Google’s winning card against Europe: time
Suing a tech company may be the easy part. Winning before everyone loses interest is hard.
The Socrates-style question surrounding the European Commission’s new case against Google’s Android operating system is not whether the company abused its power over mobile devices, but whether people will even be using smartphones and apps in five years.
Already, the Commission’s ongoing 2010 case against Google’s search engine is less important to the tech industry because customers are switching from PCs to mobile devices. The regulators’ 20-year antitrust battle over Microsoft’s Windows also ended with a yawn as consumers found other ways to download rival music and browsing software. And while the Commission keeps going after chipmaker Qualcomm, Chinese competitors are leveling the field faster.
“These are complicated cases,” says Damien Geradin, a lawyer and professor of antitrust law at the universities of Tilburg and George Mason. “In most instances, the forces of creative destruction will do more to address situations of lock-in than antitrust remedies.” Read the Nicholas Hirst's article here.
Nurse ( Yes I wipe that dirty part) @ MSK unit
8 年privacy of countries or plain business? the line should not in anyway be complex for growth, from an industrial revolution to modern evolution, man may had step on that big rock up their called moon still theirs a lot to look up, disagreements of idea in path is healthy when same link of time is more of an advantage.
Nurse ( Yes I wipe that dirty part) @ MSK unit
8 年privacy of countries or plain business? the line should not in anyway be complex for growth, from an industrial revolution to modern evolution, man may had step on that big rock up their called moon still theirs a lot to look up, disagreements of idea in path is healthy when same link of time is not an advantage, cannot end this crop so lets all just do it together, for a better moon i mean earth.
Row, your boat Gently down the stream, Life is but a Dream. Doing Good & Being Good
8 年The Lawyer Litigation against Governments all over the World including the USA is the cost of doing Business. It takes a Decade of Litigation against various levels of CA Government to get a Building Permit for example. This is why Big Corporations can afford the Lawyer Litigation costs & Government Litigation forces Small Businesses go Bankrupt.
EDI Specialist at Intecc
8 年“The regulators’ 20-year antitrust battle over Microsoft’s Windows also ended with a yawn as consumers found other ways to download rival music and browsing software.” I have to admit that I am already tired of hearing about some unsolved murder case after two days, even though the news services want to keep it in front of me for the next week. Most TV shows are lucky if they stay on the air for 10 weeks (some are pulled after two episodes). And most electronic manufacturers are debuting new products before their last ones have hardly had any market time. We are obsessed with the newest latest gadgets regardless of how little time has elapsed between this one and the last newest latest model. My son will tell me to wait until xxx for the next upgrade of my phone because a newer model will be out then. It is no wonder the European Commission seems irrelevant. Law suits drag on forever, because lawyers love billable hours. The more they can postpone a hearing, the more money they stand to make. Google, Microsoft and Qualcomm may be guilty and need to cease and desist, but by the time the EC collects any damages, they will have forgotten why.