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> You’d require that the monopoly offer a straightforward full-text-based document retrieval API that implements several different ranking algorithms and bills

> You’d require that the monopoly offer a straightforward full-text-based document retrieval API that implements several different ranking algorithms and bills per search. You’d forbid it from engaging in any advertising businesses. Then you’d free up people to build consumer-facing search interfaces and compete to sell advertising on them. What does selling ads look like if search is not a monopoly? As an advertiser in the new world, I'd have to go around and buy ads on all the new search front-ends. I probably want to pay them proportionally to how much traffic they get (well, conversions, but let's say traffic). If there's a small number of large front-ends then maybe I go to each of them directly, but if there's a long tail of front-ends then probably there'd be a search middleman who the various front-ends contract with... I guess there's still Google Search, and Google AdSense, but now AdSense also sells ads on other front-ends, and Google Search works with other brokers besides AdSense?

andyjohnson0 6y ago
> As an advertiser in the new world, I'd have to go around and buy ads on all the new search front-ends. And site operators presumably have to deal with many more ad platforms, which is likely to be a complication for them. Theres a certain logic to the way it works now, even if it is (arguably) anti-competitive and undesirable.
rightbyte 6y ago
There would probably be more actually good adnetworks without Google Ads. No need to sign up with each search frontend or site. Today other adnetworks mostly serve sites that are shady, controversial or too small for Adsense since they can't compete.
ackbar03 6y ago
Is this actually the most likely scenario though? I agree it's hard to compete and have a search service completely indexing the entire internet. Is breaking up the front end the most likely?
viraptor 6y ago
Third parties providing a nicely packaged solution to schedule ads on multiple networks would be created a short moment after the split starts. On the more technical side, common APIs would be created. It's basically the case of skyscanner, kayak, etc. and the air travel companies.
prepend 6y ago
If Google had competition they would have to lower their prices and provide better quality ads and ad tracking. Click fraud is pretty real and I’ve had contacts say it’s 30-50% of actual ad revenue. Currently, this is just “factored in” but how neat would it be if this could be prevented. Google has no incentive to fix this as click fraud is profitable for them. For ad auditing, Google frequently shows ads to people outside my geolocation and doesn’t audit how they do this. Would be nice to fix this as it’s a decent number of botched customer interactions. Finally, pricing could be so much lower. I’ve advertised for low frequency terms where the minimum bid is $1 even though there’s only 1 or zero current advertisers. So the “auction” is against a floor set by google, not the market. If no one else is buying a keyword, the minimum should be very low and climb as multiple ad buyers drive the price up. This is probably the most annoying as it would save businesses so much money.
- AJ007 6y ago
  One of Google's greatest strength was in the pre 2010 period was they were the only advertising sources that sold high quality traffic in massive volume and fraud was almost a non-issue. Go back to 2007 and try to run an ad campaign anywhere else online and it was a nightmare. Things have changed. Google repeatedly has modified the delivery settings of their ads for active campaigns, just as you complain about the geolocation issue. My guess is that if someone did a proper investigation Google would have to back pay advertisers many billions of dollars. This is fraud anyway you cut it. They have done the same thing with mobile ads. You disable the mobile app inventory and they modify the UI and re-enable it.
- jefftk 6y ago
  > I’ve advertised for low frequency terms where the minimum bid is $1 even though there’s only 1 or zero current advertisers. So the “auction” is against a floor set by google, not the market. Showing excessive ads wastes users' attention and teaches them not to pay attention to other higher value ads. A price floor seems like a very reasonable way to handle this? (Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
  - prepend 6y ago
treis 6y ago
They did this with the gas company where I live. Instead of buying gas from the gas company you contract with any number of 3rd parties and they turn around and pay the gas company to deliver it. It's not clear how this is better. The gas company still exists and takes the bulk of my payment. The 3rd parties tack on their service fee. And they basically all run a bait and switch where you sign a contract for a fix term and then the price gets jacked up if you forget to sign a new one. It's the worst of both worlds. The gas company still has a delivery monopoly. And now we've got a bunch of scummy 3rd parties running what are basically scams.

andyjohnson0 6y ago

> As an advertiser in the new world, I'd have to go around and buy ads on all the new search front-ends. And site operators presumably have to deal with many more ad platforms, which is likely to be a complication for them. Theres a certain logic to the way it works now, even if it is (arguably) anti-competitive and undesirable.

rightbyte 6y ago

There would probably be more actually good adnetworks without Google Ads. No need to sign up with each search frontend or site. Today other adnetworks mostly serve sites that are shady, controversial or too small for Adsense since they can't compete.

ackbar03 6y ago

Is this actually the most likely scenario though? I agree it's hard to compete and have a search service completely indexing the entire internet. Is breaking up the front end the most likely?

viraptor 6y ago

Third parties providing a nicely packaged solution to schedule ads on multiple networks would be created a short moment after the split starts. On the more technical side, common APIs would be created. It's basically the case of skyscanner, kayak, etc. and the air travel companies.

prepend 6y ago

If Google had competition they would have to lower their prices and provide better quality ads and ad tracking. Click fraud is pretty real and I’ve had contacts say it’s 30-50% of actual ad revenue. Currently, this is just “factored in” but how neat would it be if this could be prevented. Google has no incentive to fix this as click fraud is profitable for them. For ad auditing, Google frequently shows ads to people outside my geolocation and doesn’t audit how they do this. Would be nice to fix this as it’s a decent number of botched customer interactions. Finally, pricing could be so much lower. I’ve advertised for low frequency terms where the minimum bid is $1 even though there’s only 1 or zero current advertisers. So the “auction” is against a floor set by google, not the market. If no one else is buying a keyword, the minimum should be very low and climb as multiple ad buyers drive the price up. This is probably the most annoying as it would save businesses so much money.

AJ007 6y ago
One of Google's greatest strength was in the pre 2010 period was they were the only advertising sources that sold high quality traffic in massive volume and fraud was almost a non-issue. Go back to 2007 and try to run an ad campaign anywhere else online and it was a nightmare. Things have changed. Google repeatedly has modified the delivery settings of their ads for active campaigns, just as you complain about the geolocation issue. My guess is that if someone did a proper investigation Google would have to back pay advertisers many billions of dollars. This is fraud anyway you cut it. They have done the same thing with mobile ads. You disable the mobile app inventory and they modify the UI and re-enable it.
jefftk 6y ago
> I’ve advertised for low frequency terms where the minimum bid is $1 even though there’s only 1 or zero current advertisers. So the “auction” is against a floor set by google, not the market. Showing excessive ads wastes users' attention and teaches them not to pay attention to other higher value ads. A price floor seems like a very reasonable way to handle this? (Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
- prepend 6y ago

treis 6y ago

They did this with the gas company where I live. Instead of buying gas from the gas company you contract with any number of 3rd parties and they turn around and pay the gas company to deliver it. It's not clear how this is better. The gas company still exists and takes the bulk of my payment. The 3rd parties tack on their service fee. And they basically all run a bait and switch where you sign a contract for a fix term and then the price gets jacked up if you forget to sign a new one. It's the worst of both worlds. The gas company still has a delivery monopoly. And now we've got a bunch of scummy 3rd parties running what are basically scams.