[Oletros]

> But I don't think they are different markets. If when you search for a web page google shows you the best result, why shouldn't it search for the best/cheapest online retailer? It's searching for the most relevant 'thing' on both cases.

But in this case this is not what happened.

What Google did was showing their product before every other shopping comparison product despite the rank

[jinushaun]

That makes no sense. That would be like forcing Google to show Bing results inside Google searches. Product comparison is a search category—just like image based search. It's not a different vertical.

[philippoi]

From the EU Commission's perspective, they're different categories and one of the reasons for the case in the first case was due to complaints from EU-based comparison shopping companies who claimed Google was unfairly suppressing their results in general Google search. From the perspective of a European comparison-shopping-only company, it is unfair competition from a company that spans a broader domain, hence the narrower definition used by the commission. For an antitrust case such as this one, it is a key point that Google has such high market share in web search, above 70% in EU searches. For such a dominant network, it's easy to leverage that dominance in other domains, but that's against the EU's antitrust laws.

[DannyBee]

"due to complaints from EU-based comparison shopping companies who claimed Google was unfairly suppressing their results in general Google search"

Replace "comparison shopping" with "image search" or "text result answer". Heck, replace it with "marketing spam company".

It's nonsense. This is why the US definition involves "does this harm consumers", not "does this harm businesses".

Businesses are harmed anytime anyone competes.

This is one of the reasons that the west tends to view the European approach to antitrust as "making it up as they go along" and "targeted at non-european competitors". Because they pretty much never go after european companies, and the rulings seem completely arbitrary depending on the whims of the current commissioners.

[philippoi]

Completely arbitrary is probably an exaggeration. I wrote a paper on this case for a Digital Cultural Policy class over a year ago so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but the previous commissioner almost settled the case and thought he had reached an agreement with Google that would pass in the Commission, but it failed to even reach a vote it was so poorly received.

If European businesses catch the ear of the Commission, it's usually to the tune of, "we're being cut off and consumers are thereby being cheated of the best deal." Sure, I omitted that from the previous comment, but the companies complaining know how to make their case, so it's never entirely protectionism in favor of European companies. I don't know if it would be possible to dispel the notion that it is always somewhat protectionism, so I won't go there.

The logic of the case made sense to me, and it follows a protocol that spans several commissioners. There are differences of approach depending on who's sitting in the chair, of course, but that's true of any government.

To return to your "Replace 'comparison shopping' with..." That's not a fair substitution. I see why you make it, I mean, they're tabs in the Google interface so the seem easily interchangeable. But underneath, there isn't a composite result returned on those searches with results from different vertical search engines like there is in shopping results (save "video" where YouTube and others show up), and there isn't the same opportunity for monetization from the search types you mentioned, so it's a monopoly powered search advantage that damages no one as presented on Google's results.

The US authorities are a bad standard in my view. They seem to be defanged puppies of the corporate overlords that bribe them into submission in many cases.

"The west!" How did I almost miss this gem?!? You make it sound as though the Iron Curtain didn't fall under Reagan's might but instead engulfed The Continent! Reminds me of Brick Tamland referring to Flyover Country as the Middle East :)

[Oletros]

> Because they pretty much never go after european companies,

Do you have any stat to back this claim?

> This is one of the reasons that the west

Define the "west"

[Oletros]

The EU was talking about the GENERAL search results, not the category