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Google Sued by YouTube Rival Rumble over Search Rankings

118 points by admiralspoo 6y ago

mc32 6y ago
I never heard of rumble... But I’ve heard and seen Google’s auctioning trademarked keywords in their search ads. That should be illegal. You hold a trademark, others should not bid on that. It’s a kind of self dealing, no actually racketeering/protection. I’m glad Europe is looking into it. Maybe? The new admin will look into it, though I have my doubts. If I type AT&T or ATT I want AT&T's website listed first. If I type Google I want google to come first and not Yandex or Baidu. If I type Mazda that's who I want listed first, not Peugeot... You can put all those bidders second if you like.
- markdown 6y ago
  Eh, a trademark doesn't mean you own a word. You only own the exclusive right to use that word within a few explicitly defined contexts.
  - mc32 6y ago
    Other indexes used to honor trademark owners. Why not have the trademark office charge trademark owners right to maintain trademark fees. It’s just unseemly. I believe the EU is looking at this situation, so I’m not alone in this view.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      They effectively do. You pay fees to register the trademark, and continue to pay fees to maintain it every 10 years thereafter.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    More explicitly, you own the shape within a certain, limited in scope, industry (sometimes in broader industry). Most trademarks that contain everyday words must explicitly state no ownership claim of such words, but instead claim ownership of the shape of the word (and sometimes color) within a specific context, ie. "Apple". For most trademarks, this usually means shape of the logo is what is protected, not the word used inside the logo. So while you could create a lawn mowing service called "Apple" without any legal issue, you cannot use the exact shape of the letters (ie, font) in the Apple logo.
    - koolba 6y ago
      > So while you could create a lawn mowing service called "Apple" without any legal issue, you cannot use the exact shape of the letters (ie, font) in the Apple logo. The wider problem is that even if they don’t have the right to the broader usage of the term, they do have billions more dollars than you and can sue you into submission. Even when the apple happens to be a different fruit: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/354644 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/354644
- kiki_jiki 6y ago
  > I never heard of rumble... I wonder why
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  It makes in theory, but I think that could get really messy in practice. Trademarks aren't universal, they're for a specific domain. So who can bid on the keyword "Apple"? Does Apple Computer get exclusivity? What about Apple Cosmetics? Apple Travel Agency? Apple Corps? Imagine telling Greg Apple of Apple Plumbing that he can't advertise using his own last name! Even if you let everyone with a relevant trademark bid on keywords, you're still gonna have problems because so many trademarks are normal words. Should a random orchard that hasn't obtained a trademark containing the word "Apple" be able to place apple ads?
  - mc32 6y ago
    I think it’s fair to say we only need to consider national and international trademarks. At least with Ads you need to attribute a competitor's trademark to your competitor. Matt’s apple orchard may or may not be trademarked. They may be registered in their state, but not likely nationally. The money is in the big marks. Matt is not going to bid against Apple. Matt might bid against his neighbor on generic terms or on business name. His neighbor may bid on generic terms but not on his business name. That’d be tawdry.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Simple solution, in case of conflict nobody gets to bid on advertising.
    - cromwellian 6y ago
      Doesn't that lead to a very simple DOS on your competitors? Just register a trademarked entity in another market. Google Soap. Parler French School. Stripe Flags. Square Foods. etc.
      - Retric 6y ago
        Trademark offices make it hard to register similar trademarks. However, what you described is not a conflict search “Windows” and you get www.microsoft.com etc, but search “Storm Windows” and no search engine is going to show you www.microsoft.com/... as the top entry. It is however a reason not to choose single word trademarks.
- princesse 6y ago
  GoogleAds has a system like this behind the scene where trademark holders need to whitelist the specific GoogleAds accounts that want to use their trademark keywords. No idea how widely used or effective this is though.
- dhnajsjdnd 6y ago
  If I go to a store and ask for a KitchenAid, should it be illegal for the salesperson to try to sell me a mixer from another manufacturer?
  - mc32 6y ago
    Is the salesperson selling ads or selling goods? If she's selling goods, she can show me all the alternatives she wants! If she's selling ads, she should not pretend to not hear me say KitchenAid unless KitchenAid pays her enough to "understand" KitchenAid.
    - MacsHeadroom 6y ago
      Vendor specific sales incentives and brick and mortar retailers charging vendors to be more visible than competitors are sales of active and passive advertising respectively. Retailers have income streams beyond what shoppers provide directly. They sell access to your attention like Google and Facebook.
  - ffpip 6y ago
    It should be illegal for the salesperson to put the KitchenAid product behind a mixer from another manufacturer, just because the other manufacturer paid them to. You need to actively scroll past the ads. They aren't after the organic results. They are at the top, you need to ignore them or click them. It comes in b/w you and the first result.
    - dhnajsjdnd 6y ago
      This is how stores are in the real world - suppliers pay for good shelf space and for things like endcap displays. Also, salespeople get a bonus for selling particular items.
      - mc32 6y ago
        True, but when you reach for Coke, you get a coke. If you reach for a Pepsi you get a Pepsi. They don't nest a Pepsi in a Coke wrapper or vice versa to keep you from buying your choice.
- otterley 6y ago
  The law isn't super clear here, but nobody has put up a serious legal challenge against this practice since Rosetta Stone sued Google over it back in 2012. Google was awarded summary judgement against Rosetta Stone for its practice of selling bids for searches for Rosetta Stone's trademarks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone_Ltd._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone_Ltd._v._Google,_.... There have been earlier legal challenges to this practice as well, but none has resulted in a clear opinion that it is unlawful.
- cudgy 6y ago
  This is a good example of feature bloat that hampers Google’s search product, making them less competitive. Of course, Google’s dominance allows them to do this without much damage ... for now.
throwawaysea 6y ago
Good. Glad to see anti trust attention being brought to megacorps that are abusing their position or just immune to competition even otherwise.
ehsankia 6y ago
What's the claim here, that there's some line of code in search code that manually specifies Youtube to be higher than Rumble? Otherwise what does "rigging its search algorithms". Is it rigged if Google is giving the user what they're much more likely to want? If I search "rumble big tech censorship", the rumble video shows up before Youtube. For other queries, why would they expect some random small video site to show up higher than the #1 video site? The article is behind a paywall, does anyone have more details on the claims here?
- gerash 6y ago
  It's a WSJ article about Google. I wouldn't hold my breath
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The complaint (https://www.scribd.com/document/490433093/Rumble-Inc-v-Google-Complaint-as-Filed-ND-Cal-Case-No-5-21-Cv-00229-Jan-11-2021 https://www.scribd.com/document/490433093/Rumble-Inc-v-Googl...) lists some specific scenarios where they expect Rumble results to show up first: the search phrase "dog videos on rumble", the unique title of a video which was posted on Rumble first, etc. Even so, I very much share your skepticism that this is actionable or even improper. The idea that it's unlawful for your search algorithm to not translate "on rumble" to "site:rumble.com" would be... quite a precedent.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    Funnily enough, while it is true that there are some Youtube videos that show up above the rumble.com video for that query, all of them are from Rumble's own Youtube channel... So they are cannibalizing their own search queries :) And for some loose interpretation of "on", the results are indeed correct, those are dog videos "on" the rumble channel. As you mention, I don't see why it should be a string site: filter, if they're unhappy they can delete their Youtube channel.
- ttt0 6y ago
  Google is an advertisement company. They are not giving the user they want, but whatever someone pays them to make the user think he wants. And that's being charitable to Google, as there were leaked internal memos from Google essentially saying that they know that censorship doesn't work, but they will try to do it anyway, "for the greater good" I suppose. I don't know exactly what they did to their search engine, but whatever they did, it's an absolute travesty. It used to be that if you searched for something long enough, you would eventually find it, no matter how obscure the thing you were looking for was. Now, it's almost impossible to catch them red-handed and prove anything, as archiving millions of Google webpages is really not an option, but I'm convinced that they are for example removing results of old news stories. I thought I might be going crazy, but no, other people had noticed how garbage Google has become too, including those who I know privately and don't get political at all.
onion2k 6y ago
The lawsuit also argues that Google’s deals to pre-install a YouTube app on mobile devices running Google’s Android operating system have unfairly deprived Rumble of viewers. That sounds a lot like the US vs Microsoft (2001) antitrust case, where MSFT were sued for preinstalling IE on Windows without giving users other options, that Microsoft eventually lost. No doubt there's a lot more to it but Google bundling Google apps on Android does seem like pretty dodgy ground given the history of companies bundling their own software with OSes.
trident5000 6y ago
I think were going to have to start introducing modern definitions for modern times when it comes to anti-trust. For instance "network effect monopoly/oligopoly" should probably be something defined. Monopolistic domination is more governed by this than anything else today (economies of scale, bundling, etc)
- SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
  Care to try to define it? I think this is an interesting idea and I wonder how to meaningfully distinguish between market domination that is, let’s say, “earned” fairly, and that which is obtained by exploiting network effects.
  - guywhocodes 6y ago
    Network singularity abuse?
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  We also need to stop calling it a “monopoly”. Every time someone brings up that word, someone says that they’re not technically a monopoly because there’s other options. We should be calling it something related to the name of the laws that would be used: anti trust. Are there any words that would be more appropriate?
- supermatt 6y ago
  Or apply the rules to trusts instead of thinking they only apply to monopolies. Personally, I think a company should conform to a single NCL category (like trademarks) It is unfair competition when a megacorp can compete at loss to establish dominance in a new sector - yet these megacorps do it regularly. Buying their way in, or providing a service at a loss until the competition is eradicated. Youtube is the perfect example of a loss leader. Impossible to provide for "free" unless you own a massive ad network and substantial global infrastructure. It is simply "unfair" that it exists in its current form. You cant run youtube off google ads - only google can do that, because they get both the publishers share and the ad networks share of the revenue split!
- 6y ago
dukeofdoom 6y ago
They seem to be purposely not returning results from Gab. I searched for Trump Gab, returns only news articles. Did the same on Bing, and returns the proper page as first result. I searched when I heard he switched over. Was kind of surprised that Google is doing that. Basically returning negative news articles.
- ddorian43 6y ago
  Or removing negative results. Remember when they didn't autocomplete all the "crooked hillary" etc.
Imnimo 6y ago
If some some search engineer at Google has decided to move Rumble down in the search rankings, then sue away. But what if it's just that Google's algorithm, designed by someone who's never even heard of Rumble, just doesn't like the Rumble site as much as other sites? If that by itself constitutes a violation, it seems impossible to make a non-violating search engine. Like how could you possibly ensure that for every possible search, the "correct" results appear first? Google does its fair share of shitty things with search and ads, but I'm kind of skeptical that this is one of them.
- mdoms 6y ago
  > Like how could you possibly ensure that for every possible search, the "correct" results appear first? You align the incentives by breaking up Google. They have no business promoting their other revenue streams in their own search results.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    So a company isn’t allowed to advertise its other products?
    - kace91 6y ago
      More like, a company that is in the business of offering you information should not alter that information based on personal interest. You wouldn't expect a map created by a company to hide streets where rival businesses are located for example, or your doctor to avoid disclosing a potential treatment because it's done by a rival health provider. Funnily enough, I remember this being one of the differentiating factors that made people love google when they were starting to become popular - "our ads are unintrusive and clearly separated from actual content".
    - pornel 6y ago
      At tech giant's scale, I'd say yes. YouTube gets the level of promotion and integration with Google services that money can't buy. Google and Microsoft use their successful products to promote and keep competition out for other products. Microsoft got slapped for Internet Explorer, but somehow Google gets away with shoving Chrome and the Android certification program which is basically "you either bundle all our other products, or we'll make you incompatible with Play Services".
roenxi 6y ago
I don't particularly like Google, but I think that the rumblings here amongst the comments about bringing the government in for antitrust or regulating are much worse ideas than leaving Google alone. I like to be ahead of trends, I've been gently phasing Google out of my life. It isn't causing me any problems, there are alternatives for most things. They are currently pushing all the people I watch off YouTube, so wherever they go to I'll follow. If a person trusts Google (or YouTube) to decide what they see or host their content, then that is the person's choice. Google have a long history of unchallenged market dominance because they provide, frankly, better service than the alternatives. Not because of shady tricks, but because Google is a technically amazing company. But at some point they will cease to be technically amazing and sink back to being average, and then the market will open up space for some competitors. I'd love to see innovative advertising models to break AdWords and redirect profits from Google to the advertisers. That'd be an improvement. Getting the government and judges involved to decide how to rank search results is not an improvement. I do not want any US administration, or US Congress, or US appointed judge deciding what I should see in my searches. Nothing good will come of that.
- kace91 6y ago
  I think your view ignores many arguments, like the giant network effects that these kind of social companies have, the giant infrastructure costs of hosting video at scale that make it really hard for adversaries to rise, or the technical skills required to move your data out of some google services, if it's possible at all. Even if those barriers were overcome, the exceptionality of such a feat as taking down one of the big guys makes it really likely that the competing services that potentially succeed google, facebook, amazon et all are going to be just as monopolistic, so it's not clear at all that we would end up better off at all. > I do not want any US administration, or US Congress, or US appointed judge deciding what I should see in my searches. Nothing good will come of that. That's of course a matter of preference or ideology (and perhaps partly me being a European) but I do prefer government oversight over monopolies rather than unregulated wild west business areas - admitting it's prone to failure, as both systems are. I do have issues with the US part of it, but we don't have supranational regulatory bodies - perhaps something that we should work for, although it is very unlikely to happen successfully considering the ever diverging interests of the US, the EU and China. > They are currently pushing all the people I watch off YouTube, so wherever they go to I'll follow. Out of curiosity, who do you regularly watch that has been pushed off the platform?
plumeria 6y ago
Off-topic: It was interesting to see that they offer video hosting. However, didn't find it any cheaper than Wasabi. Do you know of a cheaper provider than Wasabi?
- qmarchi 6y ago
  If you're looking specific for video hosting, you should check out Streamable. $7.99/mo for 2TB of space, and a fair free tier.

118 points by admiralspoo 6y ago

mc32 6y ago

I never heard of rumble... But I’ve heard and seen Google’s auctioning trademarked keywords in their search ads. That should be illegal. You hold a trademark, others should not bid on that. It’s a kind of self dealing, no actually racketeering/protection. I’m glad Europe is looking into it. Maybe? The new admin will look into it, though I have my doubts. If I type AT&T or ATT I want AT&T's website listed first. If I type Google I want google to come first and not Yandex or Baidu. If I type Mazda that's who I want listed first, not Peugeot... You can put all those bidders second if you like.

markdown 6y ago
Eh, a trademark doesn't mean you own a word. You only own the exclusive right to use that word within a few explicitly defined contexts.
- mc32 6y ago
  Other indexes used to honor trademark owners. Why not have the trademark office charge trademark owners right to maintain trademark fees. It’s just unseemly. I believe the EU is looking at this situation, so I’m not alone in this view.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    They effectively do. You pay fees to register the trademark, and continue to pay fees to maintain it every 10 years thereafter.
- Alupis 6y ago
  More explicitly, you own the shape within a certain, limited in scope, industry (sometimes in broader industry). Most trademarks that contain everyday words must explicitly state no ownership claim of such words, but instead claim ownership of the shape of the word (and sometimes color) within a specific context, ie. "Apple". For most trademarks, this usually means shape of the logo is what is protected, not the word used inside the logo. So while you could create a lawn mowing service called "Apple" without any legal issue, you cannot use the exact shape of the letters (ie, font) in the Apple logo.
  - koolba 6y ago
    > So while you could create a lawn mowing service called "Apple" without any legal issue, you cannot use the exact shape of the letters (ie, font) in the Apple logo. The wider problem is that even if they don’t have the right to the broader usage of the term, they do have billions more dollars than you and can sue you into submission. Even when the apple happens to be a different fruit: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/354644 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/354644
kiki_jiki 6y ago
> I never heard of rumble... I wonder why
Rebelgecko 6y ago
It makes in theory, but I think that could get really messy in practice. Trademarks aren't universal, they're for a specific domain. So who can bid on the keyword "Apple"? Does Apple Computer get exclusivity? What about Apple Cosmetics? Apple Travel Agency? Apple Corps? Imagine telling Greg Apple of Apple Plumbing that he can't advertise using his own last name! Even if you let everyone with a relevant trademark bid on keywords, you're still gonna have problems because so many trademarks are normal words. Should a random orchard that hasn't obtained a trademark containing the word "Apple" be able to place apple ads?
- mc32 6y ago
  I think it’s fair to say we only need to consider national and international trademarks. At least with Ads you need to attribute a competitor's trademark to your competitor. Matt’s apple orchard may or may not be trademarked. They may be registered in their state, but not likely nationally. The money is in the big marks. Matt is not going to bid against Apple. Matt might bid against his neighbor on generic terms or on business name. His neighbor may bid on generic terms but not on his business name. That’d be tawdry.
- Retric 6y ago
  Simple solution, in case of conflict nobody gets to bid on advertising.
  - cromwellian 6y ago
    Doesn't that lead to a very simple DOS on your competitors? Just register a trademarked entity in another market. Google Soap. Parler French School. Stripe Flags. Square Foods. etc.
    - Retric 6y ago
      Trademark offices make it hard to register similar trademarks. However, what you described is not a conflict search “Windows” and you get www.microsoft.com etc, but search “Storm Windows” and no search engine is going to show you www.microsoft.com/... as the top entry. It is however a reason not to choose single word trademarks.
princesse 6y ago
GoogleAds has a system like this behind the scene where trademark holders need to whitelist the specific GoogleAds accounts that want to use their trademark keywords. No idea how widely used or effective this is though.
dhnajsjdnd 6y ago
If I go to a store and ask for a KitchenAid, should it be illegal for the salesperson to try to sell me a mixer from another manufacturer?
- mc32 6y ago
  Is the salesperson selling ads or selling goods? If she's selling goods, she can show me all the alternatives she wants! If she's selling ads, she should not pretend to not hear me say KitchenAid unless KitchenAid pays her enough to "understand" KitchenAid.
  - MacsHeadroom 6y ago
    Vendor specific sales incentives and brick and mortar retailers charging vendors to be more visible than competitors are sales of active and passive advertising respectively. Retailers have income streams beyond what shoppers provide directly. They sell access to your attention like Google and Facebook.
- ffpip 6y ago
  It should be illegal for the salesperson to put the KitchenAid product behind a mixer from another manufacturer, just because the other manufacturer paid them to. You need to actively scroll past the ads. They aren't after the organic results. They are at the top, you need to ignore them or click them. It comes in b/w you and the first result.
  - dhnajsjdnd 6y ago
    This is how stores are in the real world - suppliers pay for good shelf space and for things like endcap displays. Also, salespeople get a bonus for selling particular items.
    - mc32 6y ago
      True, but when you reach for Coke, you get a coke. If you reach for a Pepsi you get a Pepsi. They don't nest a Pepsi in a Coke wrapper or vice versa to keep you from buying your choice.
otterley 6y ago
The law isn't super clear here, but nobody has put up a serious legal challenge against this practice since Rosetta Stone sued Google over it back in 2012. Google was awarded summary judgement against Rosetta Stone for its practice of selling bids for searches for Rosetta Stone's trademarks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone_Ltd._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone_Ltd._v._Google,_.... There have been earlier legal challenges to this practice as well, but none has resulted in a clear opinion that it is unlawful.
cudgy 6y ago
This is a good example of feature bloat that hampers Google’s search product, making them less competitive. Of course, Google’s dominance allows them to do this without much damage ... for now.

throwawaysea 6y ago

Good. Glad to see anti trust attention being brought to megacorps that are abusing their position or just immune to competition even otherwise.

ehsankia 6y ago

What's the claim here, that there's some line of code in search code that manually specifies Youtube to be higher than Rumble? Otherwise what does "rigging its search algorithms". Is it rigged if Google is giving the user what they're much more likely to want? If I search "rumble big tech censorship", the rumble video shows up before Youtube. For other queries, why would they expect some random small video site to show up higher than the #1 video site? The article is behind a paywall, does anyone have more details on the claims here?

gerash 6y ago
It's a WSJ article about Google. I wouldn't hold my breath
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The complaint (https://www.scribd.com/document/490433093/Rumble-Inc-v-Google-Complaint-as-Filed-ND-Cal-Case-No-5-21-Cv-00229-Jan-11-2021 https://www.scribd.com/document/490433093/Rumble-Inc-v-Googl...) lists some specific scenarios where they expect Rumble results to show up first: the search phrase "dog videos on rumble", the unique title of a video which was posted on Rumble first, etc. Even so, I very much share your skepticism that this is actionable or even improper. The idea that it's unlawful for your search algorithm to not translate "on rumble" to "site:rumble.com" would be... quite a precedent.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Funnily enough, while it is true that there are some Youtube videos that show up above the rumble.com video for that query, all of them are from Rumble's own Youtube channel... So they are cannibalizing their own search queries :) And for some loose interpretation of "on", the results are indeed correct, those are dog videos "on" the rumble channel. As you mention, I don't see why it should be a string site: filter, if they're unhappy they can delete their Youtube channel.
ttt0 6y ago
Google is an advertisement company. They are not giving the user they want, but whatever someone pays them to make the user think he wants. And that's being charitable to Google, as there were leaked internal memos from Google essentially saying that they know that censorship doesn't work, but they will try to do it anyway, "for the greater good" I suppose. I don't know exactly what they did to their search engine, but whatever they did, it's an absolute travesty. It used to be that if you searched for something long enough, you would eventually find it, no matter how obscure the thing you were looking for was. Now, it's almost impossible to catch them red-handed and prove anything, as archiving millions of Google webpages is really not an option, but I'm convinced that they are for example removing results of old news stories. I thought I might be going crazy, but no, other people had noticed how garbage Google has become too, including those who I know privately and don't get political at all.

onion2k 6y ago

The lawsuit also argues that Google’s deals to pre-install a YouTube app on mobile devices running Google’s Android operating system have unfairly deprived Rumble of viewers. That sounds a lot like the US vs Microsoft (2001) antitrust case, where MSFT were sued for preinstalling IE on Windows without giving users other options, that Microsoft eventually lost. No doubt there's a lot more to it but Google bundling Google apps on Android does seem like pretty dodgy ground given the history of companies bundling their own software with OSes.

trident5000 6y ago

I think were going to have to start introducing modern definitions for modern times when it comes to anti-trust. For instance "network effect monopoly/oligopoly" should probably be something defined. Monopolistic domination is more governed by this than anything else today (economies of scale, bundling, etc)

SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
Care to try to define it? I think this is an interesting idea and I wonder how to meaningfully distinguish between market domination that is, let’s say, “earned” fairly, and that which is obtained by exploiting network effects.
- guywhocodes 6y ago
  Network singularity abuse?
colejohnson66 6y ago
We also need to stop calling it a “monopoly”. Every time someone brings up that word, someone says that they’re not technically a monopoly because there’s other options. We should be calling it something related to the name of the laws that would be used: anti trust. Are there any words that would be more appropriate?
supermatt 6y ago
Or apply the rules to trusts instead of thinking they only apply to monopolies. Personally, I think a company should conform to a single NCL category (like trademarks) It is unfair competition when a megacorp can compete at loss to establish dominance in a new sector - yet these megacorps do it regularly. Buying their way in, or providing a service at a loss until the competition is eradicated. Youtube is the perfect example of a loss leader. Impossible to provide for "free" unless you own a massive ad network and substantial global infrastructure. It is simply "unfair" that it exists in its current form. You cant run youtube off google ads - only google can do that, because they get both the publishers share and the ad networks share of the revenue split!
6y ago

dukeofdoom 6y ago

They seem to be purposely not returning results from Gab. I searched for Trump Gab, returns only news articles. Did the same on Bing, and returns the proper page as first result. I searched when I heard he switched over. Was kind of surprised that Google is doing that. Basically returning negative news articles.

ddorian43 6y ago
Or removing negative results. Remember when they didn't autocomplete all the "crooked hillary" etc.

Imnimo 6y ago

If some some search engineer at Google has decided to move Rumble down in the search rankings, then sue away. But what if it's just that Google's algorithm, designed by someone who's never even heard of Rumble, just doesn't like the Rumble site as much as other sites? If that by itself constitutes a violation, it seems impossible to make a non-violating search engine. Like how could you possibly ensure that for every possible search, the "correct" results appear first? Google does its fair share of shitty things with search and ads, but I'm kind of skeptical that this is one of them.

mdoms 6y ago
> Like how could you possibly ensure that for every possible search, the "correct" results appear first? You align the incentives by breaking up Google. They have no business promoting their other revenue streams in their own search results.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  So a company isn’t allowed to advertise its other products?
  - kace91 6y ago
    More like, a company that is in the business of offering you information should not alter that information based on personal interest. You wouldn't expect a map created by a company to hide streets where rival businesses are located for example, or your doctor to avoid disclosing a potential treatment because it's done by a rival health provider. Funnily enough, I remember this being one of the differentiating factors that made people love google when they were starting to become popular - "our ads are unintrusive and clearly separated from actual content".
  - pornel 6y ago
    At tech giant's scale, I'd say yes. YouTube gets the level of promotion and integration with Google services that money can't buy. Google and Microsoft use their successful products to promote and keep competition out for other products. Microsoft got slapped for Internet Explorer, but somehow Google gets away with shoving Chrome and the Android certification program which is basically "you either bundle all our other products, or we'll make you incompatible with Play Services".

roenxi 6y ago

I don't particularly like Google, but I think that the rumblings here amongst the comments about bringing the government in for antitrust or regulating are much worse ideas than leaving Google alone. I like to be ahead of trends, I've been gently phasing Google out of my life. It isn't causing me any problems, there are alternatives for most things. They are currently pushing all the people I watch off YouTube, so wherever they go to I'll follow. If a person trusts Google (or YouTube) to decide what they see or host their content, then that is the person's choice. Google have a long history of unchallenged market dominance because they provide, frankly, better service than the alternatives. Not because of shady tricks, but because Google is a technically amazing company. But at some point they will cease to be technically amazing and sink back to being average, and then the market will open up space for some competitors. I'd love to see innovative advertising models to break AdWords and redirect profits from Google to the advertisers. That'd be an improvement. Getting the government and judges involved to decide how to rank search results is not an improvement. I do not want any US administration, or US Congress, or US appointed judge deciding what I should see in my searches. Nothing good will come of that.

kace91 6y ago
I think your view ignores many arguments, like the giant network effects that these kind of social companies have, the giant infrastructure costs of hosting video at scale that make it really hard for adversaries to rise, or the technical skills required to move your data out of some google services, if it's possible at all. Even if those barriers were overcome, the exceptionality of such a feat as taking down one of the big guys makes it really likely that the competing services that potentially succeed google, facebook, amazon et all are going to be just as monopolistic, so it's not clear at all that we would end up better off at all. > I do not want any US administration, or US Congress, or US appointed judge deciding what I should see in my searches. Nothing good will come of that. That's of course a matter of preference or ideology (and perhaps partly me being a European) but I do prefer government oversight over monopolies rather than unregulated wild west business areas - admitting it's prone to failure, as both systems are. I do have issues with the US part of it, but we don't have supranational regulatory bodies - perhaps something that we should work for, although it is very unlikely to happen successfully considering the ever diverging interests of the US, the EU and China. > They are currently pushing all the people I watch off YouTube, so wherever they go to I'll follow. Out of curiosity, who do you regularly watch that has been pushed off the platform?

plumeria 6y ago

Off-topic: It was interesting to see that they offer video hosting. However, didn't find it any cheaper than Wasabi. Do you know of a cheaper provider than Wasabi?

qmarchi 6y ago
If you're looking specific for video hosting, you should check out Streamable. $7.99/mo for 2TB of space, and a fair free tier.