Goggle Getting Slapped!

Im sure with all the money google has they will hold it up in court for many years.

Its about damn time!!!!

Monrox said:

The point of antitrust laws is to prevent dominance in one niche by using fairly acquired dominance in another one. If someone goes to the top all by himself nuking the competition in the process, that is fine. Nobody pressed MS into having quotas of how many copies of windows to sell per year. They had a problem with pushing a browser which was not having any major advantages over the competition on its own.

If these regulations were missing, a public transport provider could simply make a deal with WalMart and not service any other stops / stations which are close to other competitors.

Or some electricity company being the only one in the vicinity decides to deliver juice only to homes that use a certain internet provider.

The capitalistic spirit does not prevent companies from becoming number one by buyouts, better service, price wars (to an extent) etc., but gaining unfair advantage has always been frowned upon.

If the FTC really wants to see a real evidence that this is actually happening, they can simply build 2 websites, one with AS, the other without and see which one gets indexed first. But why rush things, it's way better to drag this out for years, being so much more productive and stuff

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I think this is more like, Walmart gets 80% of all household consumer spending so they add a tune/lube to leverage their brand. Or maybe Microsoft sells XXXXXXXX copies of Windows each year, so to enter the browser market they include IE in every copy of windows.

Google is not saying, "Hey you cant use anyone but us or your site will be deindexed"... Google.com is owned by a private company, they should be able to do whatever the hell they want with their search results. Im not sure how using THEIR website to promote THEIR other websites is an unfair advantage.

In addition, the only thing I have seen them promote themselves with are sponsored links, and knowing how corporate accounting functions, I would be willing to bet you that each site (adsense, adwords, youtube) all pay some CPC for the sponsored listings that show up. Granted it may be a discounted rate, but again this is Googles business, not the federal governments.

Short answer, you dont like Googles results, then dont use google.

hatcheck said:

How exactly does Google prevent its competitors from playing in its ecosystem?

If you're suggesting that Yahoo and Bing have a right to use Google's organic results in their own searches, then I strongly disagree, because that notion suggests that Bing and Yahoo are entitled to the fruits of Google's labor.

If you're suggesting that Bing and Yahoo are being blocked from advertising on Google, I need to see the proof before I believe it.

If you're suggesting something else, you're going to have to be more clear.

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It's not about preventing bing and yahoo, these are same boat competitors and they can be beaten without objection from the FTC (G holds a patent and patents are a granted monopoly).

An unfair advantage, which is not vague as you complained in a later post of yours, is for example blockind advertisers. A search monopolist has no right to decide what internet users see as ads. Right now some are not allowed to advertise through AW because of some whimsical policy, e.g. 'we don't like tobacco so you tobacco people go fck yaself'. This has no legal foundation since controlling 90% of what users see when searching for stuff is effectively enjoying a mandate which has never been granted.

If they were controlling 10% nobody would object because then it won't be a monopoly. Even if all 10% market holders were banning tobacco ads, that still wouldn't be a monopoly if they independently decided to do it. But if it was a cartel, then the FTC would again need to take care of it.

In China the govt oficially owns the internet access and is allowed by law to exclude whatever they want but in many countries, including USA, there isn't a provision to allow a commercial entity to dictate what is fine and what isn't.

In some countries, state television&radio are forced to show ads, even when completely funded by the population, not because they are greedy but because they hold >70% of the ratings and the law requires media outlets to be accessible to advertisers.

As to G having an obligation to its shareholders, that is a valid point but has nothing to do with a right to break laws. Besides, they don't pay out dividents anyway. I would say paying your shareholders at least something is a greater (moral) obligation

And finally, it is important not to involve hate in such discussions. I just like to know how things are regulated, that is all. Personally it is better to try and game a single monopoly than to deal with 10 providers with their own quirks.

Yeah Scrapeboss, naturally is cool and all, but how many times have people been G slapped? That's not very natural at all is it? Personally I can't wait for G to get slapped and ultimately PWNED by bing or some other private crawler who are less nazi like when it comes to "web spam". (read: normal, little guys just trying to make money, support families etc.) Anything that gets so big as G, needs to get taken down and reduced in size. I welcome these developments.

To be honest, nobody here would want to start a small business and with time that business grows to become one of the biggest companies in the world, and one day wake up to receive a letter from Congress or any government body that "Hey, you have grown too big and you have become a monopoly. Therefore, we need to cut you down".

The dream of everyone here is to create and maintain an online business that grows very big. It's a natural human aspiration and I would not blame google for that. They are human beings and they want to keep their company stronger and richer like everyone here. The greatness of google today is as a result of the labor and wisdom of the creators. They had and still have vision, always creating opportunities for everyone to succeed together, including 99.99% of internet marketers today.

Should google be punished for greatness or because it has succeeded? NO

Instead, let google be an inspiration to many of us to do something similar. Anybody can succeed. Anything can grow from NOTHING to SOMETHING.

There is nothing wrong with being big per se, but certain abuses of power need to be checked and put in to place accordingly. The internet is a resource which in my opinion is dominated by G when there should be limits on presence and influence. If the Govt does find abuses of power which I am confident it will, then G will rightly be downsized. After all, "don't be evil". Those c**ts should take their own advice, really. I mean, what's wrong with cloaking?

Dude, I understand your point. But, let's be fair. How would you behave if you were one of the owners of Google? The truth is that those complaining would do the same if they were in the position of Larry Page, etc.

Every internet marketer today is trying to make money. Doing all kinds of SEO and promoting websites. Why are you even building backlinks? Because you are aware that you have competitors (fellow IM'ers) who are also trying to get to the top of the search engines to make money. Did you know as you maintain the top spot in search engines, you are depriving some other people of making money? You always want to get all clickbank, amazon, ebay and other commissions. You would not mind continuing to do that while being aware or unaware that many other marketers are no longer making money because you have taken that top search engine spot and converting traffic to money.

At the big level, that is the way Google is. Google would not fold arms and let Yahoo or Bing take over. It is natural with everyone of us and we would do the same at that big level.

BTW, the internet is free for everyone to operate. Anybody can set up his search engine site if he has the resources and then start competing against Google. Google might not be perfect but that should not be a big deal in the internet community where the person with the best service for the consumer is the winner.

Like I said, if any of us were owners of Google, we would do the same thing those guys are doing. Who does not like to make money and continue to make more?

jb2008 said:

There is nothing wrong with being big per se, but certain abuses of power need to be checked and put in to place accordingly. The internet is a resource which in my opinion is dominated by G when there should be limits on presence and influence. If the Govt does find abuses of power which I am confident it will, then G will rightly be downsized. After all, "don't be evil". Those c**ts should take their own advice, really. I mean, what's wrong with cloaking?

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ScrapeBoss said:

Dude, I understand your point. But, let's be fair. How would you behave if you were one of the owners of Google? The truth is that those complaining would do the same if they were in the position of Larry Page, etc.
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That is irrelevant. The majority of us would indeed do the same but being impartial is a main requirement in applying the law. If someone rapes a judge's cat, that judge will be forbidden from presiding over the case. It never comes down to what would someone do in the same situation. Except for maybe in societies that still use the blood money principle.

ScrapeBoss said:

...
BTW, the internet is free for everyone to operate. Anybody can set up his search engine site if he has the resources and then start competing against Google. Google might not be perfect but that should not be a big deal in the internet community where the person with the best service for the consumer is the winner.
...

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This is simply not true. You can't set up a search engine like G's. You'd be slapped with a huge lawsuit about patent infringement. They will base it on the same law framework that they are going to try to discard in the upcoming proceedings about acting in bad faith.

If it was a simple copy and apply, do you really think MS wouldn't be able to set up three times larger server farms with their 5 times bigger financial assets?

The more i read these posts... the more I see that people do not understand why google is going under the microscope...

Mainly its because its so big AND its using its resources unfairly...

To make it simple.. its like google is the biggest car dealership in the world..
and if you want to buy a car from them.... you need to have it financed where they tell you and ONLY where they tell you...and of course the finance company being owned by google...

that is leveraging the fact that they dominate an industry and use that power
to succeed in another industry...
that is what the government does not want google or any company to do...

these are rules that OTHER companies have to abide by too..

if anti monopoly laws were not in place....
google would of never made it to where it is now.....
Microsoft would have included a built in search engine in windows and wiped out everyone else including google.

They also made a lot of their products purposefully incompatible with 3rd party products.

If, for example, they can prove that android devices run google searches and iphones are purposefully slowed down, then there might be a case.

chano420 said:

I think this is more like, Walmart gets 80% of all household consumer spending so they add a tune/lube to leverage their brand. Or maybe Microsoft sells XXXXXXXX copies of Windows each year, so to enter the browser market they include IE in every copy of windows.

Google is not saying, "Hey you cant use anyone but us or your site will be deindexed"... Google.com is owned by a private company, they should be able to do whatever the hell they want with their search results. Im not sure how using THEIR website to promote THEIR other websites is an unfair advantage.

In addition, the only thing I have seen them promote themselves with are sponsored links, and knowing how corporate accounting functions, I would be willing to bet you that each site (adsense, adwords, youtube) all pay some CPC for the sponsored listings that show up. Granted it may be a discounted rate, but again this is Googles business, not the federal governments.

Short answer, you dont like Googles results, then dont use google.

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I'm pretty sure that Google doesn't pay U.S. taxes... Just something I heard, well that they moved they're main operations out of the U.S. If thats the case the U.S. is pissed they no longer recieve tax money but are still a giant company making $680 a second... I try not to get to hyped up over stuff like this. It's good to know whats going on in the world of the mighty G though.

zombie affiliate said:

I'm pretty sure that Google doesn't pay U.S. taxes... Just something I heard, well that they moved they're main operations out of the U.S. If thats the case the U.S. is pissed they no longer recieve tax money but are still a giant company making $680 a second... I try not to get to hyped up over stuff like this. It's good to know whats going on in the world of the mighty G though.

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Do you live in some sort of parallel universe?

zombie affiliate said:

I'm pretty sure that Google doesn't pay U.S. taxes... Just something I heard, well that they moved they're main operations out of the U.S. If thats the case the U.S. is pissed they no longer recieve tax money but are still a giant company making $680 a second... I try not to get to hyped up over stuff like this. It's good to know whats going on in the world of the mighty G though.

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They have a nice multi million (billion?) dollar acocunt in the bahama's where Uncle Sam can't touch the money. They are still based in the US, you don't have to move your corporation to avoid taxes. When you make as much as G does you hire a team of about 200 people just to tell you how to avoid taxes and to move your money around.

Most big corporations in the US do it. GE for example was on the news because they didn't pay any taxes all year and they owed some $5 billion dollars in taxes. It was all legal and the government just gave them a smile and a nod. Try that when you're making less than a billion a year and you'll be thrown in jail.

Don't see how this can be anything but good for consumers.

Googles searche results are shit because we're all playing the system. If the other 2 big search engines take some of Googles market share we will have to split our SEO efforts between 2/3 different algorythms.

So it is:
1) Better for SEO practioners because you aren't competing against everyone else on a single platform
2) Better for consumers because the main search engines results aren't being skewed by millions of people playing up to the system.
3) Better for the internet because you don't have to grovel and bow to google.

How is any of this bad? It's only really the American fairy story of the 'free market' that Im seeing used as an arguament against it, and that is just that, A FAIRY TALE, the government steps in all the time to protect big companies, sets up illeagal trade tarrifs to protect US producers and a whole host of other shit that renders the whole concept of a free market false.

I guess you haven't read too much about quality sites that have been slapped by Google, read a little more. A lot of companies had to lay-off people because of Panda. I also had a quality website with 100% unique content, quality links and got slapped. I also have my only crappy site with 80% scraped content from Amazon that is sitting at #1 for a competitive word. So you obviously don't see the problem with Google right now. Yes they are too big, and I hope they get their monopoly knocked from under their ass. If they loose a lot of their share yahoo and bing will step up to fill in the demand. I could care less about shareholders, I'll just leave you with this quote to sum it up.

"absolute power brings absolute corruption"

TNphoneman said:

A lot of you all do not realize how business works. Google is responsible to their share holders. If they get a big "slapdown" where the hell do you think the money is going to come from to appease shareholders? It is going to come out of your share of adsense revenue. So instead of you getting 60%, maybe it drops to 40%.

Google makes me money and you all wishing for them to get hurt is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Your sites got hit but it is not your fault that you put up crappy spun content or violated the TOS so they banned your account. Take responsibility for your own shit and quit blaming everyone else. The reason you dropped is because you did not adapt. Evolution and nature have a way of weeding out the weak.

Do I like everything that they are doing? No but then I also do not own 51% so there is nothing I can do about it. Learn to adapt and make it work for you instead of trying to push against it.

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kPybus said:

Try that when you're making less than a billion a year and you'll be thrown in jail.

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Exactly. That's what disgusts me. When you are a certain size and have certain money, you can afford to hire the best lawyers and accountants to help you avoid every tax possible that the regular man couldn't afford, and hence go to jail. It's quite a disgrace. If they really don't want to "be evil", then they will pay all US taxes due on their colossal earnings and stop preaching to others about "ethical tactics".

Equally, G's lawyers are so good they would definitely PWN you if a small guy tried to make his own search engine. It is unjust dominance. Let's see what happens with this investigation.

Google re-created the Internet, from my point of view.
They have been fair and straight but understandably strict. I lost my original adsense account for being extremely stupid, and can tell for sure - it's pretty clear who's to blame when one looses account.

As for the panda, crocodile, giraffe and rest of the animal world - same story as above. Try to produce some quality instead of copied shit and you might rank.

Just speaking my mind about this comments supporting google going down.
And about this topic - pretty shitty. They'll find nothing, I'd bet on that.
After years of tech improvements of internet itself, it's not cool to turn against the guys there in Google.

Bla

No need to mix up things. The tax issue is a different topic.

USA wants to collect taxes on activities that do not happen on American soil.
Which is a complete BS when for example you have a business in France. If I am a french company using adwords, I am expected to pay a premium so that Google can pay a US tax even though I am dealing with a french market? A completely unbased requirement since they want to have a piece from something that never touches anything American like roads, police, schools or whatever else taxes are spent on.

So Google (and MS and countless others as well) move their international operations to Ireland and elsewhere sparing their international clients a tax burden that is not owned in the first place.

Every now and then some journalist pops up and writes how billions of dollars are not paid... but he doesn't explain why exactly some people think they are owed. Whatever happens in France stays in France. Or do we want to pay France taxes on Michelin tyres sold in the USA?

funkman said:

Google re-created the Internet, from my point of view.

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Sorry but what the HELL does that even mean?
(Not being nasty, but I don't see how you can defend that statement)