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The author fails to include and rebut a crucial point in the EU commision's original article. He equates the monopolistic wrongdoing with showing adds. The EU

The author fails to include and rebut a crucial point in the EU commision's original article. He equates the monopolistic wrongdoing with showing adds. The EU instead says that it was Google showing adds for its own service. - First, Google dominated search and not shopping. - Then, Google used search to unfairly compete with shopping by creating its own service. The author leaves this point out, and I think it was central to the EU's decision. If some other company had created a comparison shopping service, and then paid Google to show its service inside Google search results, this would be more similar to the circumstances of the article's argument.

matt4077 9y ago
There's something there, indeed. But I feel it's really hard to define it exhaustively. The product carousel shows only paid ads, so it doesn't really matter that it's part of Google shopping. Would it be ok if the actual "Google shopping" didn't exist, and it were officially just a carousel of ads? I'm also quite certain that they internally charge a business unit such as Google Shopping for the placement. Would it be ok if they allowed other comparison shopping sites to bid for the carousel spot? It's complicated by the fact that for most products, Google does actually provide a much better experience than competitors. Take flight search, where the Google interface is just so much better than any competitor. I get that it can be in the consumers' long-term interest to preserve competition even if it means hobbling the best product, but the magnitudes involved here currently make it a really difficult decision.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  > I'm also quite certain that they internally charge a business unit such as Google Shopping for the placement. Would it be ok if they allowed other comparison shopping sites to bid for the carousel spot? Obviously not. What would happen in that case? The Google Shopping unit would go to the CFO (or whoever is responsible) and tell them that they needed more funding for bidding on carousel spots, so as to increase their market share. They would make the very solid business case that any money spent there would end up back in the company's accounts, so it is actually free. So, they would get whatever money they would need in order to outbid everyone else. As long as your expenses flow back to the entity that's funding you, there won't be any limit on funding.
  - Pyxl101 9y ago
    The theory that you're describing holds only if ads placed through Google Shopping outperform whatever other kind of ads might appear there. If the Google Shopping ads (not actually the right term) actually perform worse, then Google will lose money, and the funding will not be unlimited. The product results that appear in Google Search are called Product Listing Ads (PLAs), and are not a comparison shopping feature today. (I don't know how things worked in the past.) They are simply advertisements. Individual merchants publish their product catalog into Google's Merchant Center, along with the price they're willing to pay for each product ad. It's similar to adwords, just with product information too (title, picture, price). Consequently, it's not a comparison shopping system - within Google Search it is purely an advertising feature with more information than text ads. Furthermore, as far as I'm aware, any company can participate in it by listing their products. I also think but am not positive that the only products featured in the carousel will be paid advertisements - another way in which it is not a comparison shopping system. Note: I'm only describing Product Listing Ads within Google Search results, not whatever else Google Shopping might be. It does appear that the main Google Shopping website also involves payment from merchants, which they disclose on the page. I don't know what determines whether the product carousel is displayed or not. I would assume that it's shown at the top when Google has enough information to display it, and when it's outperforming other types of ads. Anecdotally, Product Listing Ads have considerably higher conversion than traditional AdWords, so I would expect that PLAs will naturally perform better and would justify the top advertising slot.
bryanlarsen 9y ago
The central point of the article is that "Google shopping is search". Full stop, bringing ads into the article is expansion but not necessary. You're allowed to have a monopoly, as long as you gain it fairly and defend it fairly, and don't use it to give other products an unfair advantage. So then the question simply becomes: is Google Shopping a separate service or is it search. The author argues that Google Shopping is search, the EU argues it's a separate service. There's merit to both arguments IMO.
OzzyB 9y ago
He did address this by simply stating the fact there is no actual "Google Shopping", it's just a term, like "Google Hotels" or "Google Whatever". In the end "Google Shopping" is just an Ad Block with a nomenclature of "Google Shopping. They could simply remove this term and put the same ads for Adidas shoes at the top of search results just like do for a myriad of other products and search categories; would that be a problem? I understand that Google probably has a different engineering platform to present shopping ads/results as opposed to webpages, but is this really any different from other kinds of scraping they perform? They also show song lyrics and snippets from Wikipedia for example. They're scraping the web and collating that info for users to search for. I think the author made a good case, good read.
- asr 9y ago
  One important point for everyone to keep in mind, whenever you read an article about some years-long competition investigation, is that it is talking about conduct that happened in the past. In this case, by internet standards, we're talking about conduct that happened a long, long time ago (but, in this galaxy). When Google shopping was introduced it was a search product, actually, and was not "just an ad." It only became an ad in 2012: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Shopping#Change_to_paid_listings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Shopping#Change_to_paid...
  - mst 9y ago
    Aha, thank you. In which case, I think the decision applies fine to the pre-2012 form and the article's thesis applies fine to the post-2012 form.

matt4077 9y ago

There's something there, indeed. But I feel it's really hard to define it exhaustively. The product carousel shows only paid ads, so it doesn't really matter that it's part of Google shopping. Would it be ok if the actual "Google shopping" didn't exist, and it were officially just a carousel of ads? I'm also quite certain that they internally charge a business unit such as Google Shopping for the placement. Would it be ok if they allowed other comparison shopping sites to bid for the carousel spot? It's complicated by the fact that for most products, Google does actually provide a much better experience than competitors. Take flight search, where the Google interface is just so much better than any competitor. I get that it can be in the consumers' long-term interest to preserve competition even if it means hobbling the best product, but the magnitudes involved here currently make it a really difficult decision.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
> I'm also quite certain that they internally charge a business unit such as Google Shopping for the placement. Would it be ok if they allowed other comparison shopping sites to bid for the carousel spot? Obviously not. What would happen in that case? The Google Shopping unit would go to the CFO (or whoever is responsible) and tell them that they needed more funding for bidding on carousel spots, so as to increase their market share. They would make the very solid business case that any money spent there would end up back in the company's accounts, so it is actually free. So, they would get whatever money they would need in order to outbid everyone else. As long as your expenses flow back to the entity that's funding you, there won't be any limit on funding.
- Pyxl101 9y ago
  The theory that you're describing holds only if ads placed through Google Shopping outperform whatever other kind of ads might appear there. If the Google Shopping ads (not actually the right term) actually perform worse, then Google will lose money, and the funding will not be unlimited. The product results that appear in Google Search are called Product Listing Ads (PLAs), and are not a comparison shopping feature today. (I don't know how things worked in the past.) They are simply advertisements. Individual merchants publish their product catalog into Google's Merchant Center, along with the price they're willing to pay for each product ad. It's similar to adwords, just with product information too (title, picture, price). Consequently, it's not a comparison shopping system - within Google Search it is purely an advertising feature with more information than text ads. Furthermore, as far as I'm aware, any company can participate in it by listing their products. I also think but am not positive that the only products featured in the carousel will be paid advertisements - another way in which it is not a comparison shopping system. Note: I'm only describing Product Listing Ads within Google Search results, not whatever else Google Shopping might be. It does appear that the main Google Shopping website also involves payment from merchants, which they disclose on the page. I don't know what determines whether the product carousel is displayed or not. I would assume that it's shown at the top when Google has enough information to display it, and when it's outperforming other types of ads. Anecdotally, Product Listing Ads have considerably higher conversion than traditional AdWords, so I would expect that PLAs will naturally perform better and would justify the top advertising slot.

bryanlarsen 9y ago

The central point of the article is that "Google shopping is search". Full stop, bringing ads into the article is expansion but not necessary. You're allowed to have a monopoly, as long as you gain it fairly and defend it fairly, and don't use it to give other products an unfair advantage. So then the question simply becomes: is Google Shopping a separate service or is it search. The author argues that Google Shopping is search, the EU argues it's a separate service. There's merit to both arguments IMO.

OzzyB 9y ago

He did address this by simply stating the fact there is no actual "Google Shopping", it's just a term, like "Google Hotels" or "Google Whatever". In the end "Google Shopping" is just an Ad Block with a nomenclature of "Google Shopping. They could simply remove this term and put the same ads for Adidas shoes at the top of search results just like do for a myriad of other products and search categories; would that be a problem? I understand that Google probably has a different engineering platform to present shopping ads/results as opposed to webpages, but is this really any different from other kinds of scraping they perform? They also show song lyrics and snippets from Wikipedia for example. They're scraping the web and collating that info for users to search for. I think the author made a good case, good read.

asr 9y ago
One important point for everyone to keep in mind, whenever you read an article about some years-long competition investigation, is that it is talking about conduct that happened in the past. In this case, by internet standards, we're talking about conduct that happened a long, long time ago (but, in this galaxy). When Google shopping was introduced it was a search product, actually, and was not "just an ad." It only became an ad in 2012: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Shopping#Change_to_paid_listings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Shopping#Change_to_paid...
- mst 9y ago
  Aha, thank you. In which case, I think the decision applies fine to the pre-2012 form and the article's thesis applies fine to the post-2012 form.