Vocal Voices

I read this article on Reuters yesterday and two things struck me.

First. Why do Americans always completely misread other countries and institutions. They hear parliament and they write "Law Makers". In fact the EU parliament do nothing of the sort. They don't make laws, they can't even propose laws for inclusion. That is the commission. The parliament can't even approve laws either, they stand as an arbiter for when the Council of ministers can't make their mind up. If they can make their mind up, then the EU parliament gets to play with themselves and talk and generate hot air, but nothing more.

Second. The EU parliament, basically dominated by left leaning (even Christian Democrats are left of the Lib Dems in UK politics), <x>'crats of one kind or another, has the delusion that they have either the ability or the right to demand the break up of a company which simply does some, by no means all, of it's business in the EU. Whilst the US has the right to demand changes in American companies, it simply doesn't have that right with companies elsewhere. Granted it could remove the license to carry out trade, but, then again, if you think of the Internet, how would you do that?

Isn't it about time that people started to understand the world around them and also their limitations within it. Granted the EU parliament has to do something, but making itself a laughing stock of the world is not one I would choose. But then I'm not a politician....

Suff. - You obviously know more about the constitution and workings of the EU than I do.

Frankly, I don't give a damn about the EU, and my view is that the sooner we get out of it the better.

That's why I shall be voting for UKIP.

p.s. I don't use Google, I prefer Bing.

Ah, Bing, it just offends me. It's one of those inane American words surprise, which people used to come out with all the time. At least since Microsoft has hijacked it, it's pretty much stopped people using it naturally, for which I thank Microsoft. Just think of working with an American colleague from whom every 3rd word is "cool" and you know how I feel about "Bing".

Have a look at the "search engine" timeline from wikipedia. It's the sidebar on the right.

Note that MSN Search has been going since 1998 and it was always second string. Still is today with its new Bingness.

It's interesting to look at the search engine timeline and see which search engines are still active and always have been. The first one I used was Lycos. Then I added Altavista Excite and Yahoo in 1995. Of all of these I standardised on Altavista. However as the web grew I found myself having to add up to 10 conditions on the search to get what I wanted. Until 1999 when someone showed me google. My highly conditional search in AltaVista could be replicated in Google with 2 words and I would get my required hit within the top 4 links. Every time.

Nowadays the volume of hits on Google are hundreds of times larger than they were in 1999. However it is still the best first port of call for a search. However that's not just what it is all about. Google realised early on that integrating mapping and service based information was a critical part of search. So they bought cartography services and created Google Maps then integrated it into their search engine. It makes for a comprehensive service. Google was ahead of everyone in realising that people didn't need lots of individual pieces of information like phone book, yellow pages etc. People wanted to find services and places, phone numbers and web addresses, flights, hotels, all in one query. They also recognised that location would be highly important and localised the information and offerings.

Bing, on the other hand, is heavily US centric, with erratic mapping and highly selective services offered. I'm sure it's improving, but the few times I've strayed onto it, it's like I have dropped into a time warp to an earlier internet age.

Google was early to recognise that users were going to move rapidly to mobile. So they produced and operating system for mobile phones which would extend their services to the mobile arena. At the time using Android to go head to head with Apple and Nokia was thought to be crazy…

Now we see Governments punishing that vision and attempting to interfere in the business market place. Google didn't buy up all the competition intending to push prices up (which is what the competition commission or monopolies and mergers in the UK is all about), they literally created the market and made themselves the de-facto competition.

It was the EU which allowed Google to become what it is today. Google was one of the companies which tried to use the EU break Microsoft because it was a "bad" company. In fact I recall that the EU was mulling breaking up Microsoft into companies of a smaller size so the EU businesses could compete with them.

I must admit that my ire at Google for causing a decade of lost capability of my Microsoft systems is somewhat leavened by my amusement that they are in exactly the same situation with the EU as Microsoft was at the end of the 20th century... My ire at the EU is, however, even larger. Big is bad apparently. Well, sorry, I don't believe them. If Google was German there would be no question as to breaking it up.....

Even as we hear that twitter is going to spy on your other apps on your phone, the EU is busy trying to break Google up. The EU has a history of this. Whilst it was blindingly obvious that Google was poised to break the Microsoft monopoly on desktop and browser, the EU was fanatically trying to interfere, at the behest of…. IBM, Google, Oracle, Sun, Opera, Mozilla and others. After hundreds of millions in fines and the pitifully lame “Browser Choice”, where are we today?

Google has 50% of the browser market. Google has 80% of the smartphone market. Google has a monopoly on the search and search related advertising business. Google has huge email services, business services, a virtual monopoly on mapping. Sun failed and has been bought by Oracle and Opera is in an even worse situation re: Google and Chrome than it was with IE.

Great, we screwed Microsoft in time to have Google take over everything Microsoft had AND much more besides. So what, let’s make the same mistake all over again. Let’s stop Google from competing for long enough that Facebook will take it all over…

About what the EU is good for…. Nothing!

I do not see what the problem is.

It is not the EU's fault that Reuters is reporting the EU Parliamentary role wrongly. It is up to Reuters to get its facts straight.

Nor do I see anything wrong with the EU Commission looking at Google's operations within the EU. Global companies work to the rules if the jurisdictions they operate in, that is nothing new. In the case of Google it might be impossible or ineffective to change the way it operates, but that does not mean it should not be looked at.

Yes it was an equal opportunities rant.

Reuters and American's need to learn what the EU is. It annoys me but most people in the UK have no idea what they're voting for either so I guess you can't blame them that much.

As for the Parliament and Commission?

They get to say how people may do business in their area. Not how a company runs. Talking about a company which is registered in a completely different region of the world, operating under totally different rules and regulations, as if they can just interfere because they have a % of its business; is a level of arrogance which I do not wish to see in any of our governments.

Personally, were I CEO of Google, I’d say the following:

“Certainly you may wish to change the way we operate on your shores. As such I’m going to close all offices on your shores, make the employees unemployed and mandate that all companies doing business with us have a presence located next to our HQ in the US”.

Given that most of the services that Google sells are only available from Google and can be facilitated either over the wire or virtually; it should not impact Google that much. It will, however, significantly rile the EU companies who would have to transact their business with Google in the US.

Certainly it would do some damage to their business and reduce their profits in the EU. But, in the end, nothing like the damage that something as fundamental as breaking up the company would be. It’s time that the larger companies started telling the EU “Shove it where the sun don’t shine”. I’m hoping that Google is that company. They are not so physically involved as Microsoft was. Almost everything they do is logical, in the cloud and accessible to companies regardless of where their own offices are.

I’ll be watching this to see how it all pans out. Certainly if Google doesn’t, then Zuckerberg will in a decade or so. He’s exactly the character to tell them to mix sex and travel. It’s just what they need.