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What bothers me the most is that of all the anti-competitive activities which Apple and Google engage in, this is the one which is given the most attention in t

What bothers me the most is that of all the anti-competitive activities which Apple and Google engage in, this is the one which is given the most attention in the media. It's a bit of a stretch to claim that DuckDuckGo is 'the little guy'. Yes, DuckDuckGo is small relative to Google, but it's still an insanely successful company. Imagine what Google is doing to millions of small businesses by slightly tweaking its algorithm every few months... That's the real damage. These are the real casualties. We're taking the focus away from millions of casualties who experience real suffering and directing it towards a single company which is doing well anyway. The pain of the actual 'little guy' is 100x what the CEO of DuckDuckGo feels. It's total and absolute hopelessness.

Google234 6y ago
When Google tweaks its algorithms, some other business will win if another suffers. I would imagine changes are done for a reason, e.g. site A has better reviews than site B.
- cryptica 6y ago
  Exactly. What kinds of businesses tend to win? Businesses which benefit Google and Google insiders. That means big corporations which Google has long term advertising deals with, VC-backed startups which Google plans to acquire at a discount and other businesses which have a connection to Google insiders (startup of the project manager's friend, ...). I'm not suggesting that they tweak the algorithm to benefit specific websites (they probably don't), but they tweak it to favor certain characteristics which, on the whole, benefit Google and Google insiders. Don't forget that Google employees are not a representative sample of the population by any measure. What kinds of businesses tend to lose? Businesses that are not affiliated with Google or Google insiders. Independent projects. The reason why people at Google don't acknowledge that this is happening is because the harm is literally being inflicted on those businesses which are in Google's blind spots so they don't even see the problems... Except on rare occasions when they are shocked to realize that 50% of the population voted for Trump.

Google234 6y ago

When Google tweaks its algorithms, some other business will win if another suffers. I would imagine changes are done for a reason, e.g. site A has better reviews than site B.

cryptica 6y ago
Exactly. What kinds of businesses tend to win? Businesses which benefit Google and Google insiders. That means big corporations which Google has long term advertising deals with, VC-backed startups which Google plans to acquire at a discount and other businesses which have a connection to Google insiders (startup of the project manager's friend, ...). I'm not suggesting that they tweak the algorithm to benefit specific websites (they probably don't), but they tweak it to favor certain characteristics which, on the whole, benefit Google and Google insiders. Don't forget that Google employees are not a representative sample of the population by any measure. What kinds of businesses tend to lose? Businesses that are not affiliated with Google or Google insiders. Independent projects. The reason why people at Google don't acknowledge that this is happening is because the harm is literally being inflicted on those businesses which are in Google's blind spots so they don't even see the problems... Except on rare occasions when they are shocked to realize that 50% of the population voted for Trump.