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by jesusofsuburbia
220 days ago
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For any tech/electronics stuff I regularly use Geizhals, but it doesn't offer the same for clothes, for which I use idealo. I've compared prices online for 20 years now, and I can say that Google is objectively worse and you just notice how they push sponsored stuff. Often, the top results from the other 2 are not shown, nor do they show up as comparison alternatives in general. Whoevet claims that this is an act of EU punishing American companies through stupid policies is just blind. Google failed and continues to fail to offer something better; instead they misuse their monopoly position.
I can’t understand why you would defend Google's behavior. Maybe it is due to other motives, some weird nationalism even? To a consumer, price comparison is a crucial piece for enabling a true market with competition. |
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I think there's a much bigger one than nationalism; simply that most people find it very difficult to accept that they may have held incorrect beliefs for decades. And on HN particularly, that they've played an active role in helping these companies grow, and that the whole reason behind their personal wealth, and Bay Area dev wages in general, are these practices. People have thought that what they did was almost impeccably clean.
The FAANGs and their compatriots are undeniably very parasitic companies, abusive of market position, often dumping their goods at a loss to monopolize markets - Amazon, Netflix, Uber, likely Google with Gemini, dozens of examples. At the same time, unloading large negative externalities onto society. If a physical goods producing company had done anything similar, they would've been massively tarriffed if not banned decades ago.
It's funny because the average HNer would've been supportive of the trust case against Microsoft back in the day. Yet they often don't see that the these companies taking the same behavior and raising it by a few powers, means that all of these fines don't even begin to repay their debts.
I do hope one day I'll stop seeing "hurr why EU tech so bad and slow and uncompetitive", and people start thinking a bit more about how markets work in general, drawing some parallels with the physical world. If China were to start massive supermarkets in the US and offer everything at half the price of Walmart, taking on the debt, what would happen to Walmart? Or even just at 90% of the price, but with 5x the marketing budget?
Nothing because the US government would block them, otherwise they'd get crushed. Sounds like something the EU should do.