EU launches antitrust probe into alleged Google abuses

EU launches antitrust probe into alleged Google abuses

www.bbc.co.uk

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

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

The probe follows complaints by firms including price comparison site Foundem and legal search engine ejustice.fr.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This doesn't surprise me one bit. I just wish other countries would follow suit and break up a few other mega corporations that control and dominate markets. I think these huge corps are Really Really bad for our overall economy.

Would love to see wal-mart in this situation.

Its very interesting the EU announces they are going to investigates but stressed that Google is not accused of any wrong doing.

It would be very easy for google to do something like this imho.

www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Originally posted by LDragonFire


This doesn't surprise me one bit. I just wish other countries would follow suit and break up a few other mega corporations that control and dominate markets. I think these huge corps are Really Really bad for our overall economy.

Would love to see wal-mart in this situation.

Its very interesting the EU announces they are going to investigates but stressed that Google is not accused of any wrong doing.

It would be very easy for google to do something like this imho.

www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

I have to disagree with you. 10-15 years ago, Microsoft was the big bad guy and there was talk of making the government break it up into an OS company, an applications company and development tools company. Now they have more compettion than ever, from Linux and Apple on the OS side to Chrome on the Browser side and Android, Apple and RIM on the smartphone front. Even Zune only holds a minute share of the market compared to Ipod. If Google actually broke any laws, then that's different. Just my 2 cents.

Originally posted by peter_kandra
10-15 years ago, Microsoft was the big bad guy and there was talk of making the government break it up into an OS company, an applications company and development tools company. Now they have more compettion than ever, from Linux and Apple on the OS side to Chrome on the Browser side and Android, Apple and RIM on the smartphone front. Even Zune only holds a minute share of the market compared to Ipod.

The Zune and smartphone comments don't really apply because nobody ever accused MSFT of having a dominant market position in those markets. Your claims of other competition in operating systems and browsers, which ARE the major markets for MSFT (along with their office suite) don't hold much water. Nobody ever said MSFT was the ONLY company in those markets, but in looking at these graphs for OS and browser, they are still extremely dominant, don't you agree?:

www.osnews.com...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/734c99608c14.png[/atsimg]

The Chrome sliver is probably bigger today but still pretty small I think, and I can barely even see the Safari sliver. Even on the OS side,the Apple sliver is pretty tiny.

Monopolies or near monopolies DO need to be regulated, glad to see someone taking action.

yeah. But who really cares? Apple are screwing it up for themselves by charging so bloody much. For example go into PC World. Acer laptops £399 to £499. Dell £399 to £499. Get to the Mac section. £999 for a laptop with lower specs than the Acer and Dell ones.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by peter_kandra
10-15 years ago, Microsoft was the big bad guy and there was talk of making the government break it up into an OS company, an applications company and development tools company. Now they have more compettion than ever, from Linux and Apple on the OS side to Chrome on the Browser side and Android, Apple and RIM on the smartphone front. Even Zune only holds a minute share of the market compared to Ipod.

The Zune and smartphone comments don't really apply because nobody ever accused MSFT of having a dominant market position in those markets. Your claims of other competition in operating systems and browsers, which ARE the major markets for MSFT (along with their office suite) don't hold much water. Nobody ever said MSFT was the ONLY company in those markets, but in looking at these graphs for OS and browser, they are still extremely dominant, don't you agree?:

www.osnews.com...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/734c99608c14.png[/atsimg]

The Chrome sliver is probably bigger today but still pretty small I think, and I can barely even see the Safari sliver. Even on the OS side,the Apple sliver is pretty tiny.

Monopolies or near monopolies DO need to be regulated, glad to see someone taking action.

Sure, I'd agree. The point is their marketshare was once much larger. Plus we haven't even delved into the server world...I'm sure the slivers are much closer to even on an MS server OS vs Linux/Unix and in the DB world, SQL Server has always had the smaller share. Don't get me wrong, I'm not for a monopoly, I just think the government should stay out of how businesses conduct their affairs (as long as they are legal and accountable)

This is a bit of a hard one to call for me.
I can see why the laws against people abusing a monopoly exist, Like for example Microsoft making it impossible to run windows without ie installed, they are effectively using their monopoly to stop any other business ever being able to gain any share of that market.

With Google though their complaint seems to be that Google is promoting their own services over another's. Isn't that what every business is supposed to do? Google still listed these sights on their search results, they just gave preferential positions to their own.
No business that I know of would advertise their competitors services in a preferential place to their own, why should they?