6 ms·

I understand why it's happening and I mentioned it in my comment. However, I just find it incredibly inappropriate that... 1. When I search an exact domain Goo

I understand why it's happening and I mentioned it in my comment. However, I just find it incredibly inappropriate that... 1. When I search an exact domain Google will take money from a competitor and show their "advertisement" first. I say that in quotations, because it looks like they're showing a search result, not an advertisement. At this point it feels like companies are paying for their search placement. Pay enough money and you can be the first result for any search term. 2. Does Google give Expedia the option to not pay for an advertisement when there is no competition? I don't think so, and in the example I posted, Google has basically scared Expedia into outbidding no one. The whole thing feels like extortion. Pay us money or we'll send people trying to navigate to your website to one of your competitors.

333c 7y ago
I 100% agree with you. It is extortion.
- ddingus 7y ago
  Google = the new Yelp
  - puranjay 7y ago
    That's what happens when MBAs and not engineers run your tech company
    - lwansbrough 7y ago
      There are enough unethical engineers in the world (in fact, many of them work at Google!) that you don’t need to make this accusatory statement.
      - dchichkov 7y ago
        Your statement has unquantified "enough, "many" and unqualified "in fact". It also completely misses the point - it is the proportion of unethical decision makers that matters. Not the absolute numbers.
    - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
      To be fair this exact behaviour has been happening since pretty much day 1, Google no longer being run by engineers is a very recent development.
      - ddingus 7y ago
        The difference now is gate keeping. Prior behavior did leave one to make choices. Google made their favored ones easy. Now that fails to deliver expected results. Too many people not making the choices Google would have them make.
- j4kp07 7y ago
  If I own land across from a CVS, should it be illegal to lease it to Walgreens?
milesskorpen 7y ago
To play devil's advocate, these kind of brand ads are usually very cheap and frequently generate some incrementality - you're basically paying to have your links take over a larger part of page 1. Even if competitors weren't going to advertise, it might be worth it.
- taurath 7y ago
  If I were a competitor, and it’s that cheap and effective for Expedia, then I’d never allow Expedia to have that real estate.
  - cldellow 7y ago
    It's absolutely extortion, but it's cheaper for Expedia to buy than a competitor due to Google's auction rules. Essentially, the bid to be #1 is discounted by the click-through rate. If 90% of people who search "expedia.com" will click an ad for Expedia, and only 10% of people who search "expedia.com" will click an ad for travelsite.com, travelsite.com has to pay 10x what Expedia does to make up for the lost revenue.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      Devil's advocate - isn't this a neat way of automatically being anti-incumbent and pro-competition?
      - cldellow 7y ago
        ? I don't follow the mechanism you're thinking of here.
      - tempestn 7y ago
        It might be if it were more transparent. So many people are mislead by these "ads" on branded search keywords though, it really is extortionate.
      - _jal 7y ago
        It is a tax on customers. Incumbents can generally afford to pay more than upstarts, and of course will just pass that cost on.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
crispyporkbites 7y ago
I aggree with your point #1, if you search for an specific term / domain it should always appear first if there's a direct match. but for #2 there's a pro-competition argument here. If you search for Expedia and all you ever get is Expedia and expedia pages underneath that, in theory that's good. But what if you don't know about other online travel sites? You'll never see them, so it kind of makes sense that you are shown other sites in there. Google should recognise that a search for Expedia is either: a) For Expedia b) For a travel holiday and let other competitors rank for b), showing Expedia as the biggest and main CTA on the page.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > But what if you don't know about other online travel sites? You'll never see them, so it kind of makes sense that you are shown other sites in there. I don't think that makes sense. Or, at least, such results should be below all the actually relevant results. If I'm searching for Expedia, then what I want is results about Expedia. Nothing else. If I want to know about other travel sites, I'd be searching for "travel sites" instead.
  - indecisive_user 7y ago
    And if you don't know the name for the generic product to search for? Jacuzzi, styrofoam, and Super Glue are all brand specific trademarked items[0], but I doubt most users care about that when they're searching for those terms. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...
- indecisive_user 7y ago
  What about generic or almost generic trademarks? If I search for something like bandaid I am certainly _not_ expecting Google to rank Johnson and Johnson (the owner of the trademark for bandaid) above other potentially more relevant results. And the same applies to other terms like Kleenex, Ziploc, aspirin, etc.
- kjs3 7y ago
  so it kind of makes sense that you are shown other sites in there Why? If I search for a specific thing (Expedia), why would Google assume I want to see other options that I did not ask for other than "it's more profitable for Google"? More specifically, in the event I want other options, why is the correct answer "you want to see the other options that are paying Google the most"? That's not "pro-competition", that's "pro-Google". Google should recognise that a search for Expedia is either: a) For Expedia b) For a travel holiday Why, short of mind reading (I assume they're working on it, but it's not in the 10Q), should Google ever assume B?
tmlee 7y ago
https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016?s=20 https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016?s=...
mitchdoogle 7y ago
Why are users entering brand names into google instead of going directly to the site? How can we change this behavior?
- dlandis 7y ago
  It's one way to avoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typosquatting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typosquatting
Guidii 7y ago
| 2. Does Google give Expedia the option to not pay for an advertisement when there is no competition? If nobody bids against Expedia, they'll end up paying a penny to win the auction. Source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2996564?hl=en&ref_topic=3119129 https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2996564?hl=en&r...

333c 7y ago

I 100% agree with you. It is extortion.

ddingus 7y ago
Google = the new Yelp
- puranjay 7y ago
  That's what happens when MBAs and not engineers run your tech company
  - lwansbrough 7y ago
    There are enough unethical engineers in the world (in fact, many of them work at Google!) that you don’t need to make this accusatory statement.
    - dchichkov 7y ago
      Your statement has unquantified "enough, "many" and unqualified "in fact". It also completely misses the point - it is the proportion of unethical decision makers that matters. Not the absolute numbers.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    To be fair this exact behaviour has been happening since pretty much day 1, Google no longer being run by engineers is a very recent development.
    - ddingus 7y ago
      The difference now is gate keeping. Prior behavior did leave one to make choices. Google made their favored ones easy. Now that fails to deliver expected results. Too many people not making the choices Google would have them make.
j4kp07 7y ago
If I own land across from a CVS, should it be illegal to lease it to Walgreens?

milesskorpen 7y ago

To play devil's advocate, these kind of brand ads are usually very cheap and frequently generate some incrementality - you're basically paying to have your links take over a larger part of page 1. Even if competitors weren't going to advertise, it might be worth it.

taurath 7y ago
If I were a competitor, and it’s that cheap and effective for Expedia, then I’d never allow Expedia to have that real estate.
- cldellow 7y ago
  It's absolutely extortion, but it's cheaper for Expedia to buy than a competitor due to Google's auction rules. Essentially, the bid to be #1 is discounted by the click-through rate. If 90% of people who search "expedia.com" will click an ad for Expedia, and only 10% of people who search "expedia.com" will click an ad for travelsite.com, travelsite.com has to pay 10x what Expedia does to make up for the lost revenue.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Devil's advocate - isn't this a neat way of automatically being anti-incumbent and pro-competition?
    - cldellow 7y ago
      ? I don't follow the mechanism you're thinking of here.
    - tempestn 7y ago
      It might be if it were more transparent. So many people are mislead by these "ads" on branded search keywords though, it really is extortionate.
    - _jal 7y ago
      It is a tax on customers. Incumbents can generally afford to pay more than upstarts, and of course will just pass that cost on.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

crispyporkbites 7y ago

I aggree with your point #1, if you search for an specific term / domain it should always appear first if there's a direct match. but for #2 there's a pro-competition argument here. If you search for Expedia and all you ever get is Expedia and expedia pages underneath that, in theory that's good. But what if you don't know about other online travel sites? You'll never see them, so it kind of makes sense that you are shown other sites in there. Google should recognise that a search for Expedia is either: a) For Expedia b) For a travel holiday and let other competitors rank for b), showing Expedia as the biggest and main CTA on the page.

JohnFen 7y ago
> But what if you don't know about other online travel sites? You'll never see them, so it kind of makes sense that you are shown other sites in there. I don't think that makes sense. Or, at least, such results should be below all the actually relevant results. If I'm searching for Expedia, then what I want is results about Expedia. Nothing else. If I want to know about other travel sites, I'd be searching for "travel sites" instead.
- indecisive_user 7y ago
  And if you don't know the name for the generic product to search for? Jacuzzi, styrofoam, and Super Glue are all brand specific trademarked items[0], but I doubt most users care about that when they're searching for those terms. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...
indecisive_user 7y ago
What about generic or almost generic trademarks? If I search for something like bandaid I am certainly _not_ expecting Google to rank Johnson and Johnson (the owner of the trademark for bandaid) above other potentially more relevant results. And the same applies to other terms like Kleenex, Ziploc, aspirin, etc.
kjs3 7y ago
so it kind of makes sense that you are shown other sites in there Why? If I search for a specific thing (Expedia), why would Google assume I want to see other options that I did not ask for other than "it's more profitable for Google"? More specifically, in the event I want other options, why is the correct answer "you want to see the other options that are paying Google the most"? That's not "pro-competition", that's "pro-Google". Google should recognise that a search for Expedia is either: a) For Expedia b) For a travel holiday Why, short of mind reading (I assume they're working on it, but it's not in the 10Q), should Google ever assume B?

tmlee 7y ago

https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016?s=20 https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016?s=...

mitchdoogle 7y ago

Why are users entering brand names into google instead of going directly to the site? How can we change this behavior?

dlandis 7y ago
It's one way to avoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typosquatting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typosquatting

Guidii 7y ago

| 2. Does Google give Expedia the option to not pay for an advertisement when there is no competition? If nobody bids against Expedia, they'll end up paying a penny to win the auction. Source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2996564?hl=en&ref_topic=3119129 https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2996564?hl=en&r...