For some time now, the European antitrust commissioner had not yet made a formal statement concerning the proposal made by Google which offered remedies to seek a solution in the antitrust case against the firm for its dominance over internet search.

All that has changed now, with Joachin Almunia confirming his response to Google’s proposal in a press briefing in Brussels. He went on to say, “After the analysis of the results of the market test that concluded last month [June 27], I concluded that the proposals that Google sent to us months ago are not enough to overcome our concerns. I wrote a letter to Mr Schmidt asking Google for more improvements.”

However, this isn’t the first time that Almunia has sent a letter to Schmidt with the only difference being that his first letter, sent in May 2012, outlined the reasons why the antitrust case was brought up against Google.

Along with this, competitors have also been encouraged to respond through the lobbying group FairSearch, with some names being Expedia, Microsoft and Oracle that have been trying to usurp Google’s dominance in the search market in Europe.

What makes matters worse for Google is that the aforementioned lobbying group, FairSearch, has also released the results of a survey conducted among customers and which point out how ineffective the remedies that have been outlined by Google would be.

And even if some people might consider that these remedies might seem reasonable, competitors argue that there’s more than meets the eye. In the process, Google has also surprised the EU in conceding so little in its effort to do away with the antitrust lawsuit that it has to deal with.

Almunia will make a final statement before the summer break in August, and sources believe that his office will make a more detailed one in regard to the Google case.


Even though critics are of the opinion that teens are moving away from Facebook in favor of apps such as SnapChat, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg claims that according to company this isn’t true.

Speaking on today’s earnings call, he said, “we believe that we have close to fully penetrated the US teen demographic for a while”. Apart from this, he also mentioned that teens have remained engaged with Facebook throughout the year.

Of course, there’s the caveat that some teenagers lie about their age when joining Facebook where 10 to 11 year olds can claim to be 15 and those who say their age is 21 might actually be teenagers. Regardless of which, it was estimated that almost users spent 20 billion minutes per day on Facebook which amounts to 17.39 minutes per day per user or 8.3 hours per user per month.

But what has been surprising is the fact that people are addicted to Facebook and come back each day. almost 70 percent of Canadian and American users do so, and this trend is also showing with other users across the globe.

And even though people predicted that mobile would prove to be Facebook’s undoing, thanks to being a web service and having to compete with Twitter, SnapChat and Path for users’ time, Facebook has put those doubts to rest because users are spending more time on Facebook and Instagram.

But that’s not all – Facebook has managed to generate 41% of its revenue from mobile advertising this quarter while its stock prices rose to $31.05 as investors now understand what Facebook is about.

Put simply, almost 1.15 billion people consider Facebook to be the place where they get their daily gossip and news, catch up with their friends and family, and last but not the least, express themselves.


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