Google: Innovation and the European Hassle

February 15, 2018

Google is allegedly an innovator. Forget the GoTo.com, Overture, and Yahoo ad “emulation” hassle. Forget Loon balloons in Puerto Rico. Forget solving death.

Google has a way to deal with its “chat” efflorescence. Navigate to “A Google R&D Team Wants to Bring Smart Reply to All Your Chat Apps.” Okay, a meta play. What’s interesting to us in Harrod’s Creek is that engineering free time for innovation, acquihires for innovation, and Google X are not sufficiently productive in the gee whiz department.

The write up states:

The Area 120 project will offer its suggested replies right in the notifications from these chat apps. But to be clear, Reply does not offer a standalone app of its own – it’s just a way for people to respond to incoming messages.

Is an auto responder the big hit? Nope. We just flat out did not know about Area 120. Like Area 51, we assume the innovation team is off the radar.

We hypothesize that the deployment of a meta service in order to “roll up” some functionality may catch the attention of regulators in Europe. Keep in mind this is our nagging concern.

Google may have some of the deepest pockets in the world, but that might not be enough if they cannot adapt to the “new” Europe. The EU is pushing back against the search giant for unfair practices and the battle is coming to a head. One thing seems clear, Google is going to have to bend or suffer impossible sounding debts. We learned more from a recent Irish Examiner story, “Google Under Pressure to Avoid Further EU Fines.”

According to the story:

“Rivals say the search company’s offer to auction advertising space doesn’t work because Google wins most of the spots. “The US company has so far said it is giving competitors the same opportunity to show shopping ads from retailers that its own Google Shopping service gets. “Failing to comply with an EU competition order can cost up to 5% of global daily revenue.”

According to the article’s math, that’s a whopping €9.6m a day. We are sure Google doesn’t have it in the budget to incur such a hit. Google’s best solution may be to conform, but that’s not likely to be innovation as Google seems to define the word.

Stephen E Arnold, February 15, 2018

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Google, Innovation

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.