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Why Does The European Union Consult Microsoft On How Google Should Operate?

Tim WorstallContributorOne of the things that it’s very difficult for a free market zealot like myself to understand is why the European Union allows Microsoft MSFT +1.41% (and some 17 other such companies in the search space) to try and influence how Google GOOGL +0.76% operates in the EU. Free marketry always rather presupposes that companiescompete with each other,  not insist that their competitors must act so as to make them greater profits. And we generally think that people who are losing such competition and then run to the politicians to “regulate” the market are indulging in more than a little bit of rent seeking.

That’s what makes it so difficult to understand what the European Union is doing here:

The core of the deal between Google and Mr. Almunia, announced in February, is a system that would more prominently display rivals’ search services — for finding hotels and shopping, among others — when people conduct Google searches. Rival companies have lambasted the proposal, saying it would do little to help them compete more effectively inEurope, where Google powers more than 90 percent of searches in many countries.

Europe opens a formal antitrust investigation into accusations that Google has abused its dominance in online search, exposing the company’s zealously guarded technology to unwelcome scrutiny.

 In a study conducted over the course of nearly three weeks in April, Microsoft engineers modified the publicly available search page of its own search site, Bing, to operate like a Google search page under the terms of the proposed European settlement.

In monitoring the way that Bing users conducted searches for hotels and restaurants, Microsoft said, it found that people would mostly ignore the parts of the modified page supposedly dedicated to competitors. Instead, Microsoft found that users were 99 times more likely to click on the area of the page that Google would dedicate to its own services.

Why on earth should Google’s page be set up so as to favour Microsoft’s offerings? The two companies are competing in the search space, correct? Well, go compete then instead of whining to the politicians.

Unfortunately I understand all too well what is going on here. Which is that across continental Europe no one really believes in free markets in the first place. And we shouldn’t really be blaming Microsoft or any of those others (like Foundem and so on) for taking advantage of the strange beliefs of the politicians.

The free market approach is that even if someone is indeed a monopoly (and Google isn’t but it’s close) that’s not a good enough reason to regulate how the company operates. Because the important point is not monopoly but whether that monopoly is contestable. For if a monopoly is contestable then if someone tries to use their monopoly power (as, arguably, the Chinese did in the rare earths space) to raise prices or otherwise rook consumers then competition will arise to contest that monopoly. A contestable monopoly is only stable if it continues to act as if it isn’t a monopoly. Thus there’s nothing we need to do about companies that have very large market shares, as long as it is possible for others to enter that market. As long as there’s contestability we can rely upon that threat of future, possible, competition to make sure that the monopoly isn’t exploited.

But that’s a bit of free marketry that the Continentals don’t really believe in. They take the view that anyone who is a market leader needs to be regulated. Partly because they genuinely don’t understand this idea of a contestable monopoly and partly because that’s just not the way the Continental political classes work. They see themselves as the natural regulators of the economy: the bureaucracy, if not the politicians, should be deciding who gains what out of the market. Unalloyed market activity just isn’t something that they really believe can actually happen, everything requires that there is regulation.

This is actually there in the basics of business (or civil) law as well. This isn’t quite true but it’s close enough, in the Anglo Saxon world you can do anything you want as long as there’s no law against it. In the Continental (or Roman Law) system nothing is really legal until there’s a law of regulation telling you how you can do it. We can see how this is going to colour attitudes to markets. And the Anglo jurisdictions we’re quite happy just letting everyone compete as they wish and only stepping in when there’s obvious problems. But if you come from a world where the bureaucracy and politics always decides how anyone may do anything then that’s not a world view you’re likely to embrace. To say nothing of any bureaucracy or politician ever believing that the world will carry one quite happily without their advice or interference.

But that is, really and at heart, what is going on here. The EU is deciding how Google should display its search results, in collusion with all of Google’s competitors, simply because not one single one of the Continentals can believe in a system where politics was not involved in determining such things. Whereas we in the Anglo Saxon world find their actions absurd. If we consumers don’t like the way Google is doing things there’s any number of competitors out there we can switch to and if we really don’t like what Google is doing we will. This is something that the market can sort out on its own.

Agreed, I’m predisposed to think that the EU is a ridiculous idea in the first place but this is one of those reasons. They’re simply trying to tie together economies that have wildly different ideas of when and where politics should determine matters economic. Trying to impose one order on such disparate systems just isn’t going to work.

'We will follow them to the gates of hell!'

Vice Pres. Biden says the U.S. will follow the Islamic 

State terrorists to "hell," and Pres. Obama promised to 

"destroy" them.

Judite Sousa entrevista/interview Cristiano Ronaldo Parte 2 (Jornal das 8 TVI) 29/08/2014

Apple to Unveil Next Products at Sept. 9 Event

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE AP Technology Writer

Apple's latest product launch will be in a setting that holds a special place in its history, signaling how big this event is for the company.

The Sept. 9 launch, which is expected to feature a larger iPhone and possibly a computerized watch, will be in the same Silicon Valley venue where Apple's late co-founder, Steve Jobs, took the wraps off the original Mac computer 30 years ago. That machine was hailed as a major breakthrough that helped bring personal computing to the masses.

These events have become an annual rite since the 2007 release of the iPhone, but this year's may be the most highly anticipated since the iPad came out in 2010.

A "smartwatch" or other wearable technology would mark the company's first foray into a new product category since the iPad came out.

True to its secretive nature, Apple Inc. isn't giving any clues about what's on the Sept. 9 agenda. "Wish we could say more," Apple said in a succinct white invitation mailed Thursday to reporters and others.

The company scheduled the event at an auditorium about 3 miles from its Cupertino, California, headquarters. It seats about 2,300 people, a far larger capacity than the places that Apple usually uses to show off its new products.

Apple watchers expect an iPhone with a larger screen than the 4-inch display on the previous two generations of the device. The iPhone 6 is expected to feature a 4.7-inch screen to make it more competitive with larger smartphones made by Samsung Electronics and other rivals relying on Google Inc.'s free Android software. There also has been speculation that Apple may release another iPhone model with a 5.5-inch screen.

A bigger-screen iPhone could unleash a surge of sales among Apple fans who own iPhones with smaller displays. Some analysts think Apple could sell at least 70 million units of the iPhone 6 within the first few months after the device hits the market.

Although the iPhone is Apple's biggest moneymaker, much of the intrigue around this year's event surrounds the possibility that the company may release a long-awaited smartwatch that could help monitor people's health and serve as control center for Internet-connected appliances and electronics in the home.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has indicated that he is intrigued with wearable technology devices, but hasn't provided any concrete clues about what the company is working on. Cook has only said he is excited about what Apple's latest inventions, a sentiment echoed by one of his top lieutenants, Eddy Cue, who earlier this year hailed the company's product pipeline as its best in 25 years.

Apple has just been redesigning and adding features to its iPhones, iPads, iPods and Mac since the release of the iPad, raising concerns among investors that the company had run out of new ideas after the October 2011 death of Jobs, who served as its chief visionary.

Those worries have subsided during the past four months as the excitement has built for Apple's new products. Apple's stock hit a new high of $102.78 in Thursday morning's trading before falling back to close at $102.25, up 12 cents for the session. The shares have risen 25 percent in 2014.

How to fix Google Play errors

Not sure what to do after getting a non-descript error message in Google Play? Check out these errors and their solutions to get everything working again.

Google Play will provide a pop-up error message when there is an issue installing or updating your apps. Unfortunately, the error message text is very brief and doesn't explain how you can fix it. For example, error 921:

"Unknown error code during application install (921)."

Thanks to XDA member mohamedrashad, there's a thread with the error codes and what they mean, along with ways to fix each issue. Here's a sample of that list with some of the most common error codes:

Error 403

Solution: This issue usually comes up on devices with multiple accounts. Make sure you're accessing the Google Play Store from the correct account. Next, uninstall the app you were trying to update, then re-download from the correct account.

Error 491

Solution: Remove your current Google account, re-add the account, and then clear data from the Google Services app (Settings > Application Manager > Google Services).

Error 495

Solution: Delete the data from both the Google Play and Google Services Framework apps (Settings > Application Manager > Google Play and Google Services). Next, remove your Google account, restart the device, and then re-add your Google account.

Error 919

Solution: Your device has run out of storage space. You can clean your cache, remove unused apps, or delete photos and videos.

Error 921

Solution: Delete the cache from the Google Play app (Settings > Application Manager > Google Play). If you are still seeing an error, delete the data from the Google Play app (Settings > Application Manager > Google Services). Finally, if issues persist, delete your Google account and then re-add it.

(Via XDA)

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