Posted on 07/18/2018 3:55:34 PM PDT by Mariner
Europe’s latest move to rein in Google puts pressure on U.S. regulators and lawmakers to curb the power of the Silicon Valley giant—a step Americans have thus far been reluctant to take.
The European Union slapped Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOGL -0.01% with a $5 billion fine for abusing the dominance of its Android mobile platform on Wednesday, the EU’s second major antitrust action against the internet search provider in a little more than a year.
No similar action appears on the horizon in the U.S., where Google and other top tech companies have benefited from the prevailing view that their business practices, on the whole, benefit consumers beyond any concerns they might raise. Their considerable political clout in Washington also has helped shield them from scrutiny.
But in recent months, various U.S. policy makers have voiced concerns that Google’s practices are stifling competition and endangering the privacy of billions of users. These voices have helped put an assortment of potential policy measures against Google and other companies on the table.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Now that makes no sense whatsoever.
I choose neither.
I think you lost the context. I was responding to this, "...and go running to government to protect them from competition."
Thinking the government should say "no" when someone comes looking for favors is the opposite of what you seem to think I said.
Of course not. Google has the best politicians money can buy.
That happens a lot in the 3rd World EU,
After reading your comment again, I agree.
And owe you an apology for misrepresenting what you said.
Property seizures happen in the US dozens of times per day. Perhaps hundreds.
When the government says you owe them money, you better damn well have a good reason to not hand it over.
It’s most certainly not unique to the 3rd world or EU.
Agreed.
For those who don’t realize it, they have a disproportionate monopoly in:
* online ads, more than 80%
* online search content, a plurality, due to Google books, YouTube and their own databases like Google Maps
* search engines, just a majority share of traffic
They’ve also engaged in anti-competitive practices. For example, where are Twitter’s rivals? Gab.ai can’t get its app in the Google app store because Google says “you’re hate speech” ... translation, you don’t censor people like we do so we won’t let you in. The dirty little secret is that Google has a special data mining relationship with Twitter. They’re shutting out Twitter’s rivals from search results and the app store because it wants to privilege the business it already has tight ties with.
I don’t think this is a property seizure case....more of a 3rd world “I can’t compete so I’ll change the rules”.
Scary is Google’s massive data collection on all school kids and their government contracts. Google.gov?
That’s not even the half of it.
They provide the OS on about 80% of the worlds phones and restrict application vendors who have access. They bundle their own search engine and email application with that OS, along with any/all their proprietary applications.
They make/sell hardware. And bundle that same OS into it with all the proprietary hooks.
They have a DOMINANT position in musical and video content with youtube. And they strictly control access to that platform too.
Their search engine sends you to what Google favors. They don’t even list what they don’t favor.
There are some broad categories that should be applied to modern tech:
1. Network/Transport
2. Hardware
3. OS
4. Applications
5. Content
6. Search
No company should be allowed to sell in more than two. The anti-trust laws should break up companies along those lines.
There is so much more.
The $5bil fine could end up as property seizure.
I’m sure they have no intention of paying it
I left in 1991 for my current employer. Browsers didn't exist yet, but we were enjoying X Windows and first attempts at Motif. Thankfully, a trip to UseNIX netted a new product called Purify. I was the 10th person outside of their initial development group to have access. That was a stunning success on my floor. We licensed and recommended. Eliminated our X11 core dump headaches inside of a week.
PS Before TCP/IP, I was running a System V UUCP suite over 1200 BPS (212a) modems to move e-mail, files with uucp, remote printing, early netnews (h/t Brian Kantor at UCSD and Phil Lapsley at UCB). It was primitive. the UUMAP project helped populate source routed paths (minimum cost/minimum latency). Even my Xenix system at home was part of the UUCP network in 1983. 1986 is when I graduated to SLIP links and later PPP after Bill Simpson finished it). At work, I was still getting calls to help install 56 Kbps repeaters for ARPANET.
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