This seems like it might be painting Google with too positive a brush."
Then you are either unaware of my feelings towards Google or you are so unrepentantly biased against them that is no brush too negative with which another person can paint them.
Now I'm not saying I prefer Microsoft - by no means.
However I would reject that "[o]nly one of these two will hold the majority of the English-speaking search market".
Reality does not require your acceptance.
How about neither? A third player?
Not going to happen in the next 10 years. Do you even begin to comprehend the barriers to entry in the global search market? The insane amount of intellectual property that goes into the algorithms? Not just ranking, but efficiently indexing, retrieving, geolocating, etc? That's before we even touch upon the infrastructure required to run such a thing.
I would lay hard odds that even Amazon couldn't challenge Bing. To say nothing of Google.
Several more specialized search engines - perhaps through a central search engine that'll be forced to link through the specialized search engines that it's ripping its results from... I don't just speculation of course.
Same problem. A specialized search engine is even harder than a generalized one. You're trying to find not just needles in the haystack, but needles of a certain texture. Even if you could get a bunch of companies to create these specialized search engines, why would you ever assume they wouldn't be complete ass when compared to Bing (let alone Google?)
And who pays? How do these specialized search engines make money? Who is going to "force" a centralized search engine to link through others, and how does that search engine make money? No company is going to set about pissing away billions (and yes, we are talking billions to play the game today) on something that isn't ultimately profitable to them.
Besides which, why the metric fuck would I accept some government forcing me to use a particular search engine? Why should I? What right does a government have to tell me what search provider I must use?
If the government isn't forcing me to use a given search provider, why would I use anyone but the best of the best of the best? (Which is Google, hands down. Absolutely no contest.) If all rational decisions makers choose the best search engine (and probably a handful of irrational decision makers as well) then how does Google ever lose that monopoly unless someone comes along and is legitimately better?
Being legitimately better has such a high barrier to entry...
Look: you can't legislate people to use a given search engine. All you can do is make sure that a company with a natural monopoly is prevented from abusing it. In the case of Google, search is a loss leader so if you try to turn the knobs too much they'll just say "fuck you" and leave.
At which point you've cut off your penis to inflate your ego because now you've either crippled your own economy by ensuring your people only have access to an inferior tool when compared to the rest of the world. If you get into a trade war pissing match with the multinational in question you end up creating a subversive culture where people will tunnel past your firewall to get access to the tool they actually want.
More people using a search engine doesn't make that search engine better. Even if Microsoft won, got Google banned from doing any business whatsoever in Europe, that is absolutely not a victory for the citizens of Europe. Microsoft doesn't have the skills to go up against Google and provide a tool of equal value. Nobody else does either...though Baidu might get there in a few years.
So what you get is functionally annihilating the internet economy in Europe so that one American corporation can evict another. How the hell does that serve Europeans?
If you want a third party search engine, get 10 billion dollars together, get the best PhDs you can get, build the best search algorithms and infrastructure and maybe in 5 years you'll be where Google is today. If you can accreted enough users you might get enough revenue to compete with Google and maybe you overtake them.
Google, however, won't stay still. And they have better PhDs than any you could buy. They have loyalty and the ability to continue to afford such loyalty. Most governments can't take Google on directly when it comes to internet R&D.
This isn't me liking Google. I'm pretty convinced they're evil. (Though I believe they are less evil than Microsoft.) But I recognize reality. Google represent something that has never existed before in all of human history. They are the gatekeepers to all human knowledge. They are very nearly the gatekeepers to all human experience.
More than mere money, Google have power. The power that comes from intimate knowledge, the power that comes from intelligence (detailed knowledge of the enemy), and the power that comes from religion (they have True Believers that number in the millions).
Like it or not, Google are more powerful than most nations. They are not a force that can simply be legislated to come to heel. And they are not a force to be trifled with. They provide a very distinct, very real competitive advantage to those who use their technology and they know it.
This is more than simply a wish list of wanting something for nothing from some yankee corporation. This is the game of thrones, and if Europe moves to smite Google the consequences will be very, very real.
Alumia knows that. His decision was the right one, given the circumstances. That isn't me "being kind to Google", that's just accepting that knowledge = power, and Google knows fucking everything.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
