Sul New York Times di tre giorni fa è uscito un articolo a favore della decisione antitrust UE nei confronti di Google.
Oggi arriva sullo stesso New York TImes un articolo di segno opposto.
Rubricato come “common sense” (e già questo…)
It’s hard to find any antitrust expert, European or American, who has endorsed the logic or outcome of the ruling by the European Commission
forse non hanno letto lo stesso giornale tre giorni prima ?
The focus on tying arrangements is reminiscent of two famous Microsoft cases: one in the United States, in which the government accused the company of illegally tying its Internet Explorer browser to its dominant Windows operating system, the other in Europe, where Microsoft was found to have abused its Windows dominance by embedding its media player.
The outcomes in both cases are now widely viewed as irrelevant, since by the time they were decided, Explorer and Windows Media Player had been overwhelmed by technological change and competition — from Google, among others. Microsoft’s share of the browser and media-player markets is insignificant today.
ma da chi è giudicato “irrilevante”?
esistono fior di analisi che mostrano come in seguito alla decisione c’è stato un calo di internet explorer e la corrispondente crescita di chrome. Come ho scritto in tempi non sospetti, senza quella decisione probabilmente google non avrebbe potuto essere ciò che è adesso.
But even if the European Union’s Microsoft precedent is viewed as sound, Google’s competitive situation is different. “There’s only a superficial resemblance to Microsoft,” said Pinar Akman, director of the Center for Business Law and Practice at the University of Leeds in England, who has received support from Google for some of her research.
oh che, oste, er to vino è bono ?
Leggete qui “intermediati digitali, unitevi!“, sezione “Dalla parte dei monopolisti/oligopolisti immateriali”, teerzultima frase “influenzano…”
“The commission put a lot of emphasis on the value of preinstallation. But just because an app is preinstalled doesn’t mean consumers are going to use it. It’s very easy to download a rival app.”
Google’s photo app, for example, has struggled to compete against Instagram and Snap, even though it comes preinstalled on Android-based phones as part of the Google suite.
Google photo che rivaleggia con Instagram ? sono entrambe relative a foto, ma è come dire che il garage rivaleggia con il gommista (sempre relative ad auto). Non c’entrano l’una con l’altra.
Oddly, the commission excluded Apple as a Google competitor, saying that because the company produced premium-price products, it did not constrain Google’s ability to dominate the broader market.
Ciò è “untrue”. La commissione non considera Apple un competitor perchè non lo è.
Il mercato è quello dei sistemi operativi da installare su hardware generico. Non risulta che IOS sia installabile su hardware generico. Affermare che sono competitor sarebbe come dire che la pizzeria da ciro e l’esselunga sono nello stesso mercato. Entrambi soddisfano l’esigenza di alimentazione delle persone, ma uno in modo integrato verticalmente e l’altro no.
The commission argues that when a phone comes with a single search engine preinstalled, it confers an enormous competitive advantage on that product. To support the theory, the commission said that on phones using Windows operating systems, which come with Bing preinstalled, 75 percent of searches are conducted using that engine.
But Windows-based phones accounted for only 0.15 percent of the global market at the end of last year. That renders the data irrelevant, Ms. Akman said.
Stiamo parlando di qualche decina di milioni di persone. Si può considerare che nono sia un campione rilevante ?
A closer analogy, though not one cited by the commission, can be found in Russia. Last April, Google reached a settlement with a rival search engine based there, Yandex, under which it agreed that phone makers could preinstall Yandex on Android devices and let consumers decide which app would be their default search engine.
At the time, Google and Yandex each had about 48 percent of the Russian search market. Since then, Yandex has increased its share to 51 percent; Google’s has dropped to 45 percent.
Capisco che gli americani siano deboli in geografia, ma segnalo che la Russia non fa parte dell’unione europea.
Se tutto andava bene, perchè hanno dovuto fare una conciliazione ?
“last april” è 3 mesi fa. In tre mesi Yandex ha guadagnato il 3% di market share ? e qualcuno pensa che avere un default search engine non faccia la differenza ? se un telefono mediamente vive 2 anni, in un mese cambia 1/24 del parco installato, ovvero il 4% (meno, perchè nei tre mesi considerati non c’e’ dicembre con gli acquisti di natale) Per spostare il 3% del mercato complessivo in tre mesi, significa che in questi 3 mesi yandex ha fatto oltre l’80% dei nuovi clienti (calcolo spannometrico, considerando che non ci siano nuovi acquisti di smartphone ma sostituzioni, ecc.)
Then again, the Trump factor must now be considered, especially since the president, after all but declaring economic war on Europe last week, seemed to declare a truce on Wednesday.
In Trump they trust. (Trump-nomics)
“I don’t think the Google ruling is anti-American,” Ms. Akman said. “There are plenty of rulings against European companies, too. It’s just that the American tech companies have been so successful, and have achieved so much market power, that they’re going to come under scrutiny.”
