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huh? I suffer due to targeted advertising? I'm better off watching ads for trucks and heartburn meds? I don't think a newspaper has a God given right to a cert

huh? I suffer due to targeted advertising? I'm better off watching ads for trucks and heartburn meds? I don't think a newspaper has a God given right to a certain percentage of all the ad dollars, and I don't see how Google's business model amounts to a tax. What "costs" are they even referring to? How is a search engine supposed to collect revenue for the services rendered? Google connects users with information, and content providers with eyeballs, and does a better job of it than anyone else. The world before Google was a worse world, where these connections didn't happen. This argument is so specious and just full of unsubstantiated use of buzzwords. IANAL but if it doesn't pass the common sense test I can't see it getting far in court.

jonplackett 6y ago
Isn't what it's saying about google having monopoly power over online advertising in general? For a change I don't think this is a complaint about it being targeted, aside from the fact google is uniquely able to target. You suffer because one company has monopoly power over targeted advertising, so companies must pay it whatever it asks for, which means higher prices / worse products.
prepend 6y ago
I think the complaint is saying your targeted ads are higher than they naturally should be because google is using monopoly power to raise prices. So google raises prices, companies pay higher prices and then charge more for goods. This the harm can be calculated by comparing the price of ads under monopoly vs ads without monopoly and then multiplying by some average margin over cost.
manigandham 6y ago
Google dominates online ad serving. Those ads cost more than they should with competition. That cost is included in the price you pay for products. It's not that complicated and has nothing to do with Google's other ambitions or products.
- soared 6y ago
  Google dominates search, but most of the items listed related to programmatic which is pretty competitive. The other big players are not small names.. amazon, Verizon, at&t, the trade desk, etc.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    Nobody is as big and widespread as Google. They dominate programmatic too. The open market is secondary and highly influenced by whatever runs through Google's network.
pmoriarty 6y ago
"The world before Google was a worse world" Well, except for the surveillance society Google and others of its ilk ushered in. And except for the huge concentration of power that megacorps like this and their owners accumulate, that relegate most of the rest of us to lifetimes of kissing their asses and shining their shoes.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
I just want to point out that this, "The world before Google was a worse world" might be true before 2000 or so, but certainly not for the past decade. Remember when Google result pages had sparse ads, that were clearly and boldly delineated from "natural" search results? Google was great then in helping me find stuff, I knew when I was clicking an ad, and the best products and services could still rise to the top of "natural" search results without paying a "Google tax". I also didn't get ads that followed me everywhere I went on the Internet, but I still had good relevant ads because Google had plenty of context from my search terms. These days, nearly the first entire page of results is ads, which for most people look nearly the same as natural results. Google even gets most people to click on ads, and collect their pound of flesh, when the user typed the name of the business in the search bar. Google doesn't really need to worry that much about competing with other search engines for better natural results because they've mostly killed them all off. IMO Google's search engine peaked about a decade ago and has just gotten worse since.

jonplackett 6y ago

Isn't what it's saying about google having monopoly power over online advertising in general? For a change I don't think this is a complaint about it being targeted, aside from the fact google is uniquely able to target. You suffer because one company has monopoly power over targeted advertising, so companies must pay it whatever it asks for, which means higher prices / worse products.

prepend 6y ago

I think the complaint is saying your targeted ads are higher than they naturally should be because google is using monopoly power to raise prices. So google raises prices, companies pay higher prices and then charge more for goods. This the harm can be calculated by comparing the price of ads under monopoly vs ads without monopoly and then multiplying by some average margin over cost.

manigandham 6y ago

Google dominates online ad serving. Those ads cost more than they should with competition. That cost is included in the price you pay for products. It's not that complicated and has nothing to do with Google's other ambitions or products.

soared 6y ago
Google dominates search, but most of the items listed related to programmatic which is pretty competitive. The other big players are not small names.. amazon, Verizon, at&t, the trade desk, etc.
- manigandham 6y ago
  Nobody is as big and widespread as Google. They dominate programmatic too. The open market is secondary and highly influenced by whatever runs through Google's network.

pmoriarty 6y ago

"The world before Google was a worse world" Well, except for the surveillance society Google and others of its ilk ushered in. And except for the huge concentration of power that megacorps like this and their owners accumulate, that relegate most of the rest of us to lifetimes of kissing their asses and shining their shoes.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

I just want to point out that this, "The world before Google was a worse world" might be true before 2000 or so, but certainly not for the past decade. Remember when Google result pages had sparse ads, that were clearly and boldly delineated from "natural" search results? Google was great then in helping me find stuff, I knew when I was clicking an ad, and the best products and services could still rise to the top of "natural" search results without paying a "Google tax". I also didn't get ads that followed me everywhere I went on the Internet, but I still had good relevant ads because Google had plenty of context from my search terms. These days, nearly the first entire page of results is ads, which for most people look nearly the same as natural results. Google even gets most people to click on ads, and collect their pound of flesh, when the user typed the name of the business in the search bar. Google doesn't really need to worry that much about competing with other search engines for better natural results because they've mostly killed them all off. IMO Google's search engine peaked about a decade ago and has just gotten worse since.