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What so many people fail to realize about these issues vis-a-vis Google, it’s not so much the issues of Google having a monopoly or not on the ad market...in ei

What so many people fail to realize about these issues vis-a-vis Google, it’s not so much the issues of Google having a monopoly or not on the ad market...in either case google is a dominant market incumbent that uses its position (in this case web traffic, data and online ad platform) to unfairly compete and stifle competition. Google has often used data acquired through their market position to start subsidiaries to unfairly compete with their ad customers. The reason it’s unfair is because Google has not just the ad data but the web search data, this often results in a Google ad customer going from #1 google Organic search result for key terms, to #2 to Google’s competing subsidiary. Worse from going from #1 to #2 to a google product, the natural instinct to save the business is to increase ad spend to be sure you are still the #1 ad to our place the google at the top of organic search, of course ad spend goes right into the pocket of your new competitors core business anyway, and in many instances googles subsidiary will start bidding for your same keywords so they literally can’t lose competing with your business rather the have basically acquired an off form of rent seeking equity or they kill your business and become the market incumbent. Of course the kicker are those instances a google subsidiary gets a custom tool at the top of google results (such as Flights) above both organic and ads.

perlpimp 6y ago
good point, when your ad funnel is almost the size the internet(search, gmail) ... and traffic gravity of a black hole.
doukdouk 6y ago
Words get abused a lot, and for some of them, they do not have a clear-cut, universally agreed upon meaning. "Monopoly" is one of such words (others candidate include: freedom, democracy, justice). When random person X complains about, say, Google having a monopoly, there are two possibilities: - Person X means something along "Google has a dominant market position and abuses its power", slightly abusing the meaning of "monopoly". - Person X means Google is literally a monopoly, that it is not possible to get online ads otherwise and does not know that firms such as Facebook exist. Somehow a lot of people choose to believe interpretation #2 is true, and spend a lot of time debating whether this or that company is a "monopoly" as if it is somehow more important than the substantive issues.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Meaning isn't dictated by a language academy and may change over time. Debating about the precise differences between monopoly and monopsony serves more to distract from the core issue: abuse of their market position. If the allegations are true then I can't see a solution that does not involve breaking Google up. The incentives to cheat are likely just undeniable over a time scale of years.
- dustingetz 6y ago
  Duopoly?
  - doukdouk 6y ago
    Again, mindless arguing what exact word fit or does not fit the situation detracts from the real issues.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      If the only thing the word "monopoly" does is spark a discussion about the word then why use it? Why is it so important that Google be a monopoly for their behavior to be bad? Do we really have no other words to describe business practices that we don't like?
      - doukdouk 6y ago
        Because it is generally accepted that monopolies are bad and that not-monopolies are ok. It is much easier to sell the simple idea that "X is a monopoly, so split X", than to make a long case that "X does Y and Z which meet ABC definition of unfair use of market position, bla bla bla, so split X". Conversely, for a company in the wrong, it is easier to say "Of course monopolies are bad, but we are not a monopoly!".
      - stale2002 6y ago
        > or we really have no other words There are other words, but it is a bit of a mouthful. Because of these exact issues, the way that I describe the situation is usually as follows "Company X has significant market power, and is engaging in anti-competitive actions". I have yet to have someone object to that definition.
quest88 6y ago
Can you point out any specific examples, and why Google would forgo that ad money?
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  What ad money do you think Google is forgoing in this example? There is an example at the end of the comment you are replying to, flights. Two other examples that took me only a couple of minutes to find: google 'smart thermostat' or 'corporate email providers'
  - ta1234567890 6y ago
    Also Yelp with Google Reviews / Google MyBusiness
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Aunche 6y ago
> google subsidiary gets a custom tool at the top of google results (such as Flights) above both organic and ads. Searching for flights is still a search. You wouldn't expect the first result of "cat pictures" to be Bing's search results for cat pictures, so it's also natural that the first result of "flight nyc la" would return actual flights as its first result would return actual flights rather than a link to Expedia.
- IncRnd 6y ago
  That is illegal under antitrust laws. Google was fined billions of euros for doing that.
tgtweak 6y ago
Not just web search, also android, google home, google/android pay, gmail (even if you're not on gmail you send to/from), youtube, 3rd party android apps running analytics, 3rd party websites running analytics, chrome... the list goes on. Far more reach than any other competitor could hope to have when making a competing service.
squeaky-clean 6y ago
I totally agree with the idea of your post. Just wanted to share a sort of funny tidbit about the specific example you chose: I work in fare marketing for airlines, and google flights is actually a bit of a boon for us because it drops you directly into the airline booking engine with pre-filled info. Before Google Flights we were mostly competing against Expedia/Kayak/etc. Now Google Flights indirectly gives the airlines the top rank again, and we're competing against the OTA's for the secondary spots with ads and SEO. I can also anecdotally attest that Instagram ads work very well for airlines. (Well... worked very well, pre march 2020 and all). I do agree with your main sentiment though, and the case could totally be made that google flights is doubly screwing over the OTA's now. Just wanted to share some interesting anecdata.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Let me make it really simple: The problem with the tech industry is vertical monopoly, but many people want to just think about horizontal monopoly.
- Supermancho 6y ago
  Especially where tech has the best margins, we end up with horizontal monopolies over time. eg In idiocracy, "Welcome to Google-Costco, we love you."
treis 6y ago
>n either case google is a dominant market incumbent that uses its position (in this case web traffic, data and online ad platform) to unfairly compete and stifle competition. It's not that clear how much that helps. The places where Google won (Maps, Gmail, Chrome) they had a pretty clearly better product. Other places where they didn't (Duo/Hangouts, Plus, Gsuite, Chromebook, GCloud) they don't dominate the market.
- boogies 6y ago
  Translate at least seems to have some people ignorant of the alternatives convinced that they have a clearly better product — “no competitors that even come close in terms of quality” when they objectively don’t. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975001
  - wodenokoto 6y ago
    The claimed “objectively” better translator is DeepL. You need to read like 8 paragraphs deep to get to that and there is no real explanation as to why it is objectively better - just a link to an article where some journalists apparently thought it was better. https://www.deepl.com/en/translator https://www.deepl.com/en/translator
    - boogies 6y ago
      The bottom of the page you linked shows ten articles, six of which praise DeepL as better than the competition and four which praise it without comparison. The least positive is probably Wired’s: “WIRED's quick test shows that DeepL's results are indeed in no way inferior to those of the high-ranking competitors and, in many cases, even surpass them. The translated texts often read much more fluently; where Google Translate forms completely meaningless word chains, DeepL can at least guess a connection.” — which is a long-winded way of saying that DeepL’s worst translations are as bad as Google Translate’s, but many of them are better — making DeepL strictly better overall. Of course, any individual review must be made by subjective humans, but you can find as many corroborating comparisons as you like and every review I’ve seen has either described DeepL as better or at worst as bad as Google Translate, and the former is exactly my personal experience after using each for years. We can also compare the results of sending your comment on a round trip through the top language on each: DeepL German: “The allegedly "objectively" better translator is DeepL.” Google Translate German: “The alleged "objectively" better translator is DeepL” DeepL Spanish: “The allegedly "objectively" better translator is DeepL.” Google Translate Spanish: “The best translator "objectively" that is claimed is DeepL.” As a native English speaker, the DeepL results seem clearly clearer and cleaner to me. If broad consensus isn’t evidence to you, you could also compare quantity of languages instead of quality of translations, in which case you’d find that Google Translate is missing languages that Microsoft Translate has. Either way, Google certainly doesn’t have “a pretty clearly better product.”
jayd16 6y ago
So whats the solution? Make it illegal for any search company to build any other product?
switch11 6y ago
Excellent Comment Let's consider a few more examples of abuse of market dominance 1) Retail Me Not Google through Google Venture secretly invested in them and didn't disclose that Then for next 3 years, Retail Me Not was #1 for EVERY SINGLE deal and coupon search term on Google Is that an abuse of market dominance? Pretty Sure Is it illegal? According to US Anti Trust Law - not sure. A lawyer can step in 2) A market we are in The largest 2 players (us and another company) are #40 and #41 when people search for the biggest key word Not #2, Not #10 At #40 and #41 Who is in the Top 10? companies that advertise A LOT on Google, even though they are distant 4th and 6th in the market Not only that, they do it in blatant ways Last year, they pumped up organic traffic to one of our competitors THIRTY TIMES over night So, the top two companies (another company and us) saw ZERO CHANGE However, a company that is a distant 4th in the market suddenly got its organic search engine traffic increased 30 times Pretty sure in 3 or 4 years it will be revealed that Google invested in them or did some tie up * Google is basically using Search as a weapon
- apahwa 6y ago
  this comment acts like there is some person on Google's side manually curating the search results. why is it Google's fault that your competitors have better SEO teams?
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
As detailed on the site css-tricks.com, a popular HN item, there was a time before "#1 google Organic search result" meant anything. That is, the best search engine at the time did not try to order the results. The search was accurate and comprehensive but there was no preferential ordering according to "popularity" or a "secret" algorithm. That search engine was Alta Vista. Raw results. I can remember combing through page after page looking for the results I wanted. Try that today and Google is likely to temporarily block you, accusing you of having "strange activity" coming from your computer, or looking like a "bot". The more Google has tried to "solve" the problem of finding the appropriate results for the particular searcher within the raw results returned from the query, the more they have manipulated the raw results to suit their own perspective. There is no option to get those raw results and search within them the way you want. There is only Google's way -- reorder them according to Google's "secret" processes. Do not dig into subsequent pages, stay on page one. This necessarily carries a Google bias. It also creates a "winner-take-all" contest to reach page one that Google's exploits for selling online ad services. In other words, not only does Google manipulate searches through deciding the "1st search result", it actually created this concept of "1st search result" with respect to web search. The idea that Google could guess the "correct" search result, reorder the raw results and place the "best" one at the top of the first page of results was in fact Google's idea. Thanks to Google, reordering the raw results has become commonplace so no one really thinks about this anymore, but it is this (biased) reordering that allows Google to profit.

perlpimp 6y ago

good point, when your ad funnel is almost the size the internet(search, gmail) ... and traffic gravity of a black hole.

doukdouk 6y ago

Words get abused a lot, and for some of them, they do not have a clear-cut, universally agreed upon meaning. "Monopoly" is one of such words (others candidate include: freedom, democracy, justice). When random person X complains about, say, Google having a monopoly, there are two possibilities: - Person X means something along "Google has a dominant market position and abuses its power", slightly abusing the meaning of "monopoly". - Person X means Google is literally a monopoly, that it is not possible to get online ads otherwise and does not know that firms such as Facebook exist. Somehow a lot of people choose to believe interpretation #2 is true, and spend a lot of time debating whether this or that company is a "monopoly" as if it is somehow more important than the substantive issues.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
Meaning isn't dictated by a language academy and may change over time. Debating about the precise differences between monopoly and monopsony serves more to distract from the core issue: abuse of their market position. If the allegations are true then I can't see a solution that does not involve breaking Google up. The incentives to cheat are likely just undeniable over a time scale of years.
dustingetz 6y ago
Duopoly?
- doukdouk 6y ago
  Again, mindless arguing what exact word fit or does not fit the situation detracts from the real issues.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    If the only thing the word "monopoly" does is spark a discussion about the word then why use it? Why is it so important that Google be a monopoly for their behavior to be bad? Do we really have no other words to describe business practices that we don't like?
    - doukdouk 6y ago
      Because it is generally accepted that monopolies are bad and that not-monopolies are ok. It is much easier to sell the simple idea that "X is a monopoly, so split X", than to make a long case that "X does Y and Z which meet ABC definition of unfair use of market position, bla bla bla, so split X". Conversely, for a company in the wrong, it is easier to say "Of course monopolies are bad, but we are not a monopoly!".
    - stale2002 6y ago
      > or we really have no other words There are other words, but it is a bit of a mouthful. Because of these exact issues, the way that I describe the situation is usually as follows "Company X has significant market power, and is engaging in anti-competitive actions". I have yet to have someone object to that definition.

quest88 6y ago

Can you point out any specific examples, and why Google would forgo that ad money?

Ensorceled 6y ago
What ad money do you think Google is forgoing in this example? There is an example at the end of the comment you are replying to, flights. Two other examples that took me only a couple of minutes to find: google 'smart thermostat' or 'corporate email providers'
- ta1234567890 6y ago
  Also Yelp with Google Reviews / Google MyBusiness

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Aunche 6y ago

> google subsidiary gets a custom tool at the top of google results (such as Flights) above both organic and ads. Searching for flights is still a search. You wouldn't expect the first result of "cat pictures" to be Bing's search results for cat pictures, so it's also natural that the first result of "flight nyc la" would return actual flights as its first result would return actual flights rather than a link to Expedia.

IncRnd 6y ago
That is illegal under antitrust laws. Google was fined billions of euros for doing that.

tgtweak 6y ago

Not just web search, also android, google home, google/android pay, gmail (even if you're not on gmail you send to/from), youtube, 3rd party android apps running analytics, 3rd party websites running analytics, chrome... the list goes on. Far more reach than any other competitor could hope to have when making a competing service.

squeaky-clean 6y ago

I totally agree with the idea of your post. Just wanted to share a sort of funny tidbit about the specific example you chose: I work in fare marketing for airlines, and google flights is actually a bit of a boon for us because it drops you directly into the airline booking engine with pre-filled info. Before Google Flights we were mostly competing against Expedia/Kayak/etc. Now Google Flights indirectly gives the airlines the top rank again, and we're competing against the OTA's for the secondary spots with ads and SEO. I can also anecdotally attest that Instagram ads work very well for airlines. (Well... worked very well, pre march 2020 and all). I do agree with your main sentiment though, and the case could totally be made that google flights is doubly screwing over the OTA's now. Just wanted to share some interesting anecdata.

Ericson2314 6y ago

Let me make it really simple: The problem with the tech industry is vertical monopoly, but many people want to just think about horizontal monopoly.

Supermancho 6y ago
Especially where tech has the best margins, we end up with horizontal monopolies over time. eg In idiocracy, "Welcome to Google-Costco, we love you."

treis 6y ago

>n either case google is a dominant market incumbent that uses its position (in this case web traffic, data and online ad platform) to unfairly compete and stifle competition. It's not that clear how much that helps. The places where Google won (Maps, Gmail, Chrome) they had a pretty clearly better product. Other places where they didn't (Duo/Hangouts, Plus, Gsuite, Chromebook, GCloud) they don't dominate the market.

boogies 6y ago
Translate at least seems to have some people ignorant of the alternatives convinced that they have a clearly better product — “no competitors that even come close in terms of quality” when they objectively don’t. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975001
- wodenokoto 6y ago
  The claimed “objectively” better translator is DeepL. You need to read like 8 paragraphs deep to get to that and there is no real explanation as to why it is objectively better - just a link to an article where some journalists apparently thought it was better. https://www.deepl.com/en/translator https://www.deepl.com/en/translator
  - boogies 6y ago
    The bottom of the page you linked shows ten articles, six of which praise DeepL as better than the competition and four which praise it without comparison. The least positive is probably Wired’s: “WIRED's quick test shows that DeepL's results are indeed in no way inferior to those of the high-ranking competitors and, in many cases, even surpass them. The translated texts often read much more fluently; where Google Translate forms completely meaningless word chains, DeepL can at least guess a connection.” — which is a long-winded way of saying that DeepL’s worst translations are as bad as Google Translate’s, but many of them are better — making DeepL strictly better overall. Of course, any individual review must be made by subjective humans, but you can find as many corroborating comparisons as you like and every review I’ve seen has either described DeepL as better or at worst as bad as Google Translate, and the former is exactly my personal experience after using each for years. We can also compare the results of sending your comment on a round trip through the top language on each: DeepL German: “The allegedly "objectively" better translator is DeepL.” Google Translate German: “The alleged "objectively" better translator is DeepL” DeepL Spanish: “The allegedly "objectively" better translator is DeepL.” Google Translate Spanish: “The best translator "objectively" that is claimed is DeepL.” As a native English speaker, the DeepL results seem clearly clearer and cleaner to me. If broad consensus isn’t evidence to you, you could also compare quantity of languages instead of quality of translations, in which case you’d find that Google Translate is missing languages that Microsoft Translate has. Either way, Google certainly doesn’t have “a pretty clearly better product.”

jayd16 6y ago

So whats the solution? Make it illegal for any search company to build any other product?

switch11 6y ago

Excellent Comment Let's consider a few more examples of abuse of market dominance 1) Retail Me Not Google through Google Venture secretly invested in them and didn't disclose that Then for next 3 years, Retail Me Not was #1 for EVERY SINGLE deal and coupon search term on Google Is that an abuse of market dominance? Pretty Sure Is it illegal? According to US Anti Trust Law - not sure. A lawyer can step in 2) A market we are in The largest 2 players (us and another company) are #40 and #41 when people search for the biggest key word Not #2, Not #10 At #40 and #41 Who is in the Top 10? companies that advertise A LOT on Google, even though they are distant 4th and 6th in the market Not only that, they do it in blatant ways Last year, they pumped up organic traffic to one of our competitors THIRTY TIMES over night So, the top two companies (another company and us) saw ZERO CHANGE However, a company that is a distant 4th in the market suddenly got its organic search engine traffic increased 30 times Pretty sure in 3 or 4 years it will be revealed that Google invested in them or did some tie up * Google is basically using Search as a weapon

apahwa 6y ago
this comment acts like there is some person on Google's side manually curating the search results. why is it Google's fault that your competitors have better SEO teams?

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

As detailed on the site css-tricks.com, a popular HN item, there was a time before "#1 google Organic search result" meant anything. That is, the best search engine at the time did not try to order the results. The search was accurate and comprehensive but there was no preferential ordering according to "popularity" or a "secret" algorithm. That search engine was Alta Vista. Raw results. I can remember combing through page after page looking for the results I wanted. Try that today and Google is likely to temporarily block you, accusing you of having "strange activity" coming from your computer, or looking like a "bot". The more Google has tried to "solve" the problem of finding the appropriate results for the particular searcher within the raw results returned from the query, the more they have manipulated the raw results to suit their own perspective. There is no option to get those raw results and search within them the way you want. There is only Google's way -- reorder them according to Google's "secret" processes. Do not dig into subsequent pages, stay on page one. This necessarily carries a Google bias. It also creates a "winner-take-all" contest to reach page one that Google's exploits for selling online ad services. In other words, not only does Google manipulate searches through deciding the "1st search result", it actually created this concept of "1st search result" with respect to web search. The idea that Google could guess the "correct" search result, reorder the raw results and place the "best" one at the top of the first page of results was in fact Google's idea. Thanks to Google, reordering the raw results has become commonplace so no one really thinks about this anymore, but it is this (biased) reordering that allows Google to profit.