Search Neutrality

The European Union wants Google to stop tying together its search, browser and app store products for handset makers. The regulators would love it if Google simply let handset makers like Samsung ship Android phones loaded with their own browsers and app stores instead of Google’s. Yet the European Union is letting Google decide how it wants to comply with its ruling. Keep in mind that Google is staffed with some of the world’s top lawyers and engineers, who will probably find compliance solutions that have a minimal impact on its business.

complying with the European Commission’s demand to loosen up requirements for handset makers to pre-install Google’s apps on their phones has the potential to raise the costs that have already been acting as a counterweight to the profit margins for Google’s lucrative search business. For example, the company pays Apple an undisclosed-yet-sizable sum to direct search traffic from its mobile Safari browser.

The European Commission has hit Google with a €4.3 billion (~$5.6 billion) fine, imposing a record penalty on the US group for abusing its dominant position in the Android operating system for mobile phones. The decision takes aim at a core part of Google’s business strategy over the past decade, outlawing restrictions on its Android operating system that allegedly entrenched Google’s dominance in online search at a time when consumers were moving from desktop to mobile devices. The commission found that Google had used illegal “tying” methods to force phonemakers to pre-install Google serv

Facebook, Google and Twitter on Tuesday sought to defend themselves against accusations from Republican lawmakers who say the tech giants censor conservative news and views during a congressional hearing that devolved into a political sniping match. 

[Analysis] As digital platforms have become increasingly important in our everyday lives, we’ve recognized that the need for some sort of regulatory oversight increases. We have reached the point where we need sector-specific regulation focused on online digital platforms, not just application of existing antitrust or existing consumer protection laws.

Google could face a new record penalty in July from European regulators for forcing its search and web-browsing tools on the makers of Android-equipped smartphones and other devices, potentially resulting in major changes to the world’s most widely deployed mobile operating system. The punishment from Margrethe Vestager, the European Union's competition chief, is expected to include a fine raging into the billions of dollars, apparently, marking the second time in as many years that the region's antitrust authorities have found that Google threatens corporate rivals and consumers.

Type “Russia collusion” into a Google search, and the search engine will try to guess the next word you’ll type. The first of those is “delusion.” For Francesca Tripodi, a postdoctoral scholar at Data & Society and assistant professor in sociology at James Madison University, the search results are a powerful tell of a phenomenon she set out to document. The “collusion delusion” results are seeking a conservative audience — which is exactly the demographic that would be more likely to search for the phrase in the first place.

The European Commission is for the first time preparing to regulate how search engines such as Google operate, under draft proposals designed to bolster the rights of businesses and app makers that rely on big internet giants to sell their services. The European Commission has expanded its plans to regulate the relationship online platforms such as Amazon and Apple have with vendors to also include the practices of search engines such as Google. Under the plans, the tech platforms would be required to provide companies with more information about how their ranking algorithms work.

[Commentary] Are Facebook and Google's practices of privileging certain information really analogous to what newspaper editors do, and therefore similarly protected by the First Amendment? The answer is no. Making decisions about what and how information is conveyed does not automatically make one an editor entitled to First Amendment protection.