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Discussion (56 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
It should be clear to everyone that Google is too big and is engaging in anti-competitive behaviour. The EU giving them a token fine every once in a while just part of the cost of doing business for Google. Google could just choose to not favour their own services and to give users a choice. But they don't. Hence the fine.
They could have simply added a selector when a user first clicks on the maps preview in the search result, and then remembered it on device or across that user's account.
But of course, then the user could choose a competitor's product and Google would have to honor it. That would be horrible, so instead they just made the user experience worse for everyone and elegantly made people blame the EU.
I know that sounds like it comes from "it will never work", but that's how active directory, office file format, etc ... got opened, and in a case more similar to here that's how windows n and decoupling of media and internet component from windows internals happened.
The issue is, yes, it takes time.
Another issue, purely PR, is that yes the EU gets attacked repeatedly by people trying to match "respect the law of the market or leave" with "the EU tax US companies because they can't compete".
They also buy up the competition before it gets a chance as is the way now.
I do wonder if people using Chrome on iOS face the same issue, or if Google respects your browser of choice a bit more if it’s their browser.
And eh, it works for the cookie banner so why change the strategy ? The comment you're answering to prove it still works. As long as people can't be bothered to think and inform themselves for a second about it, they won't stop. Same with the purposefully annoying and unclear and user hostile 'gdpr popup' about third party consent.
I'm not saying I agree with it. I'm saying from Google POV that's the correct move given their intent, the issue then become people like parent.
This is a corporation with tens of thousands of software developers. If they wanted to do better, they could. As always: If the UI is bad for you, that probably means that particular implementation is good for the corporation.
They didn't. That's specifically to piss you off on EU.
My assessment is that EU is doing too little too late, the fine should have been something like 20B and used towards creating a non-profit, open and extendable map service ideally with the people who already do great mapping tech that don't show up in Google search results at the top.
EU is too vanilla, too unopinionated towards the tech, they go over the problem after the damage is done, take the money for themselves and force a non-solution that doesn't fix the problem and often makes it worse because they leave the implementation to the convicts who make sure to make it maliciously compliant.
What's up with Google Maps? It's great for me.
The EU loves to play it the european way, and while on the surface it seems "oh that means regulations" in reality it's a "figure it out yourselves and please behave like adult, we don't want to deal with that" and we ask for some sort of regulatory association or whatever that we can refer to to talk to them all.
It's worked in a ton of industries including ones where we have no moat but somehow tech companies are always incapable to behave. At least the US ones, eg for the phone thing it ended up being Samsung who told the EU "hey I've been playing ball for years and Apple isn't , make them or I stop too".
Yeah that's why EU isn't producing capable tech competitors. If other map services want my business they need to work on that. Instead, someone who built a search infrastructure is supposed to do a free promotion for competitors.
There is no standard clickable "link" for physical locations. There is no URL-equivalent you can send to someone, they click it, it open up their map viewer of choice. You can send Lat Lon coordinates and then have the recipient copy and paste them. It generally works though there isn't a standard format and no service will make it clickable like an email address, so the whole process remains clunky.
When you "Share" a location in Google Maps or OSMand, you get back a URL link to their service and not an service agnostic "link" to the geographic location.
I have it working on my Android phone. It's clickable links that open my map app of choice (or rather a selection dialog).
It's just that the big players do not want to use it.
We need to stop being so helpless. A proper user agent should be able to do what you want it to.
They will just write it off against the tax they pay back in the US anyway (which is why the US doesnt like it).
US: our beloved tech companies (also funded our POTUS elections) tried to navigate the complex regulation landscape in the EU to innovate and accidentally stepped into very complex rules. But EU is fining them for being good boys.
Shame on you EU, for not supporting criminals as much as US does
The Danish "MitID", for example, doesn't quite work right with how a lot of apps using it for authentication (the default Firefox settings probably strip something from the intent links the MitID login page uses) and Danish citizen service sites require Chrome for some things such as booking an appointment, iirc.