required to show google results now or is this really not about choice but about crippling google or is it about extracting an easy multi-billion dollar payday?

When I go to the SNCF (French rail) website, are they showing me flight and bus options or only their train results?

Nobody is forcing anyone to visit google. It’s a website. Perhaps if the EU really cared, they’d ask themselves why Europe hasn’t produced a credible Google rival.

That settlement money ought to go directly to funding EU startups. Instead it will likely make its way into CAP agricultural subsidies. The Common Agricultural Policy is about 35% of the entire EU budget despite supporting an industry that that is just 1.6% of EU GDP. It’s clear that the EU prioritizes some industries over others and then they wring their hands when American tech becomes ubiquitous.

[gpderetta]

Except that Google is not a shopping service. Using a dominant position in one market to acquire one in a different market is not allowed.

[mythz]

They're returning relevant information Customers are searching for. If it wasn't relevant or useful people would use a different Service they'd deem more valuable to them. A major part of Google's simplicity is they provide a single search box you can use to search for anything, I don't want to have to go to 100 different sites to search for 100 different things.

[Kurtz79]

"They're returning relevant information Customers are searching for."

They were really not.

For every search you assume you will be given the more popular matches, what they were doing was purposefully bypassing their own algorithm to their advantage, giving doctored results.

There wouldn't have been any problem if they promoted their service making it clear it was not part of the search results.

EDIT: For a counterexample, google "flights price compare".

You will be shown a small form at the top from which you can use their own service.

It is clearly separated from the search results, which show the actual most popular websites for flight comparison.

[euyyn]

> what they were doing was purposefully bypassing their own algorithm to their advantage, giving doctored results

Where did you get this from?

[Kurtz79]

"Google has systematically given prominent placement to its own comparison shopping service: when a consumer enters a query into the Google search engine in relation to which Google's comparison shopping service wants to show results, these are displayed at or near the top of the search results.

Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results: rival comparison shopping services appear in Google's search results on the basis of Google's generic search algorithms. Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted. Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down. Google's own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including such demotions."

[yazan94]

From the article:

> Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results: rival comparison shopping services appear in Google's search results on the basis of Google's generic search algorithms. Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted. Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down. Google's own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including such demotions.

There is nothing wrong with Google's integration. The complaint is that Google unfairly promotes its own services at the expense of rivals. When I search for something, I expect the search results displayed to be relevant and fair. I have no problem with Google having that sponsored Google Shopping ad, but demoting other highly relevant results to the fourth page is highly anti-competitive and downright unfair. How many times in the last week have you actually flipped through 4 pages of Google Search results?

[tripzilch]

So, their market dominance was established from their web search product. The antitrust ruling was based on them abusing the power that comes with this dominance to stifle competition with their shopping product.

While it may be the case that today, Google likes to pile all these things into one integrated product (the user benefit of this being really debatable, even if you personally like it), their market dominance was initially acquired from their web search.

If they had historically always been demoting other shopping sites in favour of their own, they would probably not have gotten this dominant at all. One of the features that set Google apart from the other big search engines in its early days was in fact very similar: Other engines would sell rankings and other tricks often favouring profit over relevance. Google didn't do this, partially out of "principle" (which is apparently lost now), partially because their pagerank algorithm was so superior in ranking for relevance that they didn't need to. If they had only returned results for their own shopping business, it wouldn't have gained nearly as much support and wouldn't have been as successful.

But because of this established market dominance, they can get away with it today, because everything is integrated, people just google stuff, even if shopping results are heavily skewed towards their own. And not only does this obscure competition, the competition that does appear far down really sucks, and now you have people arguing that Google Shopping is actually in fact better. Google's web search has deteriorated in quality quite a bit, especially for queries related to "integrated Google products", which makes sense because why bother sorting out a web filled with spam for the good bits (like they used to work very hard at) if you can just push your own product instead?

Finally, regardless of whether Google likes to integrate and pile everything into one heap, Online Shopping and Web Search are different markets.

That's the whole point of this antitrust, just because different businesses in different markets can be grouped under one huge company, doesn't mean it can abuse its market dominance in one market to stifle competition in another.

[AndrewKemendo]

Last I checked the Google group of services did in fact include a shopping service, and a mapping service etc... so I'm not sure what you mean.

They have a dominant position in many markets.

[esturk]

And this claim is not about the other dominant positions because if they are the better product, they will be shown. This is about Google trying to prop up an inferior product in a non-dominant position using their dominant search position. In this case, the inferior non-dominant position product is Google Shopping. There better dominant positioned product out there that Google does not own which it is not showing fairly.

[jolic]

> When I go to the SNCF (French rail) website, are they showing me flight and bus options or only their train results?

Yes, apparently they do show bus results. Both from their own bus company and at least one seemingly unrelated one. I know it is similar in Sweden with SJ, which shows trains and buses from other companies.

> Nobody is forcing anyone to visit google. It’s a website. Perhaps if the EU really cared, they’d ask themselves why Europe hasn’t produced a credible Google rival.

Isn't that essentially what they are doing? It might be to late to compete on web search. That doesn't mean Google should have an unfair advantage in other search like price comparison.

> That settlement money ought to go directly to funding EU startups.

Most EU startups will be happy if they just have a chance to compete "pound for pound". US companies have been enjoying single digit VAT and corporate income tax for years. Which is both the result of EU laws and the US leaving their own "loopholes" open to make their companies more competitive.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax-checkthebox-insigh...

[ubernostrum]

Google has a dominant position in search. Google also has lots of other businesses offering different products and services. Maybe those other businesses really are the very best in their respective markets, maybe they aren't. In a proper market, we would find out which is best from seeing them compete against other companies' products/services, and the need to out-compete other companies would drive quality up and prices down.

What actually happened was that Google removed the need to compete with anyone, by always listing its own other businesses up-front in search results. Since Google has the dominant position in the search market, this guarantees a steady stream of customers to the other businesses, even if they're not as good as other companies' products/services, and means they don't face competitive pressure. Without competitive pressure, quality doesn't get driven up and prices don't get driven down.

Since we want competitive markets to drive quality up and prices down, we have laws which don't allow a company that dominates one type of product/service to use that as a way to achieve dominance in other products/services by avoiding the need to compete.