News

It serves them right.

European authorities on Wednesday fined Google 1.5 billion euros for antitrust violations in the online advertising market, continuing its efforts to rein in the world’s biggest technology companies.

The fine, worth about $1.7 billion, is the third against Google by the European Union since 2017, reinforcing the region’s position as the world’s most aggressive watchdog of an industry with an increasingly powerful role in society and the global economy. The regulators said Google had violated antitrust rules by imposing unfair terms on companies that used its search bar on their websites in Europe.

The EU’s Margrethe Vestager said it well when she declared:

“Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anticompetitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites.”

It’s nice to hear somebody in a position of public responsibility saying this and then back it up with action.

What’s sad, though, is that the United States keeps letting Google skate when it can see the same thing that European Union regulators can see. The difference is that the EU cares about combating monopolistic behavior while the U.S. authorities don’t.

We can only hope Stadia is as big of a failure as Google Plus was.

At the Game Developers Conference, Google announced its biggest play yet in the gaming space: a streaming game service named Google Stadia, designed to run on everything from PCs and Android phones to Google’s own Chromecast devices.

As of press time, the service’s release window is simply “2019.” No pricing information was announced at the event.

Google Stadia will run a selection of existing PC games on Google’s centralized servers, taking in controller inputs and sending back video and audio using Google’s network of low-latency data centers. The company revealed a new Google-produced controller, along with a game-streaming interface that revolves around a “play now” button. Press this on any Web browser and gameplay will begin “in as quick as five seconds… with no download, no patch, no update, and no install.”

Ars Technica commenters are skeptical about Stadia.

“Can’t wait for this to be killed off in a press release in 6 years! I really need more reliability from Google in supporting their platforms,” wrote one.

“Annnd will quickly forget about it in 1-2 years. Buyer beware,” said another.

“My past experience with Google products suddenly disappearing really discourages me from trying this, let alone sink money into it,” agreed a third.

A must-read post from Mozilla’s Chris Beard.

Microsoft is officially giving up on an independent shared platform for the internet. By adopting Chromium, Microsoft hands over control of even more of online life to Google.

This may sound melodramatic, but it’s not. The “browser engines” — Chromium from Google and Gecko Quantum from Mozilla — are “inside baseball” pieces of software that actually determine a great deal of what each of us can do online. They determine core capabilities such as which content we as consumers can see, how secure we are when we watch content, and how much control we have over what websites and services can do to us. Microsoft’s decision gives Google more ability to single-handedly decide what possibilities are available to each one of us.

From a business point of view Microsoft’s decision may well make sense. Google is so close to almost complete control of the infrastructure of our online lives that it may not be profitable to continue to fight this. The interests of Microsoft’s shareholders may well be served by giving up on the freedom and choice that the internet once offered us. Google is a fierce competitor with highly talented employees and a monopolistic hold on unique assets. Google’s dominance across search, advertising, smartphones, and data capture creates a vastly tilted playing field that works against the rest of us.

This is a worrying development indeed.

What would have made more sense is for Microsoft to embrace Gecko, and contribute to Firefox’s rendering engine. It would have allowed the software giant to reconcile with the successor (Mozilla) of its former opponent (Netscape) in the “browser wars”, and given a boost to the Firefox project.

Instead, Microsoft is moving to shore up Google’s dominance in the browser space.

It is worth noting here that Mozilla is financially dependent on Google — Google currently pays Mozilla to make its search engine the default in Firefox. (Defaults matter because most people don’t change them.) So even Mozilla hasn’t been able to chart a totally independent course from the Monster of Mountain View.

A Microsoft-Mozilla alliance makes so much sense: Firefox could help steer people to Bing, and Microsoft could help Gecko’s future development. It’s a shame it’s not happening.