EU voted in favour of breaking up Google.

Soldato
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The EU would like some more money. Fining companies with or without cause is a reasonably effective means of raising some. Google is big enough to be worth "fining".

Google has bought rather a lot of weapons companies recently though. I'm not sure a power struggle between the EU and Google would go the way Europe expects.
 
Soldato
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So when they did something similar to Microsoft, who was shoving that **** IE up everyone's rear end, it was ok but now it's bad because lolEU?

Because that ruling really stopped microsoft from integrating IE and bing ever more closely with Windows, right?

The ruling is pointless because:
1) The EU have no legal authority to demand a US business splits into two.
2) The integration of google services hasn't been a complaint from EU citizens.
3) Google may have by far the largest market share, but it isn't a monopoly. Alternate search engines are set as default for pretty much every non-android device. Further, it is completely free to change away from google services, the choice lies with the user.
4) This could set back the key EU-US free trade agreement.
 
Soldato
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Google has bought rather a lot of weapons companies recently though. I'm not sure a power struggle between the EU and Google would go the way Europe expects.

They've bought a lot of robotics companies, who happen to make gear for the military. They're defence suppliers at a stretch, not too dissimilar from Land Rover.
 
Associate
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Now Google are weapons manufacturers?!

Let me grab my

No9man.png


TINFOIL HAT
 
Soldato
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The EU doesn't (yet) have a military. The member states combined can put up a reasonable armed force, but I doubt it "outguns the USA, China and Russia".

Right now, Google aren't making weapons. Probably. Boston Dynamics were a pretty serious military organisation - not really on the same level as Jaguar. Google has a fairly serious interest in satellites, but could conceivably have decided not to weaponise any of them.

So, today, sure - EU vs Google isn't a fair fight and Google will probably pay a "fine". Wait a decade and I think the positions will be reversed.
 
Soldato
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Oh just shut up EU

Your last ruling was making web sites irritate the living **** out of everyone, by making us click your nanny BS about the use of cookies.

Nobody cared then, nobody cares now, you are irrelevant.
Stick to making trade arrangements that shaft the UK.

***, the european bureaucracy justifying it's inflated budget.
 
Caporegime
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Why does Google have such a monopoly? Do they have patents on this technology or something?

Use another search engine for a day and you'll see why everyone uses Google :o


Bing is painful it's like it's actively trying to stop you finding what your looking for
 
Soldato
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As someone who has a big interest in SEO, Google definitely abuses their power, so restricting them is definitely a good thing. They are even stealing content from websites and displaying it on the search page, taking ad revenue from the websites that did all the work. For a regular user I could see why this wouldn't be important though.
 
Soldato
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Use another search engine for a day and you'll see why everyone uses Google :o


Bing is painful it's like it's actively trying to stop you finding what your looking for

This really. Bing on my windows phone often offers US centric companies. I'm in the UK, with my language set to UK English, the phone even knows where I parked my car last let alone what country I'm in :p
 
Soldato
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is it wrong that to me this reads as "As someone who has a big interest in getting non relevant results into your search...."

SEO is about getting your website to the top of the relevant search phrase, you'd have a very hard time getting something irrelevant to the top, assuming it's even possible with current algorithms. Getting something there unrelated to the search phrase would be a waste of time and money. But the pages that are at the top aren't always the best source of information, they are the sites with the best SEO. For example, if I made a new website with the best information in the world about a subject and did no optimisation, you'd never find it, but if there was a page on Wikipedia with very little content, it would be on the first page. SEO affects every single thing you search for on the internet, your search results are not hand-picked by some Google employee. It's not something only bad people use to make money, although that does happen.
 
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