According to the Financial Times, the European commission, which is headquartered in Brussels, has opened a full investigation into the business operations of Google.
Included in the investigation according to the story are the following issues:
Did Google lower the ranking of unpaid search results from competing services and gave preferential placement to the results of its own vertical search services to shut out competitors?
Did Google lower the “quality score” for sponsored links of competing vertical search services?
Did Google imposed exclusivity obligations on its advertising partners, preventing them from placing competing advertising on their websites?
Does Google restrict the movement of online advertising data to competing advertising platforms.
The market is certainly not liking the news as shares of Google are down over $17 a share about 3%.
Check out the full FT.com story for more info including the quote from an attorney involved in filing one of the complaints that “this is a game changer” and that “It’s quite a broad investigation, so not just simply about vertical search. It’s also about practises and contracts with a wide range of third parties”
Be nice if they look into Gs lack of transparency in payouts to publishers – and associated threats.
James
Sounds like anythings on the table of course someone has to bring this particular issue to their attention
Fascinating, and “using Google DNS” clues them into what web-sites you visit
…
and using gMail provides them a wealth of information
…
and using their Google phones and numbers provide even more information
…
where does all that information go ? who uses it ? for what purposes ?
the Google monopoly is a big risk for the entire world
“the Google monopoly[oligopoly] is a big risk for the entire world”
EHOW.COM
“A monopoly, as many people know, is a market condition in which only one vendor (usually a large corporation) is in play. There may be other somewhat similar businesses, but a monopoly exists when only one business or individual can provide a product or service.
In an oligopoly, the product or service may be available from more than one vendor or merchant, but only a few big players dominate the market and make competition very difficult for new entries in the field.”
—-
Google has a long history of using OPD – Other People’s Data
Google also has leaders who deeply understand [monopoly] players and how to leverage them.
What is most fascinating is how {anti-monopolists} flock to the side of Google to fight the great fight – no matter what the cause. Google rolls out the welcome mat.
Google is worse than Microsoft ever was. They make MS look like Mother Teresa.
Burn Google, burn!!!
“where does all that information go ? who uses it ? for what purposes ?”
Umm…they use it to target ads? If you don’t want to be profiled then don’t use their DNS servers or email, and don’t log in when you do a search. It’s all stated in their privacy policy and changes can be made through a control panel (if you choose to create an account).
Imho, I’d worry more about how Microsoft monetizes tracking data than Google because of their long history of scummy and (convicted) monopolist behavior.
It’ll probably be years before this is totally investigated, hashed out, and settled, don’t you think Mike?
By then most domainers will have moved on or died off.
“Google is worse than Microsoft ever was.”
===
A more accurate comparison would be Google and the Pre 1/1/1984 AT&T Bell System.
Yellow Pages was part of the “evil” AT&T Bell System debacle.
DNS, web-sites and SEOs are Yellow Pages on steroids.
It is interesting that some of Google’s top executives built their careers on ANTI-Bell System agendas. Now they are happy being your phone company.
“where does all that information go ? who uses it ? for what purposes ?”
Umm…they use it to target ads?
===
…and to help get the President of the United States elected that THEY selected ?
Were you invited to the recent Obama visit to “the Valley” hosted by Google’s groupies ?
“Were you invited to the recent Obama visit to “the Valley” hosted by Google’s groupies ?”
Yes, as a matter of fact I was. One of the agenda items was how best to implicate Sarah Palin in the Stonehenge/alien visitation coverup orchestrated by Tony Blair.
So far it’s working splendidly.
“Hillary is Obama’s largest challenge.”
Big Lie,
I think she’s Obama’s largest opportunity and he is hers.
I suspect in 2012 Biden is dumped and Hillary is offered
the VP spot.
If a Obama/Clinton (Hillary) ticket is happens and succeeds, Hillary would be in a very sweet spot.
Since Obama could only serve one more term, Hillary as
the VP incumbent would in all likelihood be Democratic front runner candidate for the Presidency for 2016.
Although I believe many people are disappointed in Obama, an Obama vs Hillary battle in 2012 would just serve to divide the party.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I was. One of the agenda items was how best to implicate Sarah Palin in the Stonehenge/alien visitation coverup orchestrated by Tony Blair.”
That part wasn’t covered by the government-controlled media.
Clearly, the Bilderberg group is trying to bring down an iron fist on the tinfoil hat market.
“Google is worse than Microsoft ever was. They make MS look like Mother Teresa.”
it’s exactly my think
poof… don’t even look into the civil war. sherman has been pretty much deleted ’cause of the antitrust act which i think is totally unfair to google.
@ MHB
Great Story!
What if all SAID turns out 100% true …
Will federal HLS … “SHUT DOWN GOOGLE”
for …. Fraudulent Services,etc LOL
I think that Google should be dismembered by the US antitrust (as happened decades ago with the AT&T giant) leaving to Google ONLY the SE market
THIS VIDEO IS WHAT EVERY BLOOGER ON HERE
HAS BEEN TALKING ABOUT FOR MONTHS!
A Must See …
://video.ft.com/v/693235619001/Is-Google-too-powerful-
://www.wimp.com/entirevideo/
Strange News:
I heard that a MR Halverez was in charge of the Google Investigation …
that NAME sounds very,very familiar, does it not ???
one more _huge_ source of data: within firefox’s default config, goog “phones home” quite a bit in my experience. i rarely leave firefox open while connected. maybe i should measure the intervals. no need to have a google page opened. as long as you have a default-configured firefox open, it wakes up and connects to google. essentially, with mozilla’s help goog is pinging an enormous number of hosts: probably the majority of firefox’s userbase.
all these sources of info together… it is certainly a motherlode of data.
i’m willing to bet at least _some_ people in the know at google sometimes feel “guilty” about how much free (save the electricity costs) info they receive. it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
same goes for facebook.
@permalink: Lol, good one.
To keep Google from getting jealous, be sure to close the victoriassecret.com tab immediately after you’re done “researching”.
A private company with a private search results can do whatever they want to do. If they want to ban everybody else, the have and should have the right to do so. EU is nothing else than a socialistic organization build for the masses.
Should be interesting to see how they handle the anti-competitive stuff, particularly in light of G acquiring operating eBusinesses and potentially, altering their ranking.
It would be a dark day for Google, though, if their algo is somehow forced public via a mechanism of the courts. At that point, delivering quality content would go out the door and the entire system would become an even bigger game than it is today.
I do kind of agree, though, that at its heart, most anti-competitive/anti-trust government actions do kind of smack of a socialist sentiment, but I do wonder if they aren’t a necessary evil to keep the free markets from being dominated by extremely narrow interests. Fun debate, will be interesting to see how it bangs out.
Music to my ears.
Although this investigation will take a long long time perhaps will shake Almighty G to the core, additionaly it might open the door to scrutiny in other areas ( adsense adwords etc )
(Save all your Parking Historical “payout” data, it might come handy one day)
Attack on a narrow point.
i thought the same thing as domo. if anyone reading is knowledgeable about eu law, i’d be curious to know if they can effectively use this sort of enquiry as a “fishing expedition”.
i came across something that mentioned a similar type of enquiry aimed at a search engine many years ago, over search results for flights and airfares. all i could think about was goog’s recently acquisition of itasoftware. goog now has the gold standard in airfare search.
That’s the point I was trying to convey… poorly I must say.
It might just open the door a bit into the “inside” their ” trust-us Modus operandi”
I don’t think they are “stupid and arrogant” enough not to take this seriously , many people that do business with them worldwide have the same complaint “lack of Transparency”…
They need a “wikileak” type of exposure …
Lawyers salivate.(with due respect)…
RICO ?
did you read about the goog employee who “leaked” an internal memo about a company-wide salary increase and holiday bonus? they dismissed him promptly. as far as i could see the memo did nothing other than to make goog look good.
Not only did I read about the Google employee who leaked the memo, I wrote about it:
http://www.thedomains.com/2010/11/10/google-to-give-every-employee-at-least-a-10-raise-total-cost-1-billion-dollars/
could a russian Yandex + chinese Baidu alliance beat the Google monopoly?
however, Google can sleep quietly since the european bureaucracy is very slow