6 ms·

You know, at some point (and we are around that point) Google does cross a line where they are abusing their near monopoly on search. This is a pro consumer mov

by serge2k 11y ago

You know, at some point (and we are around that point) Google does cross a line where they are abusing their near monopoly on search. This is a pro consumer move, but it's another instance of Google saying do things our way or we punish you.

prawn 11y ago
And where does it end? With them dictating design? Demote sites they think are ugly? Or that don't validate? Why only this type of interstitial and not those pushing newsletters or paywalls or surveys? "I know you've only just arrived and read all of one sentence but CHECK OUT OUR NEWSLETTER!"
jmscharff2 11y ago
But when that happens you can always use....Bing :)
avar 11y ago
It's not at all unreasonable that if sites want to be indexed for their content that a search engine penalizes them if they don't display that content prominently once the user lands on the site and instead display some advert orthogonal to what the user wanted.
matchu 11y ago
I'm not sure what makes this abuse. Curating the content you serve isn't just okay; it's one of the key value propositions of a search engine. The problem is when a content provider, for whatever reason, intentionally curates in a way that provides less value to the consumer.
- jbigelow76 11y ago
  So what about an OS vendor that "curates" a particular default browser and destroys a competing browser provider in the process? I seem to remember that happening a few years back. It's not so much the curating that's the problem, nobody would care if Duck Duck Go did it, the problem is with the regulators that view Google to be the only curator out there.
  - georgemcbay 11y ago
    The problem in the Microsoft case was use of near-monopoly in one market (operating systems) to gain unfair advantage in another market (browsers), though even that seems a bit outdated already since the idea of shipping an OS without a browser built-in seems ludicrous today. In any case, that concept of using monopoly power in one market to bolster power in another doesn't really apply here with Google. I share a lot of the unease many people have with the amount of power Google has been able to amass as the de factor curator of the Internet, but I'm also somewhat amazed they are in the position they are in and have been as (mostly) benevolent as they have been. I suspect it is actually pretty hard work just to remain somewhat close to neutral when you are sitting on that much power.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      > since the idea of shipping an OS without a browser built-in seems ludicrous today. Windows 7 in Europe.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      This applies directly to Google. Remember them pushing Chrome on you? having ads directly on Google.com? To this day forcing you to use Chrome for Hangouts? And so on? Do you seriously think Chrome would have caught on if it weren’t for this push of advertisements? This is direct abuse of near-monopoly in one market (search engines) to gain unfair advantage in another market (browsers).
      - plonh 11y ago
        Chrome originally caught in for the same reason Firefox: when it came out it was the best browser by far. People forget how bad IE used to be and later how bad Firefox got.
        kuschku 11y ago
        Are you so sure about that? Because no one knew about it until Google started this massive ad campaign, where for weeks literally every single ad on the web was "INSTALL CHROME NOW".
- tzs 11y ago
  One potential problem here is that this only applies to page blocking interstitials that promote an app. Page blocking interstitials that push signing up for a newsletter, for example, will not be penalized. It could be hard to argue that an interstitial pushing an app (especially an app specifically for the site the user is visiting that gives them enhanced features compared to the mobile web version of the site) is more annoying, distracting, or otherwise harmful to a user than any other kind of blocking interstitial. Thus, one might try to conclude that Google's actual interest here is trying to keep users from using apps to access content instead of using the web site where Google is more likely to be the ad provider. I have no idea if this could rise to the level of an antitrust violation, but it's the first place I'd look for one.
  - matchu 11y ago
    Yeah, I dunno. I could buy the argument that a modal on launch isn't always evil (maybe it's a signin prompt), so we don't want to just block that kind of UI outright; we instead want some heuristics to tell us whether the modal is helpful or not, and prompts to download apps are almost always unhelpful. Still, I feel like newsletter prompts are also easy to detect, so that argument doesn't hold a ton of water unless there's also a separate plan to address those—or maybe they're testing the waters with this one. I think I need more information to have a real opinion :/
  - bagacrap 11y ago
    There's an alternative that is more user-friendly which the browser provides, but only for app install interstitials. Since there's no built-in alternative for other kinds of interstitials, it makes sense that they're left alone (although the crappier your site, the less time people spend on it, and presumably the farther it falls down the search results). Also, the blog post states they're essentially calling these sites mobile-unfriendly, which I think is entirely fair. All full-page interstitials are annoying, on the mobile web or desktop web, but only "install our app" interstitials are unique to mobile. So if you view "mobile friendly" as meaning "as good as desktop web", banning bad things that are only relevant to mobile makes sense.
noblethrasher 11y ago
Google's job is to get you the information that you want as fast as possible. Said another way, it wants to get you off of its search results page as soon as it can. This is anecdotal, but I almost always abandon pages that lead to an app interstitial, which means that I end up back on the results page. This is a pretty unambiguous signal to Google that the search result was bad. So, the remedy that they're proposing is good and obvious.
bad_user 11y ago
Personally I believe this is only fair, because such websites are abusing the inner workings of Google's crawler while displaying to users something else that the crawler doesn't see. I always wondered why such tactics aren't penalized, such as websites placed behind a paywall by means of Javascript, like the Experts-Exchange of old or these websites that show slimy full page ads, sometimes with broken links. And don't get me wrong, I'm actually for paywalls and ads, I'm fine with whatever business model can keep the lights on, but then if you want web-scale traffic, it's not morally justifiable to piggyback on the open-web. If you want to sell your slimy app, then use an app store instead of tricking a web search engine. Also, Google's search engine has never, ever, ever been objective in the signals used for ranking. Their results have been different and biased ever since the start, which is what made their search engine successful in the first place. It's a little late to complain about that.
- vacri 11y ago
  There was a time when the circumvention for the Experts-Exchange paywall was "scroll down a bit" - the data had to be visible to the googlebot, and they made it look obscured at the top, but it was all there and readable a few 'pages' down.
  - mattmanser 11y ago
    I happened to go through to my first result at the site with a dash in a year or two, it no longer does that. I wonder if they got penalised for doing it.
    - LoSboccacc 11y ago
      people were so fed up with their shenanigans to cheat seo that a whole new industry as been born out of it in the form of stack exchange
michaelpinto 11y ago
My gut tells me that unless thing change the open web is not going to do well as mobile dominates: This in itself is going to eat away Google's core business while Facebook dominates on mobile. And the funny thing is that the sites that beg you to install an app are doing so because they see where things are going with the open web. PS Another thing that may also hurt Google's core business may be once Apple starts blocking their ads. Google ads will become the next Flash.

by serge2k 11y ago

prawn 11y ago

And where does it end? With them dictating design? Demote sites they think are ugly? Or that don't validate? Why only this type of interstitial and not those pushing newsletters or paywalls or surveys? "I know you've only just arrived and read all of one sentence but CHECK OUT OUR NEWSLETTER!"

jmscharff2 11y ago

But when that happens you can always use....Bing :)

avar 11y ago

It's not at all unreasonable that if sites want to be indexed for their content that a search engine penalizes them if they don't display that content prominently once the user lands on the site and instead display some advert orthogonal to what the user wanted.

matchu 11y ago

I'm not sure what makes this abuse. Curating the content you serve isn't just okay; it's one of the key value propositions of a search engine. The problem is when a content provider, for whatever reason, intentionally curates in a way that provides less value to the consumer.

jbigelow76 11y ago
So what about an OS vendor that "curates" a particular default browser and destroys a competing browser provider in the process? I seem to remember that happening a few years back. It's not so much the curating that's the problem, nobody would care if Duck Duck Go did it, the problem is with the regulators that view Google to be the only curator out there.
- georgemcbay 11y ago
  The problem in the Microsoft case was use of near-monopoly in one market (operating systems) to gain unfair advantage in another market (browsers), though even that seems a bit outdated already since the idea of shipping an OS without a browser built-in seems ludicrous today. In any case, that concept of using monopoly power in one market to bolster power in another doesn't really apply here with Google. I share a lot of the unease many people have with the amount of power Google has been able to amass as the de factor curator of the Internet, but I'm also somewhat amazed they are in the position they are in and have been as (mostly) benevolent as they have been. I suspect it is actually pretty hard work just to remain somewhat close to neutral when you are sitting on that much power.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    > since the idea of shipping an OS without a browser built-in seems ludicrous today. Windows 7 in Europe.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    This applies directly to Google. Remember them pushing Chrome on you? having ads directly on Google.com? To this day forcing you to use Chrome for Hangouts? And so on? Do you seriously think Chrome would have caught on if it weren’t for this push of advertisements? This is direct abuse of near-monopoly in one market (search engines) to gain unfair advantage in another market (browsers).
    - plonh 11y ago
      Chrome originally caught in for the same reason Firefox: when it came out it was the best browser by far. People forget how bad IE used to be and later how bad Firefox got.
      - kuschku 11y ago
        Are you so sure about that? Because no one knew about it until Google started this massive ad campaign, where for weeks literally every single ad on the web was "INSTALL CHROME NOW".
tzs 11y ago
One potential problem here is that this only applies to page blocking interstitials that promote an app. Page blocking interstitials that push signing up for a newsletter, for example, will not be penalized. It could be hard to argue that an interstitial pushing an app (especially an app specifically for the site the user is visiting that gives them enhanced features compared to the mobile web version of the site) is more annoying, distracting, or otherwise harmful to a user than any other kind of blocking interstitial. Thus, one might try to conclude that Google's actual interest here is trying to keep users from using apps to access content instead of using the web site where Google is more likely to be the ad provider. I have no idea if this could rise to the level of an antitrust violation, but it's the first place I'd look for one.
- matchu 11y ago
  Yeah, I dunno. I could buy the argument that a modal on launch isn't always evil (maybe it's a signin prompt), so we don't want to just block that kind of UI outright; we instead want some heuristics to tell us whether the modal is helpful or not, and prompts to download apps are almost always unhelpful. Still, I feel like newsletter prompts are also easy to detect, so that argument doesn't hold a ton of water unless there's also a separate plan to address those—or maybe they're testing the waters with this one. I think I need more information to have a real opinion :/
- bagacrap 11y ago
  There's an alternative that is more user-friendly which the browser provides, but only for app install interstitials. Since there's no built-in alternative for other kinds of interstitials, it makes sense that they're left alone (although the crappier your site, the less time people spend on it, and presumably the farther it falls down the search results). Also, the blog post states they're essentially calling these sites mobile-unfriendly, which I think is entirely fair. All full-page interstitials are annoying, on the mobile web or desktop web, but only "install our app" interstitials are unique to mobile. So if you view "mobile friendly" as meaning "as good as desktop web", banning bad things that are only relevant to mobile makes sense.

noblethrasher 11y ago

Google's job is to get you the information that you want as fast as possible. Said another way, it wants to get you off of its search results page as soon as it can. This is anecdotal, but I almost always abandon pages that lead to an app interstitial, which means that I end up back on the results page. This is a pretty unambiguous signal to Google that the search result was bad. So, the remedy that they're proposing is good and obvious.

bad_user 11y ago

Personally I believe this is only fair, because such websites are abusing the inner workings of Google's crawler while displaying to users something else that the crawler doesn't see. I always wondered why such tactics aren't penalized, such as websites placed behind a paywall by means of Javascript, like the Experts-Exchange of old or these websites that show slimy full page ads, sometimes with broken links. And don't get me wrong, I'm actually for paywalls and ads, I'm fine with whatever business model can keep the lights on, but then if you want web-scale traffic, it's not morally justifiable to piggyback on the open-web. If you want to sell your slimy app, then use an app store instead of tricking a web search engine. Also, Google's search engine has never, ever, ever been objective in the signals used for ranking. Their results have been different and biased ever since the start, which is what made their search engine successful in the first place. It's a little late to complain about that.

vacri 11y ago
There was a time when the circumvention for the Experts-Exchange paywall was "scroll down a bit" - the data had to be visible to the googlebot, and they made it look obscured at the top, but it was all there and readable a few 'pages' down.
- mattmanser 11y ago
  I happened to go through to my first result at the site with a dash in a year or two, it no longer does that. I wonder if they got penalised for doing it.
  - LoSboccacc 11y ago
    people were so fed up with their shenanigans to cheat seo that a whole new industry as been born out of it in the form of stack exchange

michaelpinto 11y ago

My gut tells me that unless thing change the open web is not going to do well as mobile dominates: This in itself is going to eat away Google's core business while Facebook dominates on mobile. And the funny thing is that the sites that beg you to install an app are doing so because they see where things are going with the open web. PS Another thing that may also hurt Google's core business may be once Apple starts blocking their ads. Google ads will become the next Flash.