Don't worry about hitting them with a fine.....
...just make them switch all new Chrome installs default to Duck Duck Go....and force them to offer the choice to current devices, bit like MS with the browser choice.
Google is being strong-armed by the competition wing of the European Commission to quickly come up with a revised and more palatable offer to fix for its alleged abuse of dominance in the search market. It has weeks to respond, antitrust commissioner Joaquin Almunia told reporters today, according to Reuters. Google's most …
The complaints are not about how the results are ranked. They are about adding to these results boxes which display information obtained from other Google products, like Maps, Finance, Shopping.
When you google for "London", you get a box on the right which contains a map showing London, linking to Google Maps.
When you google for "nikon d3200", you get a box titled "Shop for nikon d3200 on Google", linking to Google Shopping.
This is the part that competitors are complaining about. It is not part of the organic search results.
"When you google for "London", you get a box on the right which contains a map showing London, linking to Google Maps."
I know. Bloody useful it is, too - particularly on mobile. Shame it looks like we're going to lose it and have useless links to ukstreetfarts and the like instead.
From what I can see here, Google hasn't actually done anything illegal. The EU commission is having a go for supposed "Monopoly" behaviour, but they've got a near-monopoly because they're the best at what they do. If someone came up with a better search engine, there's nothing stopping us all from moving to it (and I'm sure there are some people who do use Bing and the like).
So Google have done nothing wrong, but the EU is threatening them with fines because their competitors are unhappy about them doing so well. What's wrong with this picture?
> … they've got a near-monopoly because they're the best at what they do. If someone came up with a better search engine, there's nothing stopping us all from moving to it
If *ALL* it was about was the search engine then you'd be right. But it isn't.
They've used their massive dominance (not monopoly) in search to allow them to just step into any other market and dominate it too. I find it "somewhat suspicious" how they can introduce a new product and miraculously it leaps straight to the top of the search results - straight past existing (and sometimes good and well established) alternatives. They also give their own stuff special dominance - such the the way their shopping isn't "just another search result" like the other shopping sites, but it's own special section.
Unfortunately the damage is done, and short of dismantling Google I don't see how it can be undone. The logical outcome was plain to see (and some people can now say "told you so") a long time ago - but for a combination of reasons nothing was done when there was scope for preventing the damage (just as with Microsoft). The two main reasons (IMO) are that the regulators can't do anything until damage is actually done and someone complains, and when they do finally take action it takes years during which the players can further entrench their position and make it even harder to undo.
Google, Microsoft, IBM, Standard Oil, … All have used pretty much the same tactics over the decades.