5 ms·

The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly, and so I think that there is a valid argument that it needs to be regulated and be forced to be impar

by cyphar 8y ago

The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly, and so I think that there is a valid argument that it needs to be regulated and be forced to be impartial in the results shown. The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views (in a world where page views are how you get significant amounts of money, not to mention subscription opportunities) is a conscious decision to implement a feature that arguably impacts revenue. I think there is also a valid argument for this as well. But I do think that the EU copyright law is significantly flawed because it's purpose is to further extend the already ridiculously over-extended draconian copyright laws that exist in the EU. I don't think the issues they (ostensibly) set out to solve are something that should be ignored though -- Google acting as a biased monopoly which implements features that impact people's ability to make money is a real problem that needs to be solved somehow.

mygo 8y ago
> The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views Are you talking about AMP?
- liveoneggs 8y ago
  mobile Q&A results slide-down-widget thingy is the most egregious imho
  - mygo 8y ago
    ooh the widget content. wow that’s huge, most google results have some kind of widget content be it q&a results or images or even key excerpts. never really thought that it’s reducing a lot of page views but with enough of those little widgets it probably adds up. If you’re getting what you’re looking for right on the results page then why click on a link?
mrunkel 8y ago
> The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly This is just false. bing.com exists. news.ycombinator.com exists. reddit.com exists.... > The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views.. This is just false. Google shows at most an excerpt (that is defined by the publisher) or a headline (on news.google.com). Unless you're talking about AMP, but that's a decision made by the publisher too.
- patrickmcnamara 8y ago
  Just because there are other websites on the internet does not mean that Google doesn't have a monopoly. They have 91% search engine market share.
  - rascul 8y ago
    Stats seem to vary, it's not clear that 91% is correct. Even if it was 91%, that doesn't necessarily make it a monopoly. http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://www.statista.com/statistics/267161/market-share-of-search-engines-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267161/market-share-of-s... https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.as...
    - cyphar 8y ago
      Does 92% usage make something a monopoly? 95%? 99%? 100%? I think that the percentage argument is not the only important thing to consider, there are other anti-competitive practices which (when practiced at a large enough scale) become a monopoly even if "only" 50% of people use the product (friendly reminder that 50% of internet users is more than a billion people -- much larger than the population of most countries). My point is not that Google is doing something illegal (and thus arguing over the legal definition of a monopoly is not helpful -- just like arguing over the legal meaning of the US 1st Amendment is not helpful in discussions over the concept of free speech). I'm arguing that it is a monopoly in the ordinary meaning of the word, in that effectively everyone uses Google and Google exerts a massive amount of power over their users. But for a pseudo-legal argument: Google participates in a form of product tying[1] by requiring you to create a Google account in order to access Google Groups (which are publicly-run mailing lists and an unrelated product to their account service). Now since you don't pay for Google accounts this isn't a strict violation of anti-trust laws, but it is very close in concept to the sort of thing anti-trust laws protect against. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)
beaconstudios 8y ago
the real problem is that newspapers have no idea how to monetise themselves in the age of the internet, with its near-free content duplication.
- cyphar 8y ago
  I don't disagree that newspapers are generally garbage, but that isn't the point I was making.
dghf 8y ago
> The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly Is it? I mean, sure, far more people use Google than, say, Bing or DuckDuckGo. But there's nothing actually stopping them from using those alternatives, other than the fact that they're not as good.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  Lack of users is stopping Google's customers from using those alternatives. Users themselves (or people) are not the customers.
  - mcintyre1994 8y ago
    That's obviously correct, but it seems weird to use a different metric for market share and lock-in. If you define Google's customers as ad buyers, then they're very much not a monopoly, have way less than 91% market share, and their competitiors don't have a lack of users. If they have a monopoly on search because of their share of searches, then surely the relevant lock-in would be how easily users of search can move to competitors?
    - zzzcpan 8y ago
      Think about it this way: there are plenty of products and services that you can't advertise anywhere else but on google search, so Google has a monopoly on that. This monopoly exists because of Google's abusive practices to prevent competition from entering the market it wants to own.
pliny 8y ago
>The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views (in a world where page views are how you get significant amounts of money, not to mention subscription opportunities) is a conscious decision to implement a feature that arguably impacts revenue Think about how grossly afflicted with clickbait the news ecosystem is today, and then imagine how much worse it could get if Google were legally prevented from even attaching a blurb to the links that it shows users.
wongarsu 8y ago
> I think that there is a valid argument that it needs to be regulated and be forced to be impartial in the results shown I agree that regulation might be useful here, and impartial search results are a good goal. But linking fees go against that. If newspaper A wants a fee from google for showing its links but newspaper B doesn't, it would be unfair to the entire market to force google to include both A and B equally. If A and B agree to charge google the same fee, that sounds a lot like a cartel doing price fixing, which is already illegal. The government could set a fixed price google has to pay, but at that point we have given up on finding a free market solution, so that's a last resort that isn't nessesary yet. It's fine that people can demand money for links, but I don't see any scenario where this would happen in reality.
Nasrudith 8y ago
How do you judge impartial objectively? You can't even handle fake news without it being a cudgel for censors denying reality. Pure stats won't work and as seen with the moderation problem with Facebook not advocating their partisan view sets off their persecution complex. Also by previewing they prevent load as well and boost relevance. That favors real data instead of SEO page caching garbage that tries to get matched to every common keyword. You do not have a right to a business model, much less it being unchanged by time.

by cyphar 8y ago

mygo 8y ago

> The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views Are you talking about AMP?

liveoneggs 8y ago
mobile Q&A results slide-down-widget thingy is the most egregious imho
- mygo 8y ago
  ooh the widget content. wow that’s huge, most google results have some kind of widget content be it q&a results or images or even key excerpts. never really thought that it’s reducing a lot of page views but with enough of those little widgets it probably adds up. If you’re getting what you’re looking for right on the results page then why click on a link?

mrunkel 8y ago

> The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly This is just false. bing.com exists. news.ycombinator.com exists. reddit.com exists.... > The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views.. This is just false. Google shows at most an excerpt (that is defined by the publisher) or a headline (on news.google.com). Unless you're talking about AMP, but that's a decision made by the publisher too.

patrickmcnamara 8y ago
Just because there are other websites on the internet does not mean that Google doesn't have a monopoly. They have 91% search engine market share.
- rascul 8y ago
  Stats seem to vary, it's not clear that 91% is correct. Even if it was 91%, that doesn't necessarily make it a monopoly. http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://www.statista.com/statistics/267161/market-share-of-search-engines-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267161/market-share-of-s... https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.as...
  - cyphar 8y ago
    Does 92% usage make something a monopoly? 95%? 99%? 100%? I think that the percentage argument is not the only important thing to consider, there are other anti-competitive practices which (when practiced at a large enough scale) become a monopoly even if "only" 50% of people use the product (friendly reminder that 50% of internet users is more than a billion people -- much larger than the population of most countries). My point is not that Google is doing something illegal (and thus arguing over the legal definition of a monopoly is not helpful -- just like arguing over the legal meaning of the US 1st Amendment is not helpful in discussions over the concept of free speech). I'm arguing that it is a monopoly in the ordinary meaning of the word, in that effectively everyone uses Google and Google exerts a massive amount of power over their users. But for a pseudo-legal argument: Google participates in a form of product tying[1] by requiring you to create a Google account in order to access Google Groups (which are publicly-run mailing lists and an unrelated product to their account service). Now since you don't pay for Google accounts this isn't a strict violation of anti-trust laws, but it is very close in concept to the sort of thing anti-trust laws protect against. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

beaconstudios 8y ago

the real problem is that newspapers have no idea how to monetise themselves in the age of the internet, with its near-free content duplication.

cyphar 8y ago
I don't disagree that newspapers are generally garbage, but that isn't the point I was making.

dghf 8y ago

> The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly Is it? I mean, sure, far more people use Google than, say, Bing or DuckDuckGo. But there's nothing actually stopping them from using those alternatives, other than the fact that they're not as good.

zzzcpan 8y ago
Lack of users is stopping Google's customers from using those alternatives. Users themselves (or people) are not the customers.
- mcintyre1994 8y ago
  That's obviously correct, but it seems weird to use a different metric for market share and lock-in. If you define Google's customers as ad buyers, then they're very much not a monopoly, have way less than 91% market share, and their competitiors don't have a lack of users. If they have a monopoly on search because of their share of searches, then surely the relevant lock-in would be how easily users of search can move to competitors?
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    Think about it this way: there are plenty of products and services that you can't advertise anywhere else but on google search, so Google has a monopoly on that. This monopoly exists because of Google's abusive practices to prevent competition from entering the market it wants to own.

pliny 8y ago

>The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views (in a world where page views are how you get significant amounts of money, not to mention subscription opportunities) is a conscious decision to implement a feature that arguably impacts revenue Think about how grossly afflicted with clickbait the news ecosystem is today, and then imagine how much worse it could get if Google were legally prevented from even attaching a blurb to the links that it shows users.

wongarsu 8y ago

> I think that there is a valid argument that it needs to be regulated and be forced to be impartial in the results shown I agree that regulation might be useful here, and impartial search results are a good goal. But linking fees go against that. If newspaper A wants a fee from google for showing its links but newspaper B doesn't, it would be unfair to the entire market to force google to include both A and B equally. If A and B agree to charge google the same fee, that sounds a lot like a cartel doing price fixing, which is already illegal. The government could set a fixed price google has to pay, but at that point we have given up on finding a free market solution, so that's a last resort that isn't nessesary yet. It's fine that people can demand money for links, but I don't see any scenario where this would happen in reality.

Nasrudith 8y ago

How do you judge impartial objectively? You can't even handle fake news without it being a cudgel for censors denying reality. Pure stats won't work and as seen with the moderation problem with Facebook not advocating their partisan view sets off their persecution complex. Also by previewing they prevent load as well and boost relevance. That favors real data instead of SEO page caching garbage that tries to get matched to every common keyword. You do not have a right to a business model, much less it being unchanged by time.