13 ms·

Google Unfairly Curbs Web Ads and Skews Search, EU Alleges

106 points by antr 10y ago

thesehands 10y ago
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.
- ebbv 10y ago
  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.
  - rahimnathwani 10y ago
    Your first sentence is not consistent with how supermarkets in the UK, Western Europe or the USA work. Their shelf space is a precious resource, which they monetise through products that sell fast, products that encourage customers to come back to the store, products that have good margins, and products whose distributors or manufacturers are willing to pay listing fees to get exposure on shelves.
    - ebbv 10y ago
      What? I live and grew up in the US and go shopping multiple times a week. Every store I go to has generic and branded products next to each other on the shelves. The only exceptions are Aldi, Trader Joe's and Costco. The first two mostly only sell private label products and the last will often only have one offering of a given type of product (which may be a brand or may be private label.) But most supermarkets in the US (the big chains like Wal-Mart, Meijer, Kroger, etc.) will have generics and brand products for everything from cough syrup to bread right next to each other on the shelves. This is a silly argument and I really have no idea why you left the reply you did. Yeah shelves are precious but that has nothing to do with what I said. EDIT: Some companies will pay to be on the shelves but these are usually brands that are not established yet. Regardless that really has nothing to do with what I was talking about. I wasn't talking about how products get to the shelves, it was about whether stores put their generic products in favorable positions compared to branded products. And at least in the US generally they don't. If your point is that store shelves are a bad analogy for Google results, I would agree. I'm not the one who came up with it.
      - phaemon 10y ago
        Nope, you're incorrect. Here's an article that covers it: http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/shopping-storing/more-shopping-storing/grocery-store-layout/shelf-layout http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/shopping-storing/more... That just covers the basics of placement though. Companies will pay to have their products placed at the beginning of aisles, in "special offer" areas, etc etc. There's a whole "science" of supermarket layout.
      - rahimnathwani 10y ago
        The sentence to which I was responding ('your first sentence'): "If a supermarket did give favorable exposure to their generic brand products, the other companies could complain about that and it would be unfair." Fairness is not the reason store-brand and generic products are near each other on the shelves. It's because you get more sales if you organise a store so it's easy for customers to find stuff. "Yeah shelves are precious but that has nothing to do with what I said." It does. You proposed one explanation why generic and branded products are next to each other (fairness). I proposed an alternative explanation (maximising the returns from limited shelf space).
- webjunkie 10y ago
  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.
  - curt15 10y ago
    That sounds like mainly an education problem. Why can't that be fixed by a public awareness campaign informing people of other supermarkets.
    - dazc 10y ago
      I'm not sure it's an awareness problem? Google works and there just isn't an incentive to go elsewhere.
      - fixermark 10y ago
        Except, apparently, the perception that Google manipulates search to its own ends. You'd think that would incentivize people to go elsewhere. So the alternatives are that it's an awareness problem, or (if it's not, as you're asserting) that people know and don't care, in which case forcing Google to change policy seems like it wouldn't actually be a move benefiting the people. Why restrict a business practice that most people don't actually think is bad? (So I think lack of awareness is more likely, personally).
        tluyben2 10y ago
        My father used this (Google ranking search results to benefit themselves and tracking your searches etc) as argument to try other search engines. He uses Google again now as he the other search engines just don't produce results he was happy with. I think most people will have that experience in a blind test to be honest. But I don't know for sure; I tried others and do try others regularly and they start annoying me quite early on as the results are just not as good. Disclaimer: could be very personal ; Google tracks what i'm interested in AND my queries are tailored to Google I guess.
    - 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- daveguy 10y ago
  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. tl;dr: there are options.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    It's not about how easy it is to change, it is about the relative market shares of the various offerings.
  - petetnt 10y ago
    Is the 1/100 actually accurate for you? I occasionally test if DuckDuckGo is even nearly competent for my daily usage and it always falls incredibly short. For example, sometimes I want to revisit a HN article I read days or hour ago, and often it's just faster to type it into Google than it is to search from the history. Typing in "hn google skews" into (incognito mode) Google brings up this thread and the actual news post as the first two, while DDG just brings up pages and pages of irrelevant stuff.
    - bahjoite 10y ago
      you want: !hn google skews
      - fixermark 10y ago
        Slightly off-topic, but useful as an anecdotal example: This kind of thing is why people prefer Google. We had search engines with magic symbols prior to Google. People don't like learning magic search language; finding the right shibboleth of qualifiers, excluders, and "near-word" matches feels a lot like doing the search engine's job for it. Most people seem to prefer Google's approach of making a guess at what you want based on past search history. This doesn't mean DDG can't succeed. But in addition to their selling point of not remembering your search history and having a mechanically-tunable query, they may want to consider offering a search-history "smart" search at some point in the future.
- cocotino 10y ago
  For most people Google is the only supermarket that exists.
- perseusprime11 10y ago
  I agree. Apple preinstalls their apps on the iPhone because they make iPhones.
  - blahi 10y ago
    Apple does not control 90% of the smartphone market. If they did, they will face the same problems. Much like Microsoft did in the late 90s.
- Sylos 10y ago
  Because Google has such a huge market share in search that they can noticeable damage competition.
- DavidWanjiru 10y ago
  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.
- dewiz 10y ago
  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.
  - thecopy 10y ago
    Of course. Private companies are not property of the state.
  - thesehands 10y ago
    The difference with IE was that users were at a disadvantage to install alternative browsers over slow connections. Access to Google is exactly the same as access to Bing from the address bar.
    - blub 10y ago
      Oh, you type www.google.com in your address bar and press enter? I thought you just used the default Google search from the search bar, just like everybody else.
      - thesehands 10y ago
        I do use the search bar in Safari, and have it set to Google, but honestly I can't remember if I was prompted to set the default.
  - deanCommie 10y ago
    Eh, it seems like eligibility for a "monopoly" has shifted in the last 2 decades. Otherwise people would be getting way more bent out of shape for the decisions that both Google and Apple have done on their respective platforms
  - drdaeman 10y ago
    There is a vendor out there who not just put a default browser on their OS, but forbid browsers that aren't just shells for their default browser's rendering engine. And last time I checked nearly everyone was like "oh, that's their system, they can do whatever they want with it". Why would it be any different for a weaker case like this?
- elorant 10y ago
  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.
  - jonknee 10y ago
    ... And Google has 70% of the market in search because people like the results! You can search anywhere you'd like for the same price.
    - elorant 10y ago
      I'm not arguing whether they should or shouldn't have such a market share. For example, in Greece where I live Google's share must be north of 80% and that's fair because in localized search their results are far better than the competition's. I'm just stating the obvious. If you have a dominant share in a market the way you operate must be as transparent as possible.
  - thesehands 10y ago
    If Google's search results didn't match user requirements, users would go elsewhere. Google shouldn't be hamstrung because the competition isn't up to it.
  - realusername 10y ago
    It's more like 90% in Europe, it's a monopoly in practice. Bing, unlike in the US, has a very low market share.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Well that’s nice and dandy, problem is Google has 70% of the market in search. Do they have pricing power in search? If not, what difference does it make that they have 70% of search volume?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- meanduck 10y ago
  Dont read too much into it. This is EU seeing its economy and consumers exposed and looking for better deal.
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
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.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  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.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Market share is voluntary. I use DuckDuckGo. Its there for everybody to use. I didn't pay for either one. So I'm not even sure 'market share' is meaningful, when there is no actual market to begin with. And as I already noted, search is deliberately not a level anything. Its all about tilting the results to suit an agenda. Always was. Whether its pleasing me by finding stuff I agree with (politically or culturally), or showing me stuff I might be convinced to buy. That's the whole industry right there.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      It's not that simple. Most people never made a conscious choice to use Google they ended up using it for a number of reasons hell most people think that google is the internet.
      - fixermark 10y ago
        The threshold for antitrust really ought to be higher than "most people never bothered to learn how the Internet works."
timwaagh 10y ago
Google is an American company. its responsible for lots of EU businesses giving money to the US. of course, the EU will create a reason to make it pay a hefty tax for that if it is at all possible. If not, it will probably create a law to snatch it. I'm not proud of it but it is what it is. Another reason for TIPP, because then such things would likely be handled by a neutral authority.
- blahi 10y ago
  While I'm sure that's probably the motivation behind these lawsuits, they won't be able to do anything if Google is not at fault.
getgoingnow 10y ago
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. [1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/277483/market-value-of-the-largest-internet-companies-worldwide/
- chillydawg 10y ago
  Or, perhaps, google are abusing their de-facto monopoly position and are quite rightly being investigated for it.
  - fixermark 10y ago
    Investigation of anything that large is a responsible thing for a regulatory authority to do.
- erikrothoff 10y ago
  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.
  - Sylphine 10y ago
    Quaero is a dead giveaway. Literally.
  - kyrra 10y ago
    While it's not really proof, Obama has said the same thing[0]. Obama: > In defense of Google and Facebook, sometimes the European response here is more commercially driven than anything else. As I’ve said, there are some countries like Germany, given its history with the Stasi, that are very sensitive to these issues. But sometimes their vendors — their service providers who, you know, can’t compete with ours — are essentially trying to set up some roadblocks for our companies to operate effectively there. [0] http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/17/8050691/obama-our-companies-created-the-internet http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/17/8050691/obama-our-companie...
back_beyond 10y ago
[REDACTED]
- __john 10y ago
  Do you have any examples of this? I'm genuinely curious.
m0th87 10y ago
In the US, an FTC commission concluded the same thing a few years ago: http://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-of-google-1426793274 http://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-o...
ungzd 10y ago
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.
__b__ 10y ago
You may allow Google to scrape your website but Google will not allow you to scrape theirs.
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  you know about robots.txt right?
  - __b__ 10y ago
    Sure. You know about reciprocity?
  - tunap 10y ago
    Yeah, it's a request like "Do not track" with no controls to enforce it besides pulling a plug out. edit: To _b_'s point: "Info Sharing" is merely the promise of the marketeers', info cloistering/monetizing/weaponizing(?) are the realities.
    - tedunangst 10y ago
      Are you claiming that Google ignores robots.txt?
      - __b__ 10y ago
        Thought experiment: You have a very large site with large amount of content. You allow Google to crawl your website and store a copy of all your content in its cache. This amounts to hundreds of pages. That is, many pages of results in the Google search engine. Imagine for the thought experiment you later lose your website and all the content. Can you "crawl Google", e.g., site:website.com, to get it back? No. You will draw a ban. Google is in some ways like the Internet Archive but with some very peculiar rules. The Internet Archive encourages users to crawl it. Is crawling a special privilege that is only reserved for search engines catering to advertisers?
        10y ago
gpderetta 10y ago
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.
- Klathmon 10y ago
  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.
  - gpderetta 10y ago
    I do agree that very likely there is no intent to prefer their own properties. But if such an intent exists, it is very likely that an email trail would prove it and it might surface during disclosure in a trial.
  - halfnhalf 10y ago
    Anyone running a 5 year probe would consider this. There's no way this is the only evidence they would come up with.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - tedunangst 10y ago
      Or... The probe kept going for five years because it failed to turn up anything interesting. The length of an investigation is usually a poor measure of its merit.
adwordsjedi 10y ago
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. For example: Plumbers in San Francisco
- mikelward 10y ago
  Possibly because of this http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locksmiths-may-be-out-to-pick-your-pocket-too.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-lo...
- raldi 10y ago
  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?
  - Sylos 10y ago
    Are we sure that this is not influenced by Google's search result personalization?
    - raldi 10y ago
      Do you get something different?
Sylos 10y ago
New antitrust lawsuit? Wasn't this already started in 2014?
bitmapbrother 10y ago
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.
hsileng 10y ago
Why does anyone ever get surprised by this? This is the "do not be evil but you can be sly" way. This is what MBAs call synergies!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wnevets 10y ago
If I'm googling for something and google offers it then thats probably what I want.
- Sylphine 10y ago
  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.
nivla 10y ago
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.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > 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.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    > (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.) They can dictate AdWords pricing though, no? And where else are you going to go? Bing?
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > They can dictate AdWords pricing though, no? Perhaps; they certainly have a very large share of search advertising and its a paid market, but whether they have pricing power is a fact question that I haven't seen strong reasons to believe either way on. Its pretty clear that there are competing places for online, even search-specific, advertising, and that firms make cost-benefit considerations in choosing these; its not clear to me that there is any range in which Google can increase AdWords prices without losing some business to its competitors, even if AdWords is so attractive at its current price point that it draws the vast majority of spending.
schiffern 10y ago
A small example: 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 https://i.imgur.com/KiCxyfx.png
- ctrl-j 10y ago
  Does google's algorithm consider which browser you're using? UAs are complex to parse and easy to spoof, so I'm not sure they're even considered? 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?
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Google does consider which browser you're using - on Firefox mobile, you consistently get worse results, and can't change any extended search options. Yet, if you change your UA to Chrome, suddenly everything works.
- FT_intern 10y ago
  According to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp, Chrome has 3 times the market share as Firefox
Sylphine 10y ago
I wonder why Russia and South Korea aren't Google dominated. http://www.ginzametrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/search-market-share.png http://www.ginzametrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/searc... http://www.chandlernguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/search-engine-market-share-on-pc-for-korea-2013-v2.jpg http://www.chandlernguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sea... http://www.chandlernguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/search-engine-market-share-on-mobile-web-for-korea-2013-v2.jpg 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.
eximius 10y ago
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?
0xmohit 10y ago
From https://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/ https://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/ 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.] Why not https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  > [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?
goda90 10y ago
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.
awesomepantsm 10y ago
>It rejected Google’s argument that its chief shopping search rivals are Amazon.com Inc. and EBay Inc. Really EU?

106 points by antr 10y ago

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.

ebbv 10y ago
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.
- rahimnathwani 10y ago
  Your first sentence is not consistent with how supermarkets in the UK, Western Europe or the USA work. Their shelf space is a precious resource, which they monetise through products that sell fast, products that encourage customers to come back to the store, products that have good margins, and products whose distributors or manufacturers are willing to pay listing fees to get exposure on shelves.
  - ebbv 10y ago
    What? I live and grew up in the US and go shopping multiple times a week. Every store I go to has generic and branded products next to each other on the shelves. The only exceptions are Aldi, Trader Joe's and Costco. The first two mostly only sell private label products and the last will often only have one offering of a given type of product (which may be a brand or may be private label.) But most supermarkets in the US (the big chains like Wal-Mart, Meijer, Kroger, etc.) will have generics and brand products for everything from cough syrup to bread right next to each other on the shelves. This is a silly argument and I really have no idea why you left the reply you did. Yeah shelves are precious but that has nothing to do with what I said. EDIT: Some companies will pay to be on the shelves but these are usually brands that are not established yet. Regardless that really has nothing to do with what I was talking about. I wasn't talking about how products get to the shelves, it was about whether stores put their generic products in favorable positions compared to branded products. And at least in the US generally they don't. If your point is that store shelves are a bad analogy for Google results, I would agree. I'm not the one who came up with it.
    - phaemon 10y ago
      Nope, you're incorrect. Here's an article that covers it: http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/shopping-storing/more-shopping-storing/grocery-store-layout/shelf-layout http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/shopping-storing/more... That just covers the basics of placement though. Companies will pay to have their products placed at the beginning of aisles, in "special offer" areas, etc etc. There's a whole "science" of supermarket layout.
    - rahimnathwani 10y ago
      The sentence to which I was responding ('your first sentence'): "If a supermarket did give favorable exposure to their generic brand products, the other companies could complain about that and it would be unfair." Fairness is not the reason store-brand and generic products are near each other on the shelves. It's because you get more sales if you organise a store so it's easy for customers to find stuff. "Yeah shelves are precious but that has nothing to do with what I said." It does. You proposed one explanation why generic and branded products are next to each other (fairness). I proposed an alternative explanation (maximising the returns from limited shelf space).
webjunkie 10y ago
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.
- curt15 10y ago
  That sounds like mainly an education problem. Why can't that be fixed by a public awareness campaign informing people of other supermarkets.
  - dazc 10y ago
    I'm not sure it's an awareness problem? Google works and there just isn't an incentive to go elsewhere.
    - fixermark 10y ago
      Except, apparently, the perception that Google manipulates search to its own ends. You'd think that would incentivize people to go elsewhere. So the alternatives are that it's an awareness problem, or (if it's not, as you're asserting) that people know and don't care, in which case forcing Google to change policy seems like it wouldn't actually be a move benefiting the people. Why restrict a business practice that most people don't actually think is bad? (So I think lack of awareness is more likely, personally).
      - tluyben2 10y ago
        My father used this (Google ranking search results to benefit themselves and tracking your searches etc) as argument to try other search engines. He uses Google again now as he the other search engines just don't produce results he was happy with. I think most people will have that experience in a blind test to be honest. But I don't know for sure; I tried others and do try others regularly and they start annoying me quite early on as the results are just not as good. Disclaimer: could be very personal ; Google tracks what i'm interested in AND my queries are tailored to Google I guess.
  - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
daveguy 10y ago
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. tl;dr: there are options.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  It's not about how easy it is to change, it is about the relative market shares of the various offerings.
- petetnt 10y ago
  Is the 1/100 actually accurate for you? I occasionally test if DuckDuckGo is even nearly competent for my daily usage and it always falls incredibly short. For example, sometimes I want to revisit a HN article I read days or hour ago, and often it's just faster to type it into Google than it is to search from the history. Typing in "hn google skews" into (incognito mode) Google brings up this thread and the actual news post as the first two, while DDG just brings up pages and pages of irrelevant stuff.
  - bahjoite 10y ago
    you want: !hn google skews
    - fixermark 10y ago
      Slightly off-topic, but useful as an anecdotal example: This kind of thing is why people prefer Google. We had search engines with magic symbols prior to Google. People don't like learning magic search language; finding the right shibboleth of qualifiers, excluders, and "near-word" matches feels a lot like doing the search engine's job for it. Most people seem to prefer Google's approach of making a guess at what you want based on past search history. This doesn't mean DDG can't succeed. But in addition to their selling point of not remembering your search history and having a mechanically-tunable query, they may want to consider offering a search-history "smart" search at some point in the future.
cocotino 10y ago
For most people Google is the only supermarket that exists.
perseusprime11 10y ago
I agree. Apple preinstalls their apps on the iPhone because they make iPhones.
- blahi 10y ago
  Apple does not control 90% of the smartphone market. If they did, they will face the same problems. Much like Microsoft did in the late 90s.
Sylos 10y ago
Because Google has such a huge market share in search that they can noticeable damage competition.
DavidWanjiru 10y ago
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.
dewiz 10y ago
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.
- thecopy 10y ago
  Of course. Private companies are not property of the state.
- thesehands 10y ago
  The difference with IE was that users were at a disadvantage to install alternative browsers over slow connections. Access to Google is exactly the same as access to Bing from the address bar.
  - blub 10y ago
    Oh, you type www.google.com in your address bar and press enter? I thought you just used the default Google search from the search bar, just like everybody else.
    - thesehands 10y ago
      I do use the search bar in Safari, and have it set to Google, but honestly I can't remember if I was prompted to set the default.
- deanCommie 10y ago
  Eh, it seems like eligibility for a "monopoly" has shifted in the last 2 decades. Otherwise people would be getting way more bent out of shape for the decisions that both Google and Apple have done on their respective platforms
- drdaeman 10y ago
  There is a vendor out there who not just put a default browser on their OS, but forbid browsers that aren't just shells for their default browser's rendering engine. And last time I checked nearly everyone was like "oh, that's their system, they can do whatever they want with it". Why would it be any different for a weaker case like this?
elorant 10y ago
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.
- jonknee 10y ago
  ... And Google has 70% of the market in search because people like the results! You can search anywhere you'd like for the same price.
  - elorant 10y ago
    I'm not arguing whether they should or shouldn't have such a market share. For example, in Greece where I live Google's share must be north of 80% and that's fair because in localized search their results are far better than the competition's. I'm just stating the obvious. If you have a dominant share in a market the way you operate must be as transparent as possible.
- thesehands 10y ago
  If Google's search results didn't match user requirements, users would go elsewhere. Google shouldn't be hamstrung because the competition isn't up to it.
- realusername 10y ago
  It's more like 90% in Europe, it's a monopoly in practice. Bing, unlike in the US, has a very low market share.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Well that’s nice and dandy, problem is Google has 70% of the market in search. Do they have pricing power in search? If not, what difference does it make that they have 70% of search volume?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
meanduck 10y ago
Dont read too much into it. This is EU seeing its economy and consumers exposed and looking for better deal.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

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.

jacquesm 10y ago
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.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Market share is voluntary. I use DuckDuckGo. Its there for everybody to use. I didn't pay for either one. So I'm not even sure 'market share' is meaningful, when there is no actual market to begin with. And as I already noted, search is deliberately not a level anything. Its all about tilting the results to suit an agenda. Always was. Whether its pleasing me by finding stuff I agree with (politically or culturally), or showing me stuff I might be convinced to buy. That's the whole industry right there.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    It's not that simple. Most people never made a conscious choice to use Google they ended up using it for a number of reasons hell most people think that google is the internet.
    - fixermark 10y ago
      The threshold for antitrust really ought to be higher than "most people never bothered to learn how the Internet works."

timwaagh 10y ago

Google is an American company. its responsible for lots of EU businesses giving money to the US. of course, the EU will create a reason to make it pay a hefty tax for that if it is at all possible. If not, it will probably create a law to snatch it. I'm not proud of it but it is what it is. Another reason for TIPP, because then such things would likely be handled by a neutral authority.

blahi 10y ago
While I'm sure that's probably the motivation behind these lawsuits, they won't be able to do anything if Google is not at fault.

getgoingnow 10y ago

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. [1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/277483/market-value-of-the-largest-internet-companies-worldwide/

chillydawg 10y ago
Or, perhaps, google are abusing their de-facto monopoly position and are quite rightly being investigated for it.
- fixermark 10y ago
  Investigation of anything that large is a responsible thing for a regulatory authority to do.
erikrothoff 10y ago
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.
- Sylphine 10y ago
  Quaero is a dead giveaway. Literally.
- kyrra 10y ago
  While it's not really proof, Obama has said the same thing[0]. Obama: > In defense of Google and Facebook, sometimes the European response here is more commercially driven than anything else. As I’ve said, there are some countries like Germany, given its history with the Stasi, that are very sensitive to these issues. But sometimes their vendors — their service providers who, you know, can’t compete with ours — are essentially trying to set up some roadblocks for our companies to operate effectively there. [0] http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/17/8050691/obama-our-companies-created-the-internet http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/17/8050691/obama-our-companie...

back_beyond 10y ago

[REDACTED]

__john 10y ago
Do you have any examples of this? I'm genuinely curious.

m0th87 10y ago

In the US, an FTC commission concluded the same thing a few years ago: http://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-of-google-1426793274 http://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-o...

ungzd 10y ago

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.

__b__ 10y ago

You may allow Google to scrape your website but Google will not allow you to scrape theirs.

LoSboccacc 10y ago
you know about robots.txt right?
- __b__ 10y ago
  Sure. You know about reciprocity?
- tunap 10y ago
  Yeah, it's a request like "Do not track" with no controls to enforce it besides pulling a plug out. edit: To _b_'s point: "Info Sharing" is merely the promise of the marketeers', info cloistering/monetizing/weaponizing(?) are the realities.
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    Are you claiming that Google ignores robots.txt?
    - __b__ 10y ago
      Thought experiment: You have a very large site with large amount of content. You allow Google to crawl your website and store a copy of all your content in its cache. This amounts to hundreds of pages. That is, many pages of results in the Google search engine. Imagine for the thought experiment you later lose your website and all the content. Can you "crawl Google", e.g., site:website.com, to get it back? No. You will draw a ban. Google is in some ways like the Internet Archive but with some very peculiar rules. The Internet Archive encourages users to crawl it. Is crawling a special privilege that is only reserved for search engines catering to advertisers?
      - 10y ago

gpderetta 10y ago

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.

Klathmon 10y ago
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.
- gpderetta 10y ago
  I do agree that very likely there is no intent to prefer their own properties. But if such an intent exists, it is very likely that an email trail would prove it and it might surface during disclosure in a trial.
- halfnhalf 10y ago
  Anyone running a 5 year probe would consider this. There's no way this is the only evidence they would come up with.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    Or... The probe kept going for five years because it failed to turn up anything interesting. The length of an investigation is usually a poor measure of its merit.

adwordsjedi 10y ago

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. For example: Plumbers in San Francisco

mikelward 10y ago
Possibly because of this http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locksmiths-may-be-out-to-pick-your-pocket-too.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-lo...
raldi 10y ago
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?
- Sylos 10y ago
  Are we sure that this is not influenced by Google's search result personalization?
  - raldi 10y ago
    Do you get something different?

Sylos 10y ago

New antitrust lawsuit? Wasn't this already started in 2014?

bitmapbrother 10y ago

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.

hsileng 10y ago

Why does anyone ever get surprised by this? This is the "do not be evil but you can be sly" way. This is what MBAs call synergies!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

wnevets 10y ago

If I'm googling for something and google offers it then thats probably what I want.

Sylphine 10y ago
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.

nivla 10y ago

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.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> 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.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  > (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.) They can dictate AdWords pricing though, no? And where else are you going to go? Bing?
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > They can dictate AdWords pricing though, no? Perhaps; they certainly have a very large share of search advertising and its a paid market, but whether they have pricing power is a fact question that I haven't seen strong reasons to believe either way on. Its pretty clear that there are competing places for online, even search-specific, advertising, and that firms make cost-benefit considerations in choosing these; its not clear to me that there is any range in which Google can increase AdWords prices without losing some business to its competitors, even if AdWords is so attractive at its current price point that it draws the vast majority of spending.

schiffern 10y ago

A small example: 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 https://i.imgur.com/KiCxyfx.png

ctrl-j 10y ago
Does google's algorithm consider which browser you're using? UAs are complex to parse and easy to spoof, so I'm not sure they're even considered? 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?
- kuschku 10y ago
  Google does consider which browser you're using - on Firefox mobile, you consistently get worse results, and can't change any extended search options. Yet, if you change your UA to Chrome, suddenly everything works.
FT_intern 10y ago
According to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp, Chrome has 3 times the market share as Firefox

Sylphine 10y ago

I wonder why Russia and South Korea aren't Google dominated. http://www.ginzametrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/search-market-share.png http://www.ginzametrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/searc... http://www.chandlernguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/search-engine-market-share-on-pc-for-korea-2013-v2.jpg http://www.chandlernguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sea... http://www.chandlernguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/search-engine-market-share-on-mobile-web-for-korea-2013-v2.jpg 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.

eximius 10y ago

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?

0xmohit 10y ago

From https://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/ https://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/ 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.] Why not https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/

wutbrodo 10y ago
> [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?

goda90 10y ago

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.

awesomepantsm 10y ago

>It rejected Google’s argument that its chief shopping search rivals are Amazon.com Inc. and EBay Inc. Really EU?