Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Unexpected sympathy
Sympathy for Google? Impossible. Until this.
Via ZH:
Google suffered a major regulatory blow on Tuesday, when the EU's antitrust regulator fined Alphabet’s Google a record €2.42 billion ($2.71 billion) fine for "abusing its dominance in search" and favoring its own comparison-shopping service in search results: a decision with far-reaching implications for both the tech sector and already strained transatlantic relations. The EU further ordered the search giant to apply the same methods to rivals as its own when displaying their services in search results.Skewing search results is what Google does. That's not disingenuous or parodic or ironic, it's just a simple description of how they make money. Google is an advertising agency running a library. Expecting Google to produce results that are not paid by advertisers is like expecting BBDO or Saatchi to create full-color layouts for all products at once with no special attention to the companies that pay the agency. Google does all sorts of evil things and tries to consume the world, but its core business is normal and comparatively honest. You can't have commerce without advertising. EU wants Google to cease its only honest activity. ¶ 6:01 AM
