The central question seems to be the following, articulated most precisely by Mike Lee (R-UT): even if the organic search results are entirely unbiased, Google also programmatically (via "Google Universal Search", the system that organizes the overall search page) inserts specific links to other Google pages--such as Places, Maps, Shopping, or News--in very prominent positions. There are competitors for all of those sites (Yelp, Nextag), but Google systematically (it seems) prefers their own version.
This behavior is relevant to an antitrust principle that a firm with a monopoly in one area/market should not be allowed to use that monopoly to get inordinate market share in other markets.
The senators do not appear to have concluded that Google is doing anything illegal, though several have used the words to the effect of "I'm concerned with what is happening here."
My take: I agree with other commenters here that the senators have at several points seemed to have gaps in their understanding of Google vs. the average HN commenter, though I didn't hear any overtly wrong claims with respect to the central question. Maybe this analysis is better done by the FTC (there is an investigation in progress there), but it does not seem ridiculous that Congress, which is somewhat more transparent, is asking these particular questions, which do not seem incoherent or pointless.
Google is free for users and free to anyone wanting to get in their index, so they do not owe any self proclaimed competitor anything and that is the crux of it, the law is on their side, you cannot monopolize "free" and all this politicians' propaganda is waste of time and tax payer dollars..
I think Google would be well served if Schmidt had a little more Steve Jobs in him. Not a lot, as I think Jobs might get so frustrated he'd melt down, but a little. Eric makes everything sound somehow slightly sinister, even when it isn't.
When asked about something like maps and places the correct answer is:
We realized that is what people wanted in response to their queries. We looked around, and the other map products sucked. Also, we couldn't use them in the way we wanted to serve the users, even if we had wanted to. So we spent a ton of money developing our own -- and it absolutely clobbered the competition. It was magical, far better than anything that existed before it. Way more information, way easier and faster to use. And the users have responded overwhelmingly positively to it.
If you're asking if we favor our own maps properties, damn right we do. Because it is better. Were the people that made other maps products happy about it? Of course not. We didn't build it for them. We built if for our users.
As a part of any online maps product, users want to use it to find information tied to the locations and businesses they are looking at. We call this places. We realized we needed to build something so that we could serve up this information in a highly integrated way, because we believed users wanted a unified experience. So we spent a ton of money, and we built out our maps product with Place information. Business hours, phone numbers, pictures, and reviews. We tried to partner on reviews. It didn't work out. So we built our own review system.
And it is brilliant, consumers love it. Maps and Places absolutely blow away anything else that exists in terms of ease of use and functionality and richness of information. It is one of our greatest feats. Again, consumers love it.
Were existing business directories and review sites happy about it? Of course not. We didn't build it for them, we built if for our users.
Maps, and Places, and Product Search -- they are all part of search. They are all part of finding information, and answers. And that is what we do, and we'll continue to push forward on that front. Because that is what consumers want.
Disagree. Eric Schmidt is being very careful and respectful, knowing that his quotes will be taken apart later, and it's hard when you have congressmen some of which with their own agendas who want to show their constituents that they are asking Google the tough questions and are not afraid to take action.
Whenever I see a person and think, "man, that would be really hard for me to do, and I am a CEO!" I think they are doing an excellent job.
I would say that a programmer's carefulness is serving him well here. Even though he's not one, as far as I know. :)
> Maps, and Places, and Product Search -- they are all part of search.
That's a very relevant point, but it also sounds at least superficially similar to Microsoft's "the browser is part of the OS" argument, which generally seems to be a failure. That case has been referenced several times in this hearing; it's clearly front of mind.
Eric did well. What bothers me is that no reps of small businesses were in this hearing, it just seems like one big corporation is shilling a fight against another.
When I enter "1+1" into Google, I expect back "2", not a link to a calculator website. When I enter a street address, I want the first result to be a map, not a link to a mapping website. When I enter a stock symbol, I want the current stock price at the top of the results, not a link to a slow loading website.
Google has had these smart search results since day one and the functionality keeps expanding much to the displeasure of some companies. One could argue that this is an example of Google "favouring" its own services, but as a consumer, that's what I expect and that's why I keep using Google! I don't want links, I want answers. Bing likes to talk about being a "decision engines", but Google did it first.
at D9:
According to eric at D9, these are the top consumer companies
1-4-the gang of four(appl,google,amazon,facebook)
5-6(paypal,twitter)
Schmidt said he believes Microsoft is “not driving the consumer revolution.” He doesn’t count Microsoft’s Xbox business because it’s “not a platform at the computational level.”
today before congress:
Microsoft's Bing has continued to gain in popularity, perhaps because it comes pre-installed as the search default on over 70 percent of new computers sold. Microsoft's Bing is the exclusive search provider for Yahoo! and Facebook. Microsoft recently signed a deal for Bing to power English language search on the fast-rising Chinese search engine Baidu, which Baidu has acknowledged will help it become more competitive in markets outside of China. In addition to Internet Explorer, Microsoft has integrated Bing into its popular gaming console, the Xbox 360, which it is in talks with cable companies to convert into the set-top box of the future. Microsoft?s Bing launched in June 2009 and has grown so rapidly that some commentators have speculated that it could overtake Google as early as 2012.
Indeed, but one is comparing the consumer tech market as a whole and the other is just in the search market, so this isn't apples to apples (so to speak), no?
So.. who is the asshole, sitting behind (visible to the left of) the ex-FTC commissioner, that's constantly laughing, shaking his head, and rolling his eyes at what she's saying?
He keeps staring at the camera, I almost wonder who is paying him to be there making those actions. I would bet a 6 pack of beer he is a paid lobbyist.
Google could put up a lot of resistance but if the government wants something bad enough they generally get it. The other option is not to do business in that particular country, and for google that option is not on the table.
Microsoft has had a desktop monopoly for 20 years. They have 90% desktop market share and people don't complain about that. They destroyed their competition yet people complain because Google has 65% market share on a product that people can leave overnight. I'm not sure why people get bent out of shape over Google.
> Microsoft has had a desktop monopoly for 20 years. They have 90% desktop market share and people don't complain about that
You don't count being fined billions of dollars over that monopoly, being forced by governments to make changes to Windows to help competitors, and being sued by several state governments and others as people complaining!?
People have complained about Microsoft's monopoly at great length. They had an anti-trust case successfully brought against them in the US and similar cases overseas. It's an issue that people are very much aware of.
That aside, the department of justice could (if they hadn't already won against Microsoft) bring two suits simultaneously. The need to investigate one company doesn't stop you from investigating the other.
Last I checked it wasn't possible to switch the default search engine on Android phones (whether it was set to Google or otherwise). Is this still the case? I couldn't find anything conclusive in my searching.
I'm not sure what you mean. You can't try a new widget instead of the Google Search one? Or are you saying that widget should allow you to switch to Bing?
I don't see an option for it, but you can replace the entire home screen app (though maybe not if your carrier has locked it?), which could accomplish the same thing if there was a good bing-based home screen out there.
I think generally this is a very simple thing to do, by installing a widget for another search engine for instance. Also once you install Chrome on the desktop you get a choice of Google, Bing, or Yahoo as your default.
Yes, I find it odd that Google gets so much attention while Facebook never rates a mention. I find Facebook way more creepy and actually much harder to switch away from - I can use bing any day of the week and the results are comparable. I can use G+ today and the results are useless. To my mind there has to be some recognition of whether a "monopoly" is due to exploitation of natural barriers to entry or not, and Google seems one of the least problematic in this regard.
They keep pounding the same misconceptions again and again in endless repetition, and I can't help but wonder, who hired these guns? (that's not to say that some of their arguments don't hold water, but they are going to incredible lengths to cast Google as a monopoly, why?)
The cynic in me doubts that the cause is a lack of understanding.
Holy shit, they're are hammering down on Eric Schmidt accusing Google of tampering with search results and what not for pretty dumb reasons imho. Seems really unfair to me.
They expect him to be able to say "We know that we are not tampering with search results because of x, y, and z"--a strong statement--instead of "Search is a magic box that is imperfect. Shrug?" which is kinda what he said.
Something that kind of irked me about Jeremy Stoppelman's testimony: He failed to mention that Yelp provides an API and, in essence, gives away their data.
If Google was consuming their API (vs. scraping content directly from their site), would this even be an issue?
Let's assume, hypothetically, that Google used the API provided by Yelp to enhance their search results. If Yelp said, "We don't like what you're doing, so stop because we said so", I feel that it would totally be within Googles rights to say, "Fine, we no longer wish to do business with you and will exclude you from our index".
Of course, I'm not entirely sure what the Yelp API of 2010 looked like, nor have I read their TOS. However, I still feel that Stoppelman's testimony did more to remove my desire to ever use Yelp than it did to convince me that Google is this big evil monopoly that's destroying the little guy.
She is smart, but she did skate around the question of scraping. They asked whether Google had scraped content, but instead she attempted to change the question to whether or not it is scraping when they show the excerpt about the site in results - not whether they had scraped Yelp reviews.
For once Google are being honest and the others are being slimey. In one image they covered the sponsored ads in a box which hid the fact there is a clear differentiation between Sponsored and algorithmic results, they also say "Ads".
They still haven't open sourced Android 3.0, in which they said they would never release that part of Apache licensed code to the public.
So there could then be a possibility, again be hidden APIs so that their tablet app offerings could be better than others.
I personally think that, if you claim open source, some should be able to obtain the code if they are using the software itself. I clearly don't think a normal android tablet user would reasonably grab a copy of that source code.
[+] [-] aamar|14 years ago|reply
This behavior is relevant to an antitrust principle that a firm with a monopoly in one area/market should not be allowed to use that monopoly to get inordinate market share in other markets.
The senators do not appear to have concluded that Google is doing anything illegal, though several have used the words to the effect of "I'm concerned with what is happening here."
My take: I agree with other commenters here that the senators have at several points seemed to have gaps in their understanding of Google vs. the average HN commenter, though I didn't hear any overtly wrong claims with respect to the central question. Maybe this analysis is better done by the FTC (there is an investigation in progress there), but it does not seem ridiculous that Congress, which is somewhat more transparent, is asking these particular questions, which do not seem incoherent or pointless.
[+] [-] yanw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmrm|14 years ago|reply
When asked about something like maps and places the correct answer is:
We realized that is what people wanted in response to their queries. We looked around, and the other map products sucked. Also, we couldn't use them in the way we wanted to serve the users, even if we had wanted to. So we spent a ton of money developing our own -- and it absolutely clobbered the competition. It was magical, far better than anything that existed before it. Way more information, way easier and faster to use. And the users have responded overwhelmingly positively to it.
If you're asking if we favor our own maps properties, damn right we do. Because it is better. Were the people that made other maps products happy about it? Of course not. We didn't build it for them. We built if for our users.
As a part of any online maps product, users want to use it to find information tied to the locations and businesses they are looking at. We call this places. We realized we needed to build something so that we could serve up this information in a highly integrated way, because we believed users wanted a unified experience. So we spent a ton of money, and we built out our maps product with Place information. Business hours, phone numbers, pictures, and reviews. We tried to partner on reviews. It didn't work out. So we built our own review system.
And it is brilliant, consumers love it. Maps and Places absolutely blow away anything else that exists in terms of ease of use and functionality and richness of information. It is one of our greatest feats. Again, consumers love it.
Were existing business directories and review sites happy about it? Of course not. We didn't build it for them, we built if for our users.
Maps, and Places, and Product Search -- they are all part of search. They are all part of finding information, and answers. And that is what we do, and we'll continue to push forward on that front. Because that is what consumers want.
[+] [-] EGreg|14 years ago|reply
Whenever I see a person and think, "man, that would be really hard for me to do, and I am a CEO!" I think they are doing an excellent job.
I would say that a programmer's carefulness is serving him well here. Even though he's not one, as far as I know. :)
[+] [-] martincmartin|14 years ago|reply
That sound bite would be taken out of context, and the game would be over for Google.
[+] [-] DevX101|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aamar|14 years ago|reply
That's a very relevant point, but it also sounds at least superficially similar to Microsoft's "the browser is part of the OS" argument, which generally seems to be a failure. That case has been referenced several times in this hearing; it's clearly front of mind.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] yanw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jinushaun|14 years ago|reply
http://www.google.com/landing/searchtips/
When I enter "1+1" into Google, I expect back "2", not a link to a calculator website. When I enter a street address, I want the first result to be a map, not a link to a mapping website. When I enter a stock symbol, I want the current stock price at the top of the results, not a link to a slow loading website.
Google has had these smart search results since day one and the functionality keeps expanding much to the displeasure of some companies. One could argue that this is an example of Google "favouring" its own services, but as a consumer, that's what I expect and that's why I keep using Google! I don't want links, I want answers. Bing likes to talk about being a "decision engines", but Google did it first.
[+] [-] pycassa|14 years ago|reply
today before congress: Microsoft's Bing has continued to gain in popularity, perhaps because it comes pre-installed as the search default on over 70 percent of new computers sold. Microsoft's Bing is the exclusive search provider for Yahoo! and Facebook. Microsoft recently signed a deal for Bing to power English language search on the fast-rising Chinese search engine Baidu, which Baidu has acknowledged will help it become more competitive in markets outside of China. In addition to Internet Explorer, Microsoft has integrated Bing into its popular gaming console, the Xbox 360, which it is in talks with cable companies to convert into the set-top box of the future. Microsoft?s Bing launched in June 2009 and has grown so rapidly that some commentators have speculated that it could overtake Google as early as 2012.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20109615-93/schmidts-writte...
[+] [-] MikeCapone|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AgentConundrum|14 years ago|reply
He is extremely irritating.
[+] [-] mrtron|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miql|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endlessvoid94|14 years ago|reply
Mr. Schmidt answered those questions in an excellent manner.
The racetrack analogy was particularly unnerving.
[+] [-] oldstrangers|14 years ago|reply
Not a chance.
[+] [-] 0x12|14 years ago|reply
Google could put up a lot of resistance but if the government wants something bad enough they generally get it. The other option is not to do business in that particular country, and for google that option is not on the table.
[+] [-] melling|14 years ago|reply
Microsoft has had a desktop monopoly for 20 years. They have 90% desktop market share and people don't complain about that. They destroyed their competition yet people complain because Google has 65% market share on a product that people can leave overnight. I'm not sure why people get bent out of shape over Google.
[+] [-] tzs|14 years ago|reply
You don't count being fined billions of dollars over that monopoly, being forced by governments to make changes to Windows to help competitors, and being sued by several state governments and others as people complaining!?
[+] [-] clarkevans|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aeturnum|14 years ago|reply
That aside, the department of justice could (if they hadn't already won against Microsoft) bring two suits simultaneously. The need to investigate one company doesn't stop you from investigating the other.
[+] [-] yanw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaryd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrHankPym|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martingordon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextparadigms|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magicalist|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kadrith|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myko|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] misterkeeter|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zmmmmm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenjackson|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GeneTraylor|14 years ago|reply
The cynic in me doubts that the cause is a lack of understanding.
[+] [-] kposehn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jojopotato|14 years ago|reply
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190337400457658...
[+] [-] kposehn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zyb09|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Helianthus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmpayton|14 years ago|reply
If Google was consuming their API (vs. scraping content directly from their site), would this even be an issue?
Let's assume, hypothetically, that Google used the API provided by Yelp to enhance their search results. If Yelp said, "We don't like what you're doing, so stop because we said so", I feel that it would totally be within Googles rights to say, "Fine, we no longer wish to do business with you and will exclude you from our index".
Of course, I'm not entirely sure what the Yelp API of 2010 looked like, nor have I read their TOS. However, I still feel that Stoppelman's testimony did more to remove my desire to ever use Yelp than it did to convince me that Google is this big evil monopoly that's destroying the little guy.
[+] [-] hastalabasura|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kposehn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xtacy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jojopotato|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yonran|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brackin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsnotvalid|14 years ago|reply
So there could then be a possibility, again be hidden APIs so that their tablet app offerings could be better than others.
I personally think that, if you claim open source, some should be able to obtain the code if they are using the software itself. I clearly don't think a normal android tablet user would reasonably grab a copy of that source code.
[+] [-] myko|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dennisgorelik|14 years ago|reply
Edit: that was my impression in the beginning of that show. After warming up the questions became deeper and more interesting.