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Google Legally Profits from Fraud on Its Platform

152 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

temp1827 7y ago
Just me or is the biggest company that likely has the highest % of their revenue generated illegally AirBnB? By "illegal" I mean the listing does not conform to local, state, and/or federal law for rental/vacation home rentals. I've never heard of a situation where busted million-dollar rings of illegal AirBnBs ever resulted in the company being forced to refund fees.
- bassman9000 7y ago
  How quaint: a comment in a post critical to Google, by an account created an hour ago, bashing not-Google.
bearcobra 7y ago
Reminds me of the Reply All episode about locksmiths & Google Maps (https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho87 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho87)
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
  Interestingly enough, Google responded to that with a product offering: https://www.google.com/search?q=google+certified+locksmith https://www.google.com/search?q=google+certified+locksmith Not sure how well it works, as I haven't needed a locksmith in a long time. But for what it's worth, there is that.
  - dual_basis 7y ago
    Nothing comes up related to what you described, I just see a bunch of listings for Angie's list.
    - spennant 7y ago
      You might need to disable your ad-blocker
ethanpil 7y ago
How about eBay and Amazon knowingly selling counterfeit goods to the tune of billions? Or Craigslist for sex workers? I'm sure none of these companies started out with the intention of profiting from illegal or immoral activities, but once they notice that prophet bump, it becomes difficult for them to make changes, especially if no one really cares or complains too much...
throwaway5752 7y ago
Why is there so much attention on Google? It's market cap is $800B. Amazon and Microsoft are roughly $1T. Facebook is $600B. We're not a bunch of rubes here, to have this many articles proposing sanctions and/or breakup of Google has all the fingerprints of coordinated action. It's less than a month after the US president saying he would sue them because he felt they didn't give conservative sources favorable enough index ranking. This has a stink to it.
- 0xDEFC0DE 7y ago
  >This has a stink to it. TBH so does using market cap to dismiss criticism of Google
  - ddalex 7y ago
    But it's not dismissing criticism. It's acknowledging that other big companies that have pretty similar issues are not coming under fire for the said issues.
    - 0xDEFC0DE 7y ago
      Maybe they should talk about those issues and not bring up market cap because market cap really has nothing to do with any of this
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - eitland 7y ago
      As I have pointed out elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20444182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20444182) Microsoft and Facebook has been under fire as well. And yes, it was deserved for them as well.
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
  Some of the accusations are pretty thin too, this one included. Last I checked, Google doesn't make money off of organic Google Maps results, except inasmuch as Maps acts as a halo product. What exactly is Google supposed to do here? Are they to require a validated business license to update one's listing on Google Maps? Besides the non-trivial expense associated with that, it would act as a barrier to entry for smaller businesses that don't have one, and you can bet there'd be articles on here hating that too (just like there have been about the GMail API changes).
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
It's amazing how many scams and malware-serving websites are in Google Ads, and how aggressively Google refuses to address it. I've actually had Googlers (here on HN) go and report and have removed the malicious sites I reported, just to see them back a handful of hours later, without so much as rotating domain names out. Google must be stripped of any profit from criminal activity on their platform. When a fraudulent site is removed, Google should be forced to give up all of the profits generated from it. Though I doubt Google would even make the Fortune 500 if it did. Section 230 absolutely has to go for order and justice to prevail. My go-to example for the particular type of predatory crimes Google knowingly and willfully enables happens whenever a senior citizen searches for "mapquest": https://www.google.com/search?q=mapquest https://www.google.com/search?q=mapquest I actually took a call yesterday from someone who "couldn't get directions from MapQuest without installing something". And if you look at the search results, you'll see why: Ads that look like real search results that claim to be MapQuest push the real MapQuest below the scroll fold. And computer-illiterate individuals get taken advantage of, again and again and again. I've been pointing out this example for six or seven years, and the same domains that were operating then are still operating today, because Google simply makes too much money from them to care. If you work for Google, this is where your paycheck is coming from, and if you use Google, this is the cost of your convenience.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Google has a strong incentive to be ineffective at catching fraud on their platform, and despite the company line, it shows through their actions.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    Indeed. I think it's fundamentally key to fixing this that profit from fraudulent activity be confiscated. (I'm sure we can find a responsible way to spend it, compensating victims of fraud or something similar.) With ad slots being an auction of sorts, Google benefits from increased bidding when there are more bidders... including fraudulent ones. So there's zero reason for them to prevent fraud. If upon a fraudulent account being reported and shut down, they lost all of their profit from that account's history, they would have a significant incentive to prevent fraud on the platform, since any fraudulent "winners" would completely zero out an ad slot for them.
alexnewman 7y ago
I cannot wait to publish our stats on how effective google captcha is blocking bots.
- o_p 7y ago
  Let me guess, 0%? :-)
  - alexnewman 7y ago
    We beat recaptcha v3 50% of the time v2 about 20%
- bifrost 7y ago
  But the monetization is so good! lol.
stevenicr 7y ago
Was expecting to see various types fraud that google profits from, instead it seems to be focused mainly on "(business) identity theft via google maps" - right? Thought for sure there would be info about things like taking ads for "flashplayer" that installed malware, things like taking money for ads for "walmart" searches instead of just listed the organic result, because there is implied threat of NOT listing walmart at the top due to competitor ads or "gamed" search results. Enabling places like grubhub and others to take over search results for restaurants / small businesses and brands in the search results. Censoring organic results, yet allowing paid listings to insert themselves within. I'm sure there are many more forms of fraud that could be brought up that are mainly possible with google. Basically looking for more perspective given the title, I think the title could of been less broad given the article's info.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tracker1 7y ago
  Funnier than the flashplayer ads, is that "Google Chrome" was (is?) a heavy ad target for malware.
paulcole 7y ago
I mean so does Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, FedEx, and any other service provider who hasn't 100% eliminated fraud (which is all of them).
zokier 7y ago
And YouTube was built on exploiting flagrant copyright infringement, making it easier than ever for the masses.
vipbababd 7y ago
"It's almost certainly the case" without any evidence whatsoever? I mean, there's a lot of companies who have a reason to promote Google's fraud-based business model (mostly, companies being defrauded by it). What would you say makes it "almost certainly" about Amazon?
vipbababd 7y ago
There is a major boycott of Amazon this week after it came out they're directly competing for military contracts that Google declined to take [0]. It's almost certainly the case that Amazon is helping and urging people to post negative stories about other high profile competitors, Google included, right now. That's just how tech journalism works. Amazon is just much better at it than less successful attempts like the "scroogled" campaign. This does not dismiss the bad things Google does. However, it does mean that it's a good week to remind people to boycott Amazon any way they can in addition to holding Google accountable.
mcntall 7y ago
It is such a difficult balance to be had since by taking a position of trying to resolve any/all frauds in the platform, they create a can of worm that is difficult, if not impossible to fill. The failure of finding all the frauds, illegal activity would prohibitively expensive, if not destructive to the platform itself (Think false-positives, etc). For them, it is better/easier to say "we have the platform, we remove what we are legally bound to remove, everything else is on the user to be mindful of".

152 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

Just me or is the biggest company that likely has the highest % of their revenue generated illegally AirBnB? By "illegal" I mean the listing does not conform to local, state, and/or federal law for rental/vacation home rentals. I've never heard of a situation where busted million-dollar rings of illegal AirBnBs ever resulted in the company being forced to refund fees.

bassman9000 7y ago
How quaint: a comment in a post critical to Google, by an account created an hour ago, bashing not-Google.

bearcobra 7y ago

Reminds me of the Reply All episode about locksmiths & Google Maps (https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho87 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho87)

ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
Interestingly enough, Google responded to that with a product offering: https://www.google.com/search?q=google+certified+locksmith https://www.google.com/search?q=google+certified+locksmith Not sure how well it works, as I haven't needed a locksmith in a long time. But for what it's worth, there is that.
- dual_basis 7y ago
  Nothing comes up related to what you described, I just see a bunch of listings for Angie's list.
  - spennant 7y ago
    You might need to disable your ad-blocker

ethanpil 7y ago

How about eBay and Amazon knowingly selling counterfeit goods to the tune of billions? Or Craigslist for sex workers? I'm sure none of these companies started out with the intention of profiting from illegal or immoral activities, but once they notice that prophet bump, it becomes difficult for them to make changes, especially if no one really cares or complains too much...

throwaway5752 7y ago

Why is there so much attention on Google? It's market cap is $800B. Amazon and Microsoft are roughly $1T. Facebook is $600B. We're not a bunch of rubes here, to have this many articles proposing sanctions and/or breakup of Google has all the fingerprints of coordinated action. It's less than a month after the US president saying he would sue them because he felt they didn't give conservative sources favorable enough index ranking. This has a stink to it.

0xDEFC0DE 7y ago
>This has a stink to it. TBH so does using market cap to dismiss criticism of Google
- ddalex 7y ago
  But it's not dismissing criticism. It's acknowledging that other big companies that have pretty similar issues are not coming under fire for the said issues.
  - 0xDEFC0DE 7y ago
    Maybe they should talk about those issues and not bring up market cap because market cap really has nothing to do with any of this
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - eitland 7y ago
    As I have pointed out elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20444182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20444182) Microsoft and Facebook has been under fire as well. And yes, it was deserved for them as well.
ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
Some of the accusations are pretty thin too, this one included. Last I checked, Google doesn't make money off of organic Google Maps results, except inasmuch as Maps acts as a halo product. What exactly is Google supposed to do here? Are they to require a validated business license to update one's listing on Google Maps? Besides the non-trivial expense associated with that, it would act as a barrier to entry for smaller businesses that don't have one, and you can bet there'd be articles on here hating that too (just like there have been about the GMail API changes).

ocdtrekkie 7y ago

It's amazing how many scams and malware-serving websites are in Google Ads, and how aggressively Google refuses to address it. I've actually had Googlers (here on HN) go and report and have removed the malicious sites I reported, just to see them back a handful of hours later, without so much as rotating domain names out. Google must be stripped of any profit from criminal activity on their platform. When a fraudulent site is removed, Google should be forced to give up all of the profits generated from it. Though I doubt Google would even make the Fortune 500 if it did. Section 230 absolutely has to go for order and justice to prevail. My go-to example for the particular type of predatory crimes Google knowingly and willfully enables happens whenever a senior citizen searches for "mapquest": https://www.google.com/search?q=mapquest https://www.google.com/search?q=mapquest I actually took a call yesterday from someone who "couldn't get directions from MapQuest without installing something". And if you look at the search results, you'll see why: Ads that look like real search results that claim to be MapQuest push the real MapQuest below the scroll fold. And computer-illiterate individuals get taken advantage of, again and again and again. I've been pointing out this example for six or seven years, and the same domains that were operating then are still operating today, because Google simply makes too much money from them to care. If you work for Google, this is where your paycheck is coming from, and if you use Google, this is the cost of your convenience.

cwkoss 7y ago
Google has a strong incentive to be ineffective at catching fraud on their platform, and despite the company line, it shows through their actions.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  Indeed. I think it's fundamentally key to fixing this that profit from fraudulent activity be confiscated. (I'm sure we can find a responsible way to spend it, compensating victims of fraud or something similar.) With ad slots being an auction of sorts, Google benefits from increased bidding when there are more bidders... including fraudulent ones. So there's zero reason for them to prevent fraud. If upon a fraudulent account being reported and shut down, they lost all of their profit from that account's history, they would have a significant incentive to prevent fraud on the platform, since any fraudulent "winners" would completely zero out an ad slot for them.

alexnewman 7y ago

I cannot wait to publish our stats on how effective google captcha is blocking bots.

o_p 7y ago
Let me guess, 0%? :-)
- alexnewman 7y ago
  We beat recaptcha v3 50% of the time v2 about 20%
bifrost 7y ago
But the monetization is so good! lol.

stevenicr 7y ago

Was expecting to see various types fraud that google profits from, instead it seems to be focused mainly on "(business) identity theft via google maps" - right? Thought for sure there would be info about things like taking ads for "flashplayer" that installed malware, things like taking money for ads for "walmart" searches instead of just listed the organic result, because there is implied threat of NOT listing walmart at the top due to competitor ads or "gamed" search results. Enabling places like grubhub and others to take over search results for restaurants / small businesses and brands in the search results. Censoring organic results, yet allowing paid listings to insert themselves within. I'm sure there are many more forms of fraud that could be brought up that are mainly possible with google. Basically looking for more perspective given the title, I think the title could of been less broad given the article's info.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tracker1 7y ago
Funnier than the flashplayer ads, is that "Google Chrome" was (is?) a heavy ad target for malware.

paulcole 7y ago

I mean so does Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, FedEx, and any other service provider who hasn't 100% eliminated fraud (which is all of them).

zokier 7y ago

And YouTube was built on exploiting flagrant copyright infringement, making it easier than ever for the masses.

vipbababd 7y ago

"It's almost certainly the case" without any evidence whatsoever? I mean, there's a lot of companies who have a reason to promote Google's fraud-based business model (mostly, companies being defrauded by it). What would you say makes it "almost certainly" about Amazon?

vipbababd 7y ago

There is a major boycott of Amazon this week after it came out they're directly competing for military contracts that Google declined to take [0]. It's almost certainly the case that Amazon is helping and urging people to post negative stories about other high profile competitors, Google included, right now. That's just how tech journalism works. Amazon is just much better at it than less successful attempts like the "scroogled" campaign. This does not dismiss the bad things Google does. However, it does mean that it's a good week to remind people to boycott Amazon any way they can in addition to holding Google accountable.

mcntall 7y ago

It is such a difficult balance to be had since by taking a position of trying to resolve any/all frauds in the platform, they create a can of worm that is difficult, if not impossible to fill. The failure of finding all the frauds, illegal activity would prohibitively expensive, if not destructive to the platform itself (Think false-positives, etc). For them, it is better/easier to say "we have the platform, we remove what we are legally bound to remove, everything else is on the user to be mindful of".