European Parliament Votes in Favor of Breaking Up Google

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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On Thursday, Google was dealt a blow from the European Parliament’s decision voting to break up the mega-corporation in Europe. The vote calls for unbundling of search engines from other commercial services. The vote has no legal standing, but recommendations like this are usually acted upon favorably by the European Commission.

Reuters reports that European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager “has said she will review the case and talk to complainants before deciding on the next step.
 
Spinning off the search is not really breaking but it is a welcome move in my commie eyes. Let the shitstorm commence!
 
Yes, that'd be a good idea. Google was probably not an awful company like ages ago, but all they've been doing lately is pushing out spyware and malware these days and mining everything that crosses their path.
 
Great news imo, finally someone demands an end to Google's scam. Godspeed to the EU/EP/EC.
 
Great news imo, finally someone demands an end to Google's scam. Godspeed to the EU/EP/EC.
Wow. Never realized there were this many backward thinking anti-capitalist on [H]ard.

What "scam"?

Do you guys also support breaking up Apple and spinning off iTunes? You realize they are about twice as large as Google...
 
Wow. Never realized there were this many backward thinking anti-capitalist on [H]ard.

What "scam"?

Do you guys also support breaking up Apple and spinning off iTunes? You realize they are about twice as large as Google...

What does the monetary worth of a company have to do with it? The EU is motivated to break apart Google because, unlike the people living in the US that are too enthralled with gadget lust, they're able to take a step back and analyze the broad and long reach Google has in collecting data from multitudes of various sources, compile it in association with a single person, and then pick it apart for things fo value. Removing search from adservices, mail, social networking, phone operating systems, app market places, and youtube might limit some of the global logging Google conducts.

So yeah, name one other corporate entity that can gather as much information as Google, eh?
 
Wow. Never realized there were this many backward thinking anti-capitalist on [H]ard.

What "scam"?
If one has to ask that question, imo no amount of explaining will answer it for them. But I'll take a shot at it anyway:

THE WORLD DESPERATELY NEEDS AN OBJECTIVE SEARCH ENGINE FOR THE INTERNET.

Longer answer:

According to their own numbers Google now control 2/3 of web searches worldwide, and virtually all of the remaining 1/3 simply points back to Google's 2/3. And the company have been given the legal green light (in our country at least) to manipulate/obfuscate search results as they see fit. The combination of their essential monopoly position and operating practices make Google masters over their own competition both actual and potential, among thousands of other things ranging from access to freeware and legitimate hacking sites to political discourse.

Most or all of this problem will resolve itself once the internet is properly reclassified as a utility, and manipulation of search results (other than by the party searching) is made illegal in our country.
 
Good News Everyone!! No but seriously....this is excellent news. Google has gotten extremely creepy over the past few years. They have gone from "Don't be evil" to "Do Lots of EVIL!!!"

I trust Apple & Microsoft more than I trust Google. Apple and Microsoft consider us as customers and are therefore to some extent beholden to us. To companies like Google and Facebook, you and I are not customers, but the product. Google's true customers are advertisers. Once I understood that I am the product google is selling its advertisers, my desire to use their 'free' services went down to zero.

Google is like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Giving you free candy so they can eat you alive.
 
Good search results are not as good anymore for downloading torrents and files like it use to be. Too many links have been removed or pushed back a few hundred pages. Yahoo, Bing, and Ixquick give better results for downloads these days.That was the turning point for me at least ;). You can delete a lot of things but once i can't find my downloads forget it.
 
If one has to ask that question, imo no amount of explaining will answer it for them. But I'll take a shot at it anyway:

THE WORLD DESPERATELY NEEDS AN OBJECTIVE SEARCH ENGINE FOR THE INTERNET.

Longer answer:

According to their own numbers Google now control 2/3 of web searches worldwide, and virtually all of the remaining 1/3 simply points back to Google's 2/3. And the company have been given the legal green light (in our country at least) to manipulate/obfuscate search results as they see fit. The combination of their essential monopoly position and operating practices make Google masters over their own competition both actual and potential, among thousands of other things ranging from access to freeware and legitimate hacking sites to political discourse.

Most or all of this problem will resolve itself once the internet is properly reclassified as a utility, and manipulation of search results (other than by the party searching) is made illegal in our country.

Oh bullshit, If you don't like don't use it. Google is not a monopoly as long as there's other search engines available for your to use and there's plenty. Bing, Yahoo, duckduckgo, startpage, lycos (yeah there still around), and more. A monopoly means a single company controls so much of the market share of a product or service that it significantly affects the terms on which others have access to it. And there's nothing about Google that restricts any other company from competing against any service Google offers. A company has the right to do with their product as they see fit. No one is forced to use Google or their services. Has Google been buying out other search engines so people have no choice but to use Google? Nope. People who use Google do it voluntarily. Other companies can vi for market share if they create a better product & there's nothing about google that prevents another company from making a better search engine and taking away market share from Google.
 
QFT
Thinking a company is "creepy" does not constitute this action. Lots of other options available for you to use out there.

Oh bullshit, If you don't like don't use it. Google is not a monopoly as long as there's other search engines available for your to use and there's plenty. Bing, Yahoo, duckduckgo, startpage, lycos (yeah there still around), and more. A monopoly means a single company controls so much of the market share of a product or service that it significantly affects the terms on which others have access to it. And there's nothing about Google that restricts any other company from competing against any service Google offers. A company has the right to do with their product as they see fit. No one is forced to use Google or their services. Has Google been buying out other search engines so people have no choice but to use Google? Nope. People who use Google do it voluntarily. Other companies can vi for market share if they create a better product & there's nothing about google that prevents another company from making a better search engine and taking away market share from Google.
 
QFT
Thinking a company is "creepy" does not constitute this action. Lots of other options available for you to use out there.
Please point us to a single widely-used engine that produces results which are not simply subsets of Google's.

Quick lesson on the problem: try a Google search for a video clip and see how many results are returned beyond a tiny handful of whitelisted sites (Youtube, Dailymotion etc). Now try Bing, Yahoo etc and see if your results are much (or in many cases any) different. The entire rest of the world has been completely squelched, e.g. hundreds if not thousands of video sites in Russia alone have been relegated to essential non-existence.

Time will tell if this is correct but I think most of us will be amazed at what we've been missing in the world, and what Google previously denied us, once the company's legalized stranglehold over search results is broken. The current situation is, quite literally and without overstatement, a global corporate fascist state, and thanks again to the Euros for finally starting the inevitable process to remedy the problem.

Again I believe the foundation for all other internet protections is the correction of its traffic classification, from "information service" to essential common-carrier utility. Once it happens the need for an objective search engine (as if it isn't obvious enough already) will become overwhelmingly apparent to everyone. There is no other eventuality imo.
 
Please point us to a single widely-used engine that produces results which are not simply subsets of Google's.

What does this have to do with anything? There are plenty of other search engines. It's not Google's job to make sure there's another widely used one around. There is nothing anti competitive that Google is doing that prevents other search engines from competing against it. Just because people want to use Google doesn't make it a monopoly. Only way Google is a monopoly is if they say penalized sites for not blocking search engine spiders of other search engines.

Quick lesson on the problem: try a Google search for a video clip and see how many results are returned beyond a tiny handful of whitelisted sites (Youtube, Dailymotion etc). Now try Bing, Yahoo etc and see if your results are much (or in many cases any) different. The entire rest of the world has been completely squelched, e.g. hundreds if not thousands of video sites in Russia alone have been relegated to essential non-existence.

Ok, and what's your point? You just proved that Google can't be a monopoly because people have other choices to go too...like Bing / Yahoo.

Time will tell if this is correct but I think most of us will be amazed at what we've been missing in the world, and what Google previously denied us, once the company's legalized stranglehold over search results is broken. The current situation is, quite literally and without overstatement, a global corporate fascist state, and thanks again to the Euros for finally starting the inevitable process to remedy the problem.

Google is not forcing people to use it's search engine and it's not preventing other search engines from indexing websites.

Again I believe the foundation for all other internet protections is the correction of its traffic classification, from "information service" to essential common-carrier utility. Once it happens the need for an objective search engine (as if it isn't obvious enough already) will become overwhelmingly apparent to everyone. There is no other eventuality imo.

What stopping you or anyone else from creating this magical "objective search engine" so I can view Russian videos when I search for something?
 
Please point us to a single widely-used engine that produces results which are not simply subsets of Google's.

Quick lesson on the problem: try a Google search for a video clip and see how many results are returned beyond a tiny handful of whitelisted sites (Youtube, Dailymotion etc). Now try Bing, Yahoo etc and see if your results are much (or in many cases any) different. The entire rest of the world has been completely squelched, e.g. hundreds if not thousands of video sites in Russia alone have been relegated to essential non-existence.

Time will tell if this is correct but I think most of us will be amazed at what we've been missing in the world, and what Google previously denied us, once the company's legalized stranglehold over search results is broken. The current situation is, quite literally and without overstatement, a global corporate fascist state, and thanks again to the Euros for finally starting the inevitable process to remedy the problem.

Again I believe the foundation for all other internet protections is the correction of its traffic classification, from "information service" to essential common-carrier utility. Once it happens the need for an objective search engine (as if it isn't obvious enough already) will become overwhelmingly apparent to everyone. There is no other eventuality imo.

How did google come to power? A large part of its power came from the manipulation of search results all the other search engines were doing legally. Google offered a simple strait forward search with no ads on top or strung about in the results. They also focused on the popularity of items which many engines were moving to. That is how they beat the exiting power houses of the day like yahoo.

So what I ask is, if google is using its power to abuse search then why do you think people will not start looking to alternative engines to give them more relevant results? The irony of the EU is all their antitrust lawsuits are jokes that are applied unequally and long past the point they will do any good.
 
How did google come to power? A large part of its power came from the manipulation of search results all the other search engines were doing legally. Google offered a simple strait forward search with no ads on top or strung about in the results. They also focused on the popularity of items which many engines were moving to. That is how they beat the exiting power houses of the day like yahoo.

So what I ask is, if google is using its power to abuse search then why do you think people will not start looking to alternative engines to give them more relevant results? The irony of the EU is all their antitrust lawsuits are jokes that are applied unequally and long past the point they will do any good.

Basically, most of the world's problems today are caused by Google, energy drinks, and libertarians. The best thing ever for the planet is to get rid of all three, but totally squishing one of those three is a great start and will massively reduce gun crime, make people less obese, and stop [H] forum members from being grumpy old men who like always whine about their governments. Getting rid of Google might even like cut down on the number of NASCAR fans who wear camo clothing in public and have satellite TV, but live in a dumpy trailer full of scream-y kids.

Besides, it's never too late for a government to go all raging-barbarian-waving-a-giant-axe-made-from-rabid-irate-squirrels on a corporation. Even the EU just like bringing up the point at all is totally gonna make the whole world (yah, even the dumb people in the US who like Android phones and carry around their little creepster monitoring device everywhere ... even to the bathroom which is seriously gross guys so stop it) wake up and some people might go, "Hmmm..you know, maybe being a good little Google drone all my life isn't a great idea," which is super helpful in lots of ways.
 
DuckDuckGo is a pretty nice search engine, if you're against using Google's. Sometimes it doesn't give the results I'm looking for, or they're just aren't many results, but usually it works for me.

I could care less whether Google's Search division is broken out. Sure, it'll hurt Google's bottom line a little, but at the same time it'll force them to focus on their individual products more. On the other hand, I'm not really into forcing companies to do things unless it's a real monopoly (or they're breaking other laws), so I wouldn't mind if they just kept going business as usual, either.
 
Good News Everyone!! No but seriously....this is excellent news. Google has gotten extremely creepy over the past few years. They have gone from "Don't be evil" to "Do Lots of EVIL!!!"

I trust Apple & Microsoft more than I trust Google. Apple and Microsoft consider us as customers and are therefore to some extent beholden to us. To companies like Google and Facebook, you and I are not customers, but the product. Google's true customers are advertisers. Once I understood that I am the product google is selling its advertisers, my desire to use their 'free' services went down to zero.

Google is like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Giving you free candy so they can eat you alive.

So you trust a company that its entire business model is controlling the minds of their customers and suing any form of competition. The other company who has a track record of being far far worse than google when allowed and gave us Win 8, more than a company who's services are completely optional to use and is just really a big advertising meta data hub...:rolleyes:

Some seriously bizarre priorities there..I don't trust google farther than I can throw them either but saying you trust those other two more is just insane.
 
So what I ask is, if google is using its power to abuse search then why do you think people will not start looking to alternative engines to give them more relevant results?
I've already answered that question, you're either unable or unwilling to understand it. I'm disgusted that anyone defends the status quo, and apparently wishes to continue living in a world where nothing is known unless Google's legal department wishes it to be known. Simply astonishing and downright frightening imo, there really is no bottom to the pit of corporate prostitution.

As to your point, of course someone else can write an objective search engine, but nobody has done so, and as a result eight billion people wallow in artificial ignorance and a corporate fascist state. If Google was a bit player it wouldn't be an issue. They're not, and when any 100 people are asked where they go first for searches at least 90 of them always say Google.

Hopefully you didn't miss the story here a few weeks back about the millions of automated takedowns thanks to the DMCA, in many cases these removals were in error, but there was no human oversight or intervention whatsoever in the entire process. Not only a corporate fascist system, we now have an automated one that doesn't care whether any rights have actually been violated. Please add this abomination to Google's daily wholesale censorship of usenet, etc, and it's beyond me how anyone tries to paint the company as some kind of friend of the internet.
 
So you trust a company that its entire business model is controlling the minds of their customers and suing any form of competition. The other company who has a track record of being far far worse than google when allowed and gave us Win 8, more than a company who's services are completely optional to use and is just really a big advertising meta data hub...:rolleyes:

Some seriously bizarre priorities there..I don't trust google farther than I can throw them either but saying you trust those other two more is just insane.

Aside from like, not being online at all, you pretty much can't avoid being the subject of Google's adservices-based tracking. Also, avoiding Google, but remaining not an off-grid dweller kinda means using alternative services from those other companies you're criticizing which you say are worse. So how are there any good alternatives and why is it so wrong to wanna fix Google through government intervention?
 
Aside from like, not being online at all, you pretty much can't avoid being the subject of Google's adservices-based tracking. Also, avoiding Google, but remaining not an off-grid dweller kinda means using alternative services from those other companies you're criticizing which you say are worse. So how are there any good alternatives and why is it so wrong to wanna fix Google through government intervention?

I said nothing about avoiding them, I simply pointed out the absurdity of trusting the other two companies which are as bad or worse on track record. As for government intervention, I trust the government far far FAR less than a mere corporation. Especially the proven beyond doubt corrupt cesspool that makes up EU. Here is a interesting little tidbit...Corporations wouldn't have nearly the power they do if not for dirtbag paid off politicians and regulation. Regulation is good in theory, but it always comes with earmarks to pay for some dirtbags pet projects which means it has loopholes and ends up far worse than just not being regulated in the first place.
 
I said nothing about avoiding them, I simply pointed out the absurdity of trusting the other two companies which are as bad or worse on track record. As for government intervention, I trust the government far far FAR less than a mere corporation. Especially the proven beyond doubt corrupt cesspool that makes up EU. Here is a interesting little tidbit...Corporations wouldn't have nearly the power they do if not for dirtbag paid off politicians and regulation. Regulation is good in theory, but it always comes with earmarks to pay for some dirtbags pet projects which means it has loopholes and ends up far worse than just not being regulated in the first place.
Again I'll offer the challenge for anyone to come up with a third option. The two existing ones are to regulate the internet as a utility or lose it to the corporate profit motive. It's as true today for the internet as it was for our landline telephone network in the 1930's, the feds saw no other option but to write and pass the Communications Act of 1934. These are the same Title I/II protections now being considered for internet traffic.
 
Again I'll offer the challenge for anyone to come up with a third option. The two existing ones are to regulate the internet as a utility or lose it to the corporate profit motive. It's as true today for the internet as it was for our landline telephone network in the 1930's, the feds saw no other option but to write and pass the Communications Act of 1934. These are the same Title I/II protections now being considered for internet traffic.

yea but our government today is bunch of pussies and would never do this because they lose their handouts. They don't do shit like they used to. Yea there is always corruption in the government and they do shit no one wants but it is way worse now than before.

one party will either lose tons of money or make tons on money depending on their decision. so they'll choose which ever gives them more.
 
Since when has any government "fixed" anything?

Lots and lots of times. The many thousands of years of humans governing humans and the short amounts of time where there were not organized governments of some fashion are pretty small. Arguing otherwise kinda ignores the whole of recorded history just to kinda validate being a grumpy old man on a computer forum. :D
 
Lots and lots of times. The many thousands of years of humans governing humans and the short amounts of time where there were not organized governments of some fashion are pretty small. Arguing otherwise kinda ignores the whole of recorded history just to kinda validate being a grumpy old man on a computer forum. :D

So ya got nothin...;)
 
So ya got nothin...;)

No U!

Really though, every action a government takes will make some people all happy and squishy and others will go grumping-face around which makes every single act debatable depending on the individual (so nope, I'm not gonna cite anything because I don't wanna get sucked into a "this was good" and "that was bad" discussion) when I can get the point across in broader, bigger terms that you fully get based on the kinda reply you posted which has, "I'm wrong and wanna avoid looking silly really hard," written all over it. So basically, in the end, humans will still form them from like a small to a large-huge scale no matter what so why sit there be mad about it when doing so is so totally not relevant to whether or not you are gonna have to deal with authority (because that's basically what man-gov-hate boils down to anyhow)?
 
This idea is so stupid. Are they being bribed by Microsoft? That's who would benefit the most from breaking up Google.
 
Breaking up Google, yeah right. Next thing you know they'll want the US to divest itself of the NSA. :D
 
What legal authority do they have to break up an American company?
 
Again I'll offer the challenge for anyone to come up with a third option. The two existing ones are to regulate the internet as a utility or lose it to the corporate profit motive. It's as true today for the internet as it was for our landline telephone network in the 1930's, the feds saw no other option but to write and pass the Communications Act of 1934. These are the same Title I/II protections now being considered for internet traffic.

This has absolutely nothing to do with ISP's and the utility argument.
 
What legal authority do they have to break up an American company?

They have the authority to regulate how they do business regarding consumers and operations in the EU.

This is a little bit sticky, because an EU citizen could perform a search that uses computing resources located in North America to actually perform the search and serve the results, and the EU has shown that they are willing to reach beyond their geographical borders when attempting to regulate things like this in the past, but Google could respond either by walling off their EU operations so all their EU citizen searches use EU resources or they could say "too bad, so sad, your customers are using hardware located in North America where you have no jurisdiction, so as long as they request results from a different country we will serve them agnostically", which is one possible scenario.
 
What legal authority do they have to break up an American company?

Pretty much my question.


Really though, it seems like Europe really has it out for American companies. That said, Im sure the American Govt probably do lots of things to European countries.
 
I said nothing about avoiding them, I simply pointed out the absurdity of trusting the other two companies which are as bad or worse on track record. As for government intervention, I trust the government far far FAR less than a mere corporation. Especially the proven beyond doubt corrupt cesspool that makes up EU. Here is a interesting little tidbit...Corporations wouldn't have nearly the power they do if not for dirtbag paid off politicians and regulation. Regulation is good in theory, but it always comes with earmarks to pay for some dirtbags pet projects which means it has loopholes and ends up far worse than just not being regulated in the first place.
Uh, please explain how it would be possible to have anything "far worse" than cable TV and commercial radio in our country. The exact same fate awaits the internet unless it's protected. Period. No third option unless you can offer one. Or please do the world a favor and shitcan the regurgitated right-wing horseshit just once in your life, and open your fucking eyes. Government is and can be the only protector of the public interest against the corporate profit motive. Keep repeating it over and over until it penetrates all those fat cells surrounding that pea brain.
 
Pretty much my question.


Really though, it seems like Europe really has it out for American companies. That said, Im sure the American Govt probably do lots of things to European countries.

They can legally break the company up within the EU, which actually might cause quite a stir because these companies often run tax evasion components in the EU. What ever happens google will have to reorganize the company either as 2 separate companies world wide, or simply break something like the EU search company off and make it an independent company in the EU only. Ultimately how they react will depend on how they plan to serve advertisements and sell them to EU clients.

My problem with all this is just that the tech world moves in big swings and its unfair if you target one company and not another. What the EU should do is simply make broad sweeping rules for tech. I think we should do this in the USA too. Basically bill of rights for consumers and devices. Simple things like saying no company can stop a person from installing any application on their device nor can any company stop a person from uninstalling any application. Basically make walled gardens illegal. That way at any point if someone tries to abuse a monopoly the consumers can voice their opinion by using competing products. Then they can wait and see if the market corrects itself. The argument for anticompetitive practices should be one of harm to consumers. But if most consumers couldn't care less how their search results are returned or if they use a gmail account or not then its hard to argue that the consumers are seeing a big harm. If consumers hate a product and they still cannot uninstall it or install an alternative then I feel a major abuse is going on.

For instance I hate the way the new gmail has ads up top and I hate the way google maps has become worse or even recommends places that are really far away. But I have the option of simply using a different GPS. And obviously since I have not moved because I am too lazy its not important enough. Is that a major harm to me as a consumer. not really if am too lazy to even bother moving to a competing product.
 
Google will eventually commit or be forced to commit its search engine to open source and the public domain. Just as MS was and did with .NET. Can't even manage an imo on that claim because it's so completely self-evident. The situation we now have is opening a book of Yellow Pages and having 99% of the listings covered with "intentionally obfuscated" stickers. Time will expose Google's business practices as the abominations they are, and it will happen sooner than many of us might imagine: a literal global corporate fascist state where nothing is known unless it's first cleared by Google's legal department.
 
Yes, that'd be a good idea. Google was probably not an awful company like ages ago, but all they've been doing lately is pushing out spyware and malware these days and mining everything that crosses their path.
Hmm that is so full of BS
 
The unfortunate thing here is its a self-inflicted monopoly. Why wouldn't it happen again.
 
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