While a side topic being 3rd in the world as a country or nearly half of the top 100 cities is hardly a lag.

Not making first or second country in the world or the top 50 cities on a global scale isn't a superb argument.

I also just read foundem compliant to the eu commission but it doesn't make me want to use their superior search engine.

Also searched for SEO first.

Then SEO services.

Got books and lots of stuff not related to search engine optimisation.

@EditorialGuy: But we aren't talking about broadband availability. We're talking about search.

Right after you bring Deutsche Bahn and long distance buses into the conversation? Heh.

@fathom: While a side topic being 3rd in the world as a country or nearly half of the top 100 cities is hardly a lag.

You looked at the wrong chart. There is an "IPV6 Adoption" chart where they made 3rd. They didn't even make the top 10 chart for broadband adoption.

You can file a DMCA complaint and Google will obey it by removing the scrapped content until the scrapper Counterclaims then it is up to you to sue.

This is a catch 22, as I have found from personal experience, if you file any DMCA complaints and name yourself (and website) in the complaint, Google will cease indexing any more of your images. Period.

All my images have disappeared from google image search...except of course the ones that are still on the scraper sites. They may have taken action on the ones I reported, but many, many other are still out there.

But we aren't talking about broadband availability. We're talking about search.

Actually, we are talking about anti-trust which encompasses all business verticals.

Protectionism is likely to work only when you've got something worth protecting.

Exactly and where failure occurs is in the identification what is "worth protecting". In my view, healthy competition is worth protecting.

Exactly and where failure occurs is in the identification what is "worth protecting". In my view, healthy competition is worth protecting.

Competition can't be created by executive fiat. First, you've got to have competitors. Where are they? Where were they in the early and mid-1990s, when Google didn't even exist?

Competition can't be created by executive fiat.

Yes it can.. Ever heard of The Sherman Antitrust Act and what happened to Standard Oil? How about AT&T pre-1970's?

Moving forward.. how does an empathetic society like the EU move forward to encourage the emergence of strong competitors? What solution would you propose to level the economic playing field between search companies and bring choice to the consumers?

how does an empathetic society like the EU move forward to encourage the emergence of strong competitors?

Not sure I understand what all of the ripple effects would be, but one shortcut could be an EU standard ad blocker that does not accept payment from any advertiser for white listing. Or maybe just the threat of one :)

Competition can't be created by executive fiat. First, you've got to have competitors.

Nobody is trying to create competition. From what I have read, it is clear that the EU is trying to preserve a fair marketplace.

Any reasonably unbiased person, when presented with the facts, can see how Google is expanding into highly profitable sectors with their acquisitions, investments and partnerships. How Google uses their search engine to ensure the success of these new ventures (preferred placement in paid and organic serps) puts everyone else in those sectors at a significant disadvantage. Coupled with scraped content, which is displayed for Google's own gain without regard for the copyright holder, it is quite clear that the EU has legitimate concerns with regards to Google's use/abuse of their search dominance. Many others here have the same concerns and are just waiting for the next Google acquisition, investment and/or partnership that could put them out of business too.

It sounds like this Google investigation is merely one part of a larger EU effort:

[wsj.com...]

Key quote:

The possible investigation was discussed last week by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, which is working on a signature plan to reform the region’s digital economy, that aims to establish Europe as a global leader in IT. Such an investigation could eventually lead to new legislative measures aimed at reining in major Internet platforms.

[Boldface highlighting added]

Addendum: BUSINESS INSIDER has published an article that has some interesting statistics about cultural differences between Europe and the U.S. that may be influencing EU attitudes toward U.S. companies:

[businessinsider.com...]

Addendum: BUSINESS INSIDER has published an article that has some interesting statistics about cultural differences between Europe and the U.S. that may be influencing EU attitudes toward U.S. companies:

I did find the article interesting, and worth reading. It is worth noting, however, that the author graduated from college about 2 years ago. Also his only paid work experience is being the "sole financial reporter" (implying no suitable mentors there) for a publication with about 400k readers.

I would take his conclusions with a hefty grain of salt.

This has been going on for years... and, unless I miss my guess, if is a power grab for dollars. It is politics, not economics, or, a way to raise revenues for government(s), even if is it only a one-shot (that can be fired again and again).

There is no "competition" in EU as there are no EU indigenous tech IT companies willing to invest in serious competition against the gorg.

And in the interest of "fair" there will be big payout, eventually, for the EU... and the users will see no difference when all is said and done.

The U.S. produced Google and Bing (among others), Russia produced Yandex, China produced Baidu, and the EU produced [drumroll] Foundem?

The simple fact is that Europe could not produce a search engine to compete with Google because it would be illegal.

Google's entire search business plan is based on using private data to target advertising. This is illegal over here unless the searcher has given express - not implied - permission.

Our own BT attempted to do a similar thing years ago (look up 'Phorm' on Google) and was threatened with prosecution. Google has got away with it so far but not necessarily for much longer.

The simple fact is that Europe could not produce a search engine to compete with Google because it would be illegal.

Google's entire search business plan is based on using private data to target advertising. This is illegal over here unless the searcher has given express - not implied - permission.

Our own BT attempted to do a similar thing years ago (look up 'Phorm' on Google) and was threatened with prosecution. Google has got away with it so far but not necessarily for much longer.

Matt Cutts' recent talk posted on his blog counters that. [mattcutts.com...] and many of his mentors.

I like Peter Thiel quote "what do you believe that no one else believes".

It's all about innovation and if your own innovations are align to your competitors' innovation you aren't really that innovative.

In the EU market dominance is not prohibited. It is abuse of dominance that is prohibited. Google has abused market dominance in a grand way, hurting the European economy (consumers & businesses) in a grand way.

Google's game is to abuse the system as long as they are allowed to do so - any fine, as large as it may be, is expected to be smaller than the billions they have already made, and the billions they will make till this is resolved. If this will not be the case, the U.S. government will intervene behind the scenes, to protect one of it's own.

Matter too complicated, and everyone involved is aware of this.


.

Google has abused market dominance in a grand way, hurting the European economy (consumers & businesses) in a grand way.

Right, all the searchers who gave Google a 90% market share did so because they liked being abused.

Fact is, nobody else stepped up to the plate. Nobody in the EU did, and the potential players from outside the EU (such as Bing/Yahoo and Yandex) left the field to Google.

Just for the laughs, I'd like to see the EU put the boot in on Google with this action. It will have the usual people, the Google apologists, the Google shills and technology churnalists whinging about how the nice people in Google really aren't a bunch of privacy invading pervs who want to snarf everyone's personal data. But that will be wrong. One of the main motivations for this is the amount of taxes paid by Google in the EU.

And EditorialGuy, you don't have a clue about the development of Search in the EU. The real reason for the dominance of Google in the market is simply that Google monetised the results better than any other company. Monetisation has always been the issue. Europe isn't a single market like the US. It has over 27 different languages and highly active ccTLDs. In 2003, most EU ccTLD registries stopped publishing their ccTLD zonefiles because of abuse. This was the point that ccTLD search went dark for most search engines including Google. Google's coverage of ccTLD webspace is still not 100%. It depends on crawling links, Analytics, Adsense and other methods. But the reality is that many new ccTLD websites are invisible to search engines. Many European countries had their own Search players but they would probably have gone unnoticed by people who can't speak the language and have no connection with the country.

The .COM and gTLDs are also having problems. The one year renewal rate for new one year new .COM registrations is approximately 54%. That means, in rather brutal terms, that approximately 46% of these .COM domains are dropped and not renewed. The growth and development in ccTLDs often outpaces .COM development in those countries and Google has problems keeping up with this ccTLD activity.

There's blood in the water and it's Google's. But it is a battle over money rather than markets domination.

Regards...jmcc

And EditorialGuy, you don't have a clue about the development of Search in the EU. The real reason for the dominance of Google in the market is simply that Google monetised the results better than any other company.

You forget that Google was a latecomer to search. But even if that weren't true, the fact remains that Google was--and is--the choice of searchers across the EU.

Europe does a great job with top-down infrastructure and certain types of heavy industry (railroads, heavy engineering, shipyards, AirBus), but it's missed the boat with things like search, social networks, and smartphones.

There's blood in the water and it's Google's. But it is a battle over money rather than markets domination.

Battle? It's starting to look like the beginning of a trade war.

The real reason for the dominance of Google in the market is simply that Google monetised the results better than any other company. Monetisation has always been the issue.

So monetisation better is abuse?

Europe isn't a single market like the US.

Oh come on... If you don't want to be the EU ... Scrap it!

No. Monetisation of the SERPs is the key to search engine survival. Google did it better than other search engines and that's why most of the other search engines did not succeed. People not in the Search business tend to think it is all about the quality of search results but the reality is that a search engine operation needs money. It is a a ruthless business with a very high attrition rate. There was a time when every webmaster seemed to think that they could build a search engine but they rarely lasted more than two years. This is because when people see domain name counts, they assume that there's an equivalent number of active websites. There isn't. Most of the work in building a search index is in cleaning it. The "coming soon" pages, the PPC sites, the registrar holding pages, the hacked sites, the duplicate content and the clone sites all have to be removed. Unless a search engine operator really knows what they are doing, that work will overwhelm it.

The European Union is not the European Economic Community that most EU countries joined. There is a very real anti-EU sentiment in many of those countries.

Regards...jmcc

[edited by: jmccormac at 10:49 pm (utc) on Apr 5, 2015]

You forget that Google was a latecomer to search.

No I don't. You just don't have a clue about the development of Search in Europe and are all too willing to give people the benefit of your inexperience in the matter. Most search engines in Europe developed as national or geographically limited ones due to the large number of languages. This can be a difficult concept for people who only have experience of one market to understand. Local search isn't such a new thing in Europe and it has been going on in one way or another for almost twenty years. It was Google's effective monetisation of the SERPs that allowed it to thrive. Google's tax avoision activities are the subject of increasing attention in the EU.

Regards...jmcc

But Google was a latecomer to search--not just in Europe, but also in the United States. Other search engines existed when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still in grad school.

And yes, even aside from providing better results than its competitors did, Google did a better job of monetizing search. That isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing.

You mentioned anti-EU sentiment in Europe. That's all the more reason for making Google, Facebook, Apple, and other foreign companies into villains. When economic growth is stagnant, employment (especially youth unemployment) is rampant, and nationalist parties are threatening the established parties and entrenched interests, what could be better for the bureaucrats in Brussels than having a foreign piñata to whack? Hit 'em up for a few billion, then spend a year or two writing a plan for a digital Shangri-La in the hope that industrial policy is a workable substitute for innovation.

if you want to play in the largest economy in the world (hint: the EU) you need to play by their rules.

or stop doing business there. simple as that.

if you want to play in the largest economy in the world (hint: the EU) you need to play by their rules.

or stop doing business there. simple as that.

Filing a lawsuit, even in the great EU does not mean you automatically won.

I'm sure Google will pick the latter if this stance is totally unfriendly to them. Makes room for a better YouTube and Foundem is the perfect replacement.

To bad, IF, for EU companies that survived on Adwords and/or Google Organic results but they also need to play by the same rules or stop doing business there.

You don't live in a bubble mate.

I doubt google would stop doing business in the EU - 10% of googles revenue comes from the UK alone.

they will continue to do business in the EU and will do whatever they have to to remain there.

its too big an economic region to avoid and google's shareholders will demand they comply with the rules in the name of profits.

they will continue to do business in the EU and will do whatever they have to to remain there.

Yes, and ultimately, the additional costs of doing business in the EU will be passed along to advertisers. Think of it as a hidden tax.

Yes, and ultimately, the additional costs of doing business in the EU will be passed along to advertisers. Think of it as a hidden tax.

and avertisers will go elsewhere.... mobile, facebook, pinterest, bing, etc... lowering google's revenue.

if avertisers dont get a ROI there wouldn't be much point in advertising.

Also Google will raise the cost of advertising to as much as possible anyway so this isn't a valid point.

and avertisers will go elsewhere.... mobile, facebook, pinterest, bing, etc... lowering google's revenue.

if avertisers dont get a ROI there wouldn't be much point in advertising.

Also Google will raise the cost of advertising to as much as possible anyway so this isn't a valid point.

Thanks for adding your own rebuttal to your first claim.

Oh what a web we weave!

I'm not "for" Google and if they are abusing their position they should pay but their ability to innovate better than everyone else is a positive impact for you and everyone else doing business in the EU or looking for businesses in the EU.

Thanks for adding your own rebuttal to your first claim.

which claim might that be?

I doubt google would stop doing business in the EU - 10% of googles revenue comes from the UK alone.

they will continue to do business in the EU and will do whatever they have to to remain there.

its too big an economic region to avoid and google's shareholders will demand they comply with the rules in the name of profits.

OK I'll buy that...

and avertisers will go elsewhere.... mobile, facebook, pinterest, bing, etc... lowering google's revenue.

if avertisers dont get a ROI there wouldn't be much point in advertising.

Also Google will raise the cost of advertising to as much as possible anyway so this isn't a valid point.

But alternatively those are the same conditions Google will face and would bail, if there is no incentive to stay.

Everyone is stuck with the same rules - right?

Do you seriously think google's shareholders will demand they comply with the rules based on losing share value?

You mentioned anti-EU sentiment in Europe. That's all the more reason for making Google, Facebook, Apple, and other foreign companies into villains.

The anti-EU sentiment in EU countries is against a bunch of un-elected bureaucrats making laws and regulations for nation states. Think Cuba making laws for the USA. The anti-EU sentiment isn't anti-Google, anti-Facebook or anti-Apple sentiment. What part of this don't you understand?

When economic growth is stagnant, employment (especially youth unemployment) is rampant, and nationalist parties are threatening the established parties and entrenched interests, what could be better for the bureaucrats in Brussels than having a foreign piñata to whack?

There you go again thinking that the EU is one single state. It is not. Most of the parties in EU countries are largely "nationalist" parties. You seem to think of it as being a unitary state like the USA. It is very far from that.

Hit 'em up for a few billion, then spend a year or two writing a plan for a digital Shangri-La in the hope that industrial policy is a workable substitute for innovation.

Few, apart from clueless churnalists that depend on the EU for press releases, take any notice of the equivalent of the Google Animal Farm type numpties in Brussels and their rubbish about digital policy. The .EU ccTLD is rarely used in the EU and has a web usage around the .BIZ gTLD level. It is not a core TLD in most EU countries. You assume that these bozos in Brussels set the digital policies for all countries. They don't. The countries in the EU compete for foreign direct investment from companies like Google et al.

Regards...jmcc