#83: Europe's War on Google

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2016

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

News broke yesterday that Google will soon face a 3 billion euro fine from the European Commission after 6 years of antitrust investigations from EU regulators. In the past, the EC has accused Google of unfairly promoting its own services in search results at the expense of its competitors. Now, regulators are complaining that Google requires smartphone manufacturers to make Google search the default and pre-install Google apps on phones running its Android operating system. Evan and Berin discuss the merits and implications of the case. Is Google really abusing its dominance in the search and smartphone markets?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Schwargerber. On today's show, Google is facing a $3 billion fine from the European Commission. You heard me, $3 billion. For the past six years, antitrust investigators in the
0:22.9	EU have been investigating Google for unfairly abusing its dominance in the search market to the
0:30.2	benefit of its own products over its competitors. So think about Google putting shopping results
0:35.1	above eBay or its Google reviews of businesses above Yelp.
0:39.6	A lot of these companies have been complaining.
0:41.6	And because Google has 90% of the search market in Europe, and when I say Europe, I mean the EU,
0:47.6	we got these complaints.
0:48.8	So back in April, the EEC put out its statement of objections.
0:53.1	And then on yesterday, a report surface that they're
0:56.1	facing about a $3 billion fine. Joining me to discuss this and tell me why search monopolies
1:01.7	are really great for consumers is Google Schill and President of Tech Freedom, Berrin Soka.
1:05.6	Barron, thank you for joining me. Right. On Mondays, it's Google Schill and Tuesdays it's Cable
1:09.7	shill, right? Well, just, you know, whoever happens you happen to be shilling for at that moment. You can
1:14.5	shill for more than one company at a time, right? Right, right, as long as they hate each other.
1:18.8	Yeah, well, that's what makes you you? So, Baron, what exactly is the problem here? I mean, yes,
1:24.2	Google has 90% of the search market in the EU, but that's because Europeans like Google, right?
1:30.6	Right. So this case has been going on for a long time, right? Europe has a long history of bringing
1:35.8	long antitrust cases, the case that the European Commission, that's the EC that you mentioned,
1:42.8	brought against, Microsoft started back in
1:45.9	1993. That really went on until about 2012 and resulted in a fine of close to 900 million
1:53.0	euros. So this case has been going on for a long time, as you point out, the earlier iterations
1:58.7	of this were focused on search and the integration
	...

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