Google hit with new charges by EU

EU files fresh competition charges against Google

[jmccormac]

The EU has hit Google with fresh charges that deal with online search advertising. (Adwords/Adsense).
"EU regulators have brought a third competition charge against Alphabet's Google, accusing it of blocking rivals in the lucrative online search advertising market."

[rte.ie...]

This should be fun.

[wsj.com...]

[theverge.com...]

And the official EU statement:
[europa.eu...]

Regards...jmcc

[engine]

This is such a fine line, and it's never going to to be easy. The company has the opportunity to tweak things in the meantime.

[jmccormac]

Well at least Google has learned from the PR disaster of trying to dismiss it all via a cluelessly wrong blog post. Google seems to be keeping quiet this time around. The French investigation is ongoing too. It looks like Google may end up with a large fine whatever it does.

Regards...jmcc

[EditorialGuy]

Maybe it's time for Gexit. :-)

[isellstuff]

Yup, Google has been favoring its own shopping engine over competitors for a couple of years and the damage to competing shopping engines has been significant. I've done some analysis on how often Google's shopping has the best price and the results aren't great. If you factor out the "fly by night" sellers, the results are even worse. There are certain categories where Google shopping results are absolutely horrible. So you could argue that Google is actually hurting the consumer along with their competitors.

When Google adopted the stance that the only "middle person" would be themselves, they harmed the consumer by limiting the amount of information and inhibiting innovation. My question is, when will we see similar anti-trust initiatives in the US?

[blend27]

My question is, when will we see similar anti-trust initiatives in the US?

Probably the next day after "I am Feeling Lucky" button changes to say "Show me only Google sites"

[tangor]

As noted elsewhere, g is not out of the woods in the USA ... though at the moment it will take an administration change for any challenges to proceed.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[jmccormac]

The US moves will be very significant as Google has a lot of lobbyists. There is a definite shift with the EU and it seemed that Google believed that the European Commission wasn't serious. Things changed when the last commissioner was removed/retired/dumped. The Google koolaid was not on the drinks list this time around and the coverage seems to have shifted away from believing the whole "do no evil" mantra. The tax avoision issue has become utterly toxic not only for Google but for other large multinationals as well. Google's FUDbuddies in the media have lost a lot of credibility as this has shifted to being a taxation and business story. Most of the "technology" journalists have no background or expertise in these areas and are generally being ignored in news organisations on the story. Google got six weeks to reply on the last set of charges (September 7th being the reply date). It has ten weeks to reply on this one.

Regards...jmcc

[MrSavage]

Does anyone think that the organic traffic culling as it relates to the subsequent demise of affiliate marketing programs will become a discussion point in the future? Less traffic means less publishers, means less value in companies using affiliate programs which steers a great many companies into alternative advertising options. Those other options being what I wonder. I'm sure not intentional with the flagrant disregard for organic results and traffic handouts, but for me, it's a win because when companies realize that their affiliate program expenses are nothing short of a joke, Google stands to benefit. Must be nice.