In this thread a lot of people don't understand the meaning of monopoly and assumes a monopoly is only synonymous with the companies they hate. It has more to do with having a dominant control over a market and abusing that dominant position to own advantage. Google has pulled a lot of stunts in the past that clearly defines this. Remember the only way to have pictures on your search listing was to link your blog/site with Google+? A result with an image next to it had better clicks that the one without. Next was the shopping fiasco: The shopping results that shows up on the top had barely anything to do with ranking, instead it was a set of sponsored listing that was paid for by companies. Hmm the blending out the background of the ads with the rest of the results is another story of its own.
Although my primary search engine is still Google (like the majority here), I still don't agree nor do I encourage the direction Google is taking with their search engine.
One of the primary characteristics of a monopoly is high customer switching costs. For example, a business running on the Microsoft platform in 1995 could not realistically switch to Apple, Solaris, etc. During the heyday of Standard Oil, you could either buy from them or find a way to get your oil shipped from overseas. If you didn't want to use AT&T in 1975, you'd... uh, have to work at the speed of telegrams?
Meanwhile, if someone builds a better search engine, all of Google's customers could switch to it in ten seconds and never look back.
> In this thread a lot of people don't understand the meaning of monopoly and assumes a monopoly is only synonymous with the companies they hate. It has more to do with having a dominant control over a market and abusing that dominant position to own advantage.
No, it just has to do with the former (usually defined through possession of pricing power, which is very hard to argue Google has in many of the free services in which it is dominant.) The latter is abusing a monopoly, not having one.
We live in a world full of many pressing issues. My google results page is not one of them. What I'd like to know is - how did these regulators prioritize their backlog in such a way that this is the current priority - and everything else is a lesser one. That process is what's broken. Not Google.
I don't understand the shopping results argument listed on the top of the pages for search results. I have personally never confused them with actual results, and doesn DuckDuckGo Bing and Yahoo do this? If so, then why single out Google?
I don't really see how this is any different to a supermarket giving better visibility to their own brand generics over branded products. There should be no onus on Google to display anything other than what they want to display on their site.
True, but I think it has to do with the fact that Google is 90% of the supermarkets in town and most people don't know that there are other supermarkets at all.
So you agree that Microsoft was fine to put IE as the default browser I guess. I see the same rationale, and I'd be OK as long as we give companies the same fair treatment.
If I understand you correctly, the point you are making is the question of obligation. Is Google obliged to us? Well, no, private company, other search engines available, etc. I contend, however, that being a publicly financed entity is not the only path by which a company can, or at any rate should, become obligated to a public. Funds are not the only resource that a public can provide. A public also provides trust, without which a private company wouldn't make money, because the public won't use your product. That trust in my view is public a resource. And acquiring it is important to Google's business, which is why Google wasn't skewing search results in 2000, which is why Facebook wasn't mucking around with the Timeline in 2009. They had the freedom to do it then. Why didn't they? Because the outcome for us, and hence for them, would have been different. We hadn't "invested" our trust in them back then. Now we have, and they can't just fuck around with it just because private company, other brands are available, etc. Google isn't built on their brilliance only, it's built on our usage of their brilliance, and they can't act like we aren't invested in it. We didn't put any of our money in it, but money is not the only thing that a public puts, or could put, in companies. Are we Google owners? No. But are we Google stake holders? Yes we are, hence our demand they don't skew results in favor of some thing or other. I didn't sign up for that, and if I hadn't signed up, Google wouldn't be, would it? Can we resolve this by education? No, because Rome wasn't built in a day. If the govt wanted to shut Google down, can you imagine people protesting? I can. Why, and they don't own Google? Because they're stake holders.
Unless they are declared an equal access utility. Stranger things have happened in well regulated markets and this is the EU. In the US and EU "search result neutrality" might happen if there was a monopoly (this is an antitrust allegation).
Personally I don't think the antitrust will stick. It is incredibly easy to change your search engine. They may be required to select a default engine on install of chrome. I switched to duckduckgo.com about a year ago. With duckduckgo, your results aren't as ad laden, they don't track you, they don't randomly insist you turn on intrusive tracking to provide services. I would much rather take an extra step for the 1/100 searches ddg doesn't cut it than see ads above the scroll. Setting a blue/green color scheme in the upper right corner, instead of the default monochrome makes a big difference.
Well that’s nice and dandy, problem is Google has 70% of the market in search. Which doesn’t bond well with transparency and fair use if they’re promoting their products over competition’s.
If a supermarket did give favorable exposure to their generic brand products, the other companies could complain about that and it would be unfair. Usually the generics are on the shelf right next to the brand products for this very reason.
It's also hard to compare Google to a supermarket. Other than towns where Wal-Mart is the only option there's not really a real world comparison to Google. You can say Bing is a real competitor to Google but we all know it barely makes a dent.
The other issue at hand here is Google being misleading, because they present that the rankings are objective/fair to both users and the web sites being listed. If they are skewing in favor of their own products, that's clear misrepresentation.
You can make money without doing evil.
Placement in search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising is not only clearly marked as such, it offers relevant content and is not distracting.
We don’t allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they are relevant where they are shown.
Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a “Sponsored Link,” so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results.
[Anybody who uses Google search would know better.]
> [Anybody who uses Google search would know better.
Huh? There are bases for complaint about Google that are reasonable, but the rules you just listed are adhered to afaict. Do you have any concrete examples of what you're talking about or are you just another uninformed commenter in this thread muttering darkly (and vaguely) about "obvious" abuses, but unable to articulate what they are?
So does Amazon. What's the big deal? Anybody ever believe Google results are not skewed? That's kind of the whole point - the results are customized per individual. Of course that includes skewed toward items Google considers more important.
The big deal is - in case that wasn't clear to anybody - that having a de-facto monopoly on search changes things.
If google had a 2% market share in search nobody would care about them pushing their own products but with the market share that google currently has they control what internet users see and can push other parties offering the same or better services out of business (or at a minimum hurt them disproportionally).
Search should be a level playing field, and Google - in spite of their motto - is pushing their own products even when they are not superior and that's a dead giveaway that they are abusing their position.
The only problem I have with these inquiries is that often users want google to skew towards their products. If people search 'email' or 'mail', what is the probability they are an existing customer clicking on gmail in the results? Is that really skewed if thats what people want?
As a data point, I was employed with a Google competitor a few years ago. We had nowhere near the market share of Google of course, still we did bend over backward to make sure we weren't favoring our own verticals over G's in our results.
The thing is, there is a good chance that they aren't explicitly preferring their own products, just that they are the most popular products.
They are trying to find what people want to see when they search. If most people who search "email" want Gmail, then it should be at the top.
It's going to be almost impossible to prove that they aren't just better than the competitors at finding what people want vs manipulating search results in their favor.
I recently experienced an anecdote related to Google "abusing" their position. I was looking at Project Fi in the same browser that I had my Gmail/Google account open in. I just looked around without pressing any buttons to sign up or the like. A couple days later I got an email in my main Gmail inbox inviting me to "Complete your sign up to Project Fi". It wasn't solicited, and it wasn't even filtered to Gmail's handy "Promotions" folder.
Unfortunately that hasn't been my experience in recent years.While Google and Bing have evolved enormously the internet is so bloated by clickbait website that I have come to rely on community curated content.
On some searches now Google barely displays and real results at all. The map results are gone, adwords are gone and now they show Local Services at the top requesting quotes.
The top result is Yelp, and there's even a widget that lets you search for a plumber that's been certified. What results would you prefer to see at the top instead?
When I search for browser addons, Chrome addons will appear before Firefox addons. I'm positive Google knows I'm using FF, so why show me an incompatible extension? It makes no sense, and is annoying to boot.
EU bureaucrats are jealous of US internet companies. The only big internet companies come from USA and China [1].
They have very high taxes, it's very difficult to fire people and there are tons of other regulations. So, they are losing the future. That is why they are attacking Google - they want to take their money by penalties.
I'm curious, with a sweeping statement like "EU bureaucrats are jealous of US internet companies", who are you referring to? Is it EU as whole, or individuals who have a personal stake in creating EU internet companies? Because from an outside perspective, this statement seems a lot like tin foil hattery, but if you do have anything to back up your claim, I'm all ears.
This page loads CPU 100% all the time it opened, even with adblocker (that causes the site to show nag screen). I hope one day Google Safe Browsing will treat such newsshit sites as malicious.
I've lost track of how many antitrust charges the EU has tacked onto Google. They probably think Google is going to roll over to their whims. I foresee a protracted legal battle lasting years in the courts and amounting to very little in the end.
[+] [-] nivla|9 years ago|reply
Although my primary search engine is still Google (like the majority here), I still don't agree nor do I encourage the direction Google is taking with their search engine.
[+] [-] raldi|9 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, if someone builds a better search engine, all of Google's customers could switch to it in ten seconds and never look back.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|9 years ago|reply
No, it just has to do with the former (usually defined through possession of pricing power, which is very hard to argue Google has in many of the free services in which it is dominant.) The latter is abusing a monopoly, not having one.
[+] [-] smokeyj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbreeden|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thesehands|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webjunkie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dewiz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DavidWanjiru|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daveguy|9 years ago|reply
Personally I don't think the antitrust will stick. It is incredibly easy to change your search engine. They may be required to select a default engine on install of chrome. I switched to duckduckgo.com about a year ago. With duckduckgo, your results aren't as ad laden, they don't track you, they don't randomly insist you turn on intrusive tracking to provide services. I would much rather take an extra step for the 1/100 searches ddg doesn't cut it than see ads above the scroll. Setting a blue/green color scheme in the upper right corner, instead of the default monochrome makes a big difference.
tl;dr: there are options.
[+] [-] elorant|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perseusprime11|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ebbv|9 years ago|reply
It's also hard to compare Google to a supermarket. Other than towns where Wal-Mart is the only option there's not really a real world comparison to Google. You can say Bing is a real competitor to Google but we all know it barely makes a dent.
The other issue at hand here is Google being misleading, because they present that the rankings are objective/fair to both users and the web sites being listed. If they are skewing in favor of their own products, that's clear misrepresentation.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] meanduck|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sylos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] 0xmohit|9 years ago|reply
Why not https://duckduckgo.com/
[+] [-] wutbrodo|9 years ago|reply
Huh? There are bases for complaint about Google that are reasonable, but the rules you just listed are adhered to afaict. Do you have any concrete examples of what you're talking about or are you just another uninformed commenter in this thread muttering darkly (and vaguely) about "obvious" abuses, but unable to articulate what they are?
[+] [-] m0th87|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|9 years ago|reply
If google had a 2% market share in search nobody would care about them pushing their own products but with the market share that google currently has they control what internet users see and can push other parties offering the same or better services out of business (or at a minimum hurt them disproportionally).
Search should be a level playing field, and Google - in spite of their motto - is pushing their own products even when they are not superior and that's a dead giveaway that they are abusing their position.
[+] [-] eximius|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gpderetta|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Klathmon|9 years ago|reply
They are trying to find what people want to see when they search. If most people who search "email" want Gmail, then it should be at the top.
It's going to be almost impossible to prove that they aren't just better than the competitors at finding what people want vs manipulating search results in their favor.
[+] [-] Sylphine|9 years ago|reply
http://www.ginzametrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/searc... http://www.chandlernguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sea... http://www.chandlernguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sea...
Note that the data is older by a few years but i doubt that it has changed dramatically.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] goda90|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awesomepantsm|9 years ago|reply
Really EU?
[+] [-] wnevets|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sylphine|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adwordsjedi|9 years ago|reply
For example: Plumbers in San Francisco
[+] [-] raldi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikelward|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hsileng|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schiffern|9 years ago|reply
When I search for browser addons, Chrome addons will appear before Firefox addons. I'm positive Google knows I'm using FF, so why show me an incompatible extension? It makes no sense, and is annoying to boot.
Come on Google, you're better than this. https://i.imgur.com/KiCxyfx.png
[+] [-] ctrl-j|9 years ago|reply
If that's the case, isn't it also possible that the chrome extension page has a higher algorithm rank due to chrome being the more popular browser?
Is it possible this isn't a malicious ploy, and is the algorithm doing its job?
[+] [-] FT_intern|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sylos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] back_beyond|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __john|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] getgoingnow|9 years ago|reply
They have very high taxes, it's very difficult to fire people and there are tons of other regulations. So, they are losing the future. That is why they are attacking Google - they want to take their money by penalties.
[+] [-] erikrothoff|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chillydawg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blub|9 years ago|reply
The world would continue to exist without Google, don't be scared.
[+] [-] ungzd|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitmapbrother|9 years ago|reply