8 ms·

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 onu

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
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deleted 10y ago
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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
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meanduck 10y ago
Dont read too much into it. This is EU seeing its economy and consumers exposed and looking for better deal.

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

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deleted 10y ago

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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.