https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/27/google-brac...
Klarna bought pricerunner for just under a billion 5 years ago, pretty good deal.
Is this real accountability for anti-competitive behaviour, or just another cost of doing business for Big Tech?
My cynicism is tell me that unfortunately it is the latter.
(Even India has fined them 100s of millions of dollars - https://ssrana.in/articles/google-fined-anti-competitive-pra... ).
If they stop providing value to users, they are putting their ad business at risk. It's never free, providing value to share holders is a top priority.
Them not launching in Europe gives the local market a chance to build up its own players. China was very successful in this thanks to the Great Firewall.
And you think local players are going to look at users with this comically detached worldview and be like "Yeah, we want to build services for that group of people to use"?
Those are just more avenues for Google to collect data to shove ads down everyone's throats.
Good that regulations keeps Google from releasing more pf their shit here. Governments should really tighten the screws there.
The former is nigh impossible, the latter is fairly trivial with sufficient will.
Why would Google NOT favor it's own service at it's own product? How is that illegal?
1.5B is preferable to being broken up (not that Sweden could enforce that)
It is now illegal as laws have been introduced with the aim to prevent this from happening again. The effectiveness of these laws, with regards to how well they fit the current era, is a different matter.
So Google is allowed to favour their own price comparison in, say, Hangouts, but not in Search.
Considering Klarna essentially boils down to a lending service for people who want to buy stuff they aren't able to afford in the moment, I don't think this is the dunk you think it is.
Why have local laws in that case? Better we all just adopt American laws to not have to fear the Americans getting pissy when they diverge...
The law isn’t just “what you happen to intuitively think is right”, especially in a jurisdiction where you clearly do not reside.
At this point can you make a custom task manager and sue Microsoft to propose users to install your task manager on first boot? What about background image providers, why doesn't Microsoft propose to install background images from them at first boot?
It's an absolutely ridiculous idea.
They should not block alternatives, but having to promote them is complete nonsense.
For instance, if a company started up an ad business, are they going to sue and win, because Google uses their own ad service in Search instead of this new competitor?
That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
A company can create a new search engine and Google Search isn't obligated to even mention it.
The issue is when achieving market dominance and new service is integrated into the dominant product.
You clearly haven't been around long enough to have caught a lot of discussions on this topic over a decade ago.