[milemi]

So… no evidence? Putting ads at the top of the page is nothing like your original claim that Google lets advertisers impersonate other businesses. I didn’t ask if you care about Google’s policy on impersonation, but whether you have an example where I type business name X and Google shows me an ad that says it will take me to X but it takes me somewhere else.

What can or can’t be done in yellow pages is irrelevant. I also can’t click on things in yellow pages, does that mean presenting links should be illegal?

[harry8]

They don't care about impersonation at all but yes it happens as is evidenced in this very thread.

What they want is for the majority of punters using google to search for the url for xyz corp to click the ad for that url rather than that same url the search result. This is why they changed the ads to look like search result and put them above. It's incredibly lucrative. It's exactly what MBA types talk about monetisation of the infrastructure to "toll the way." And the rest of us refer to as "protection money." That was and remains the claim. It's pretty solid.

But good on you for sticking up for google so hard, it's unfashionable to take the side of the gazillion dollar behmoth with all the market power and it needs to be respected that you're trying.

[milemi]

I think you’re under the impression that google.com is some sort of a public good, while it’s actually a privately owned platform. I think your issue might be with capitalism. Or maybe it’s with people who don’t want to switch to another search platform, or with people who click on ads instead making sure they scroll down to the first link that’s not an ad. In any case, nobody’s forcing you or anyone else to be one of those people.

If G bought Bing or DuckDuckGo or any of the alternative search engines that appear as choices in people’s browsers, and not just that but did so under a threat of violence, you’d be right to call it a mafia. If it threatened to kneecap Apple executives to be the default search engine on their devices instead of paying Apple billions yearly for the privilege you’d be right to call it a mafia. Otherwise they don’t extort anyone any more than any property owner asking to be paid for use of their property.

There’s a lot of shady shit that Google does, but it’s childish and silly to expect a trillion plus company to be some embodiment of a non-capitalist utopia embedded in a capitalist society, and call them mafia if they fall short of that ideal.

I might be shilling for Google, but your great hope is the government? Haven’t those people been known to employ deadly force at home and overseas in all kinds of disgusting ways?