Author Topic: Google Under Investigation by European Commission  (Read 3489 times)

creative666

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Google Under Investigation by European Commission
« on: November 30, 2010, 11:32:17 AM »
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11876443

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The European Commission has launched an investigation into Google after other search engines complained that the firm had abused its dominant position.

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The body said it would look into whether the world's largest search engine lowered the ranking of competing services in its results.

creative666

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Re: Google Under Investigation by European Commission
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2010, 11:48:14 AM »
Just so longs as I didnt have to pay any of the money back I made  :)

TallTroll

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Re: Google Under Investigation by European Commission
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2010, 04:49:29 PM »
I saw some stuff about this somewhere (can't find the link now), and it's a non-story. A Google rep noted that one of the complainants had probably lost positions due to the 79% of dupe content on their site. It was a gentle "Back off, or we'll tell everyone what a bunch of spammers you are" comment

bill

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JamesR

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Re: Google Under Investigation by European Commission
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2010, 06:06:46 AM »
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Getting upset that Google doesn’t point to other search engines is like getting upset that the New York Times doesn’t simply have headlines followed by a single paragraph of text that says “read about this story in the Wall Street Journal.”

Google is competing against everyone that has a site in their vertical, not just other search engines.  Does Danny really want Google to have a monopoly position in the search market and then load up the top of every SERP with its own sites?  How is this different from Microsoft monopolizing desktops and the browser market?

And if Google has the right to put its sites at the top of popular searches, why not let them have the whole first page? It's their search engine according to Danny so might as well let them.

TallTroll

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Re: Google Under Investigation by European Commission
« Reply #5 on: December 01, 2010, 11:39:12 AM »
How is what Google does conceptually different to the results you see when you search for a stock code on Yahoo (Y Finance result inserted above the natural results) or a local search in Bing (map and local results inserted above the natural results)?

Google may insert more of their own products into / above more terms, but you can argue (and I'm sure they will) that that just demonstrates that they do a better job of interpreting and serving the users query. It's a bit of a tired old cliche, but no-one is forced to use Google for anything. In cases where other services do something better than the Google product, people use those other services. Look at how much stuff they have released that has just bombed. Is that really the sign of market abuse?

I'm far from being a Google fanboi, but this whole thing stinks of third rate services crying to the authorities that someone is doing their job better than they do. If Google can be proved to have abused their position, of course they should be punished, but they shouldn't be punished for the fact that a lot of people use them, rather than someone else

creative666

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Re: Google Under Investigation by European Commission
« Reply #6 on: December 01, 2010, 02:27:41 PM »
I think what scares most (?) everyday webmaster is that Google can squash traffic to a site and in turn kill their business for no "apparent" reason - if Google were to ever answer they would simply say "its not our fault, its the algo, it decided your site wasnt relevant enough anymore... hey why not give our Adwords system ago in the mean time etc.." ;)

> > but they shouldn't be punished for the fact that a lot of people use them, rather than someone else

But surely when a service, no matter if its free or not, becomes so powerful that it can effect peoples lives they should be held accountable? More so if they sell associated services (Adwords) off of the back of that free service. Maybe thats a slightly naive view point but still a valid one ;)

Of course everyone should diversify their traffic , but for some people thats easier said than done when Google contribute 70% of your sites traffic - you worry about keeping the big GOOG happy.

Brad

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Re: Google Under Investigation by European Commission
« Reply #7 on: December 01, 2010, 02:44:27 PM »
A few years ago several larger countries like France and Germany were talking about launching national competitor SE's to Google out of just these fears, but nothing ever came of it.

Frankly, if I were a great power I'd feel nervous about a foreign company being the gate-keeper to the internet.  Maybe they ought to dust off those plans again?

bill

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Re: Google Under Investigation by European Commission
« Reply #8 on: December 02, 2010, 12:39:09 AM »
The Japanese government did something similar. They were upset that foreign companies like Yahoo and Google were beating out their native technology for searching the Japanese language. The government brought together several major global Japanese corporations to work on a search engine...but years have passed and nothing has come of it yet.