EU anti-trust authorities are from Thursday testing for a month changes to Google’s search results meant to respond to competitors’ complaints that the US online giant was giving unfair prominence to its own links and ads.
The “market test” trial stems from a 2010 inquiry opened after several complaints from companies, including the portal Ciao, owned by Microsoft, that Google was abusing its dominant market position to promote its own businesses.
If the measures are deemed adequate, the EU’s executive body, the European Commission, could make them binding on the company. However, if they are not, then Google could be fined an amount reaching as high as 10 percent of its global revenues.
US regulators in January closed their own similar probe into Google’s practices by saying there was not enough evidence to prove the Internet giant was manipulating its search results to harm competitors.
Google controls about 70 percent of the online search market in the US and about 90 percent in Europe.
In response to the EU probe, Google has committed itself to several remedies over the next five years, including clearly labeling search results that link to Google businesses, such as restaurant finders, and to put three competitors’ links close by on the same page.
Google would also scrap exclusivity clauses with advertisers whose links pop up in relation to a search query.
Crucially, Google would also provide newspaper publishers with a mechanism to control the “display of their content in Google News,” the commission said
Competitors have a month in which to make their remarks on the changed practices.
Google’s competitors and some consumer groups said the test period and proposed remedies were insufficient.
“Google’s proposed commitments appear to fall short of ending the preferential treatment at the heart of the commission’s case based on formal complaints from 17 companies,” said Thomas Vinje, a spokesman for FairSearch Europe, which groups smaller online search and technology businesses, including Microsoft and the travel sites Expedia and TripAdvisor.
BEUC, a European consumer group, said in a statement that its “initial reaction is one of disappointment as we do not think today’s [Thursday’s] proposals can credibly achieve these targets” of ensuring fair practices.
Six European countries, including France and Britain, have also launched joint action against Google to get it to scale back new monitoring powers that watchdogs believe violate EU privacy protection rules.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day