8 ms·

They are not just taking away internet traffic, but in the flights example, they actually acquired an aggregate flight/travel company and so they are actually e

They are not just taking away internet traffic, but in the flights example, they actually acquired an aggregate flight/travel company and so they are actually entering markets and competing with their own ad customers. Then it comes fully circle to Google unfairly using their market position vis-a-vis data, search and advertising. It’s a win-win Google lets the data dictate which markets to enter and on one hand they can jack up advertising fees on customers/competitors and unfairly build their own service into search above both ads and organic results.

marshmallow_12 6y ago
Aren't there anti trust laws to prevent this kind of thing?
- samuelizdat 6y ago
  That depends, would Google let us know?
  - rijoja 6y ago
    not if they could avoid it
- adamcstephens 6y ago
  Yes, but they lack enforcement.
- midoBB 6y ago
  Anti-trust in the US tend to not hit the big tech players as much they do other sectors. Also there is actually a debate in the judicial system about the extent of Anti trust laws themselves.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    Chicago school basically published a bunch of position papers that made feudal corporations a legal entity that "aren't monopolies" because the give things away for free. Because the consumer isn't paying, it can't be bad.
- supernovae 6y ago
  Just tell people to stop using google. Go direct.
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    Upvoted - regardless how pointless some people might think this comment is, it really is the ONLY way that Google is going to drop out of its aggregate lead position. Enough people realizing Google is trapping and cannibalizing traffic to the other sites it feeds off of, and choosing to do other things EXCEPT touching Google properties, is THE ONLY way they'll be unseated. No clear legal path to stop a bully means it's an ethical / habit path. Not saying there's any easy way, just that this is it.
    - smaryjerry 6y ago
      I find those little snippets actually mostly worthless, maybe because I’ve seen enough of them taken out of context or basically using a snippet from someone who figured out SEO properly, meanwhile the correct information may be down a couple links or not there at all.
- Majromax 6y ago
  Antiturst laws are hard to enforce in the United States. Monopolies themselves aren't illegal. To be convicted of an antitrust violation, a firm needs to both have a monopoly and needs to be using anticompetitive means to maintain that monopoly. The recent "textbook" example was of Microsoft, which in the 90s used its dominant position to charge computer manufacturers for a Windows license for each computer sold, regardless of whether it had Windows installed or was a "bare" PC. Depending on how you define the market, Google may not even have a monopoly. It's probably dominant enough in web search to count, but if you look at its advertising network it competes with Facebook and other ad networks. In the realm of travel planning (to pick an example from these comments), it's barely a blip. Furthermore, Google can potentially argue it's not being anticompetitive: all businesses use their existing data to optimize new products, so Google could claim that it not doing so would be an artificial straightjacket.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Is web search even a "market" independent of ads?
    - rijoja 6y ago
      yes
      - pmiller2 6y ago
        Where's the money?
        ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        That's like arguing that newspapers are not a market, because it makes money from ads.
        pmiller2 6y ago
        No, I was asking if web search was a market independent of ads. BTW, newspapers also make money from subscriptions and sales of copies, so your analogy is doubly wrong.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  The current anti-trust doctrine in the US has a goal of protecting consumers - not competition. What Google is doing is arguably great for consumers but awful to their competitors/other organizations. Technically, companies can simply block Google using robots.txt - but in reality that will lose them more money than the current partial disintermediation by Google is costing them - and Google knows this. It's a tall order to convince the courts that Google's actions consumers, or is illegal: after all, being innovative in ways that may end up hurting the competition is a key feature of a capitalist society - proving that a line has been crossed is really hard, by design.
  - speeder 6y ago
    consumers are in this case the advertisers. google has a monopoly on search ads and does enforce it, being a drain on the economy since in many fields you only succeed if you spend on search ads
    - sangnoir 6y ago
      > consumers are in this case the advertisers. If someone could convince the courts that this is correct, then I'm sure Google would lose. However, I bet dollars to donuts Google's counter-arguement would be that the people doing the searching and quickly finding information are also consumers, and they outnumber advertisers and may be harmed by any proposed remediation in favor of advertisers.
    - basch 6y ago
      googles answer to this at yesterdays hearing.. Search isnt a single category. If you break it down, they arent a monopoly. For example. 1/2 of PRODUCT SEARCHES begin on Amazon. It's probably hard to argue Google as a monopoly if who they see as their main competitor has half the market share.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        That's so disingenuous there should be a new term for it.
- throwaway_kufu 6y ago
  Laws are one thing and enforceability another. In fact Google had to make certain concessions in order for the Google Flights acquisition to get regulatory approval. IIRC a Chinese firewall between Google data and Google Flights...but like many regulations they were likely written by Google lobbyists aka the industry experts. Because at the end of the day Google flights: 1. Still has the built in widget above organic results and 2. They still bid on their own ad spots jacking up costs on competition which is ultimately passed on to consumers.
danielscrubs 6y ago
Be careful when using Google Flight, last time I checked they use significantly less margins between flights so it’s shorter trips but much riskier.
- slymon99 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on this? Do you mean shorter layovers?
  - bombcar 6y ago
    It sounds like it - and third-party companies will often show you flights that involve different companies on the different legs - which can leave you in a pickle because technically each airline's job is to get you to the end of THIER flight, not the entire journey.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      And sometimes with a change of airport!
      - foepys 6y ago
        I remember when in Germany some budget airlines used to say they'd fly to "Frankfurt" (FRA) but actually flew to "Frankfurt-Hahn" (HHN) - 115km away. After arrival in HHN they put you on a bus to FRA that took about 2 hours.
- aetherane 6y ago
  You can screwed any time you book a connecting flight on two different airlines even if the times aren't tight. For instance if one is cancelled. If you use the same airline they will make sure you get to the destination.
  - matwood 6y ago
    That's true, but it can save you a ton of money. You just have to be aware of the risks and plan accordingly. I have typically used this strategy when flying back to the US from the EU. Take an EZJet or similar low cost airline from random small EU city to a larger EU city like Paris, London, Frankfurt, etc... and book the return trip to the US from the larger city. I've also been forced to do this from some EU cities since there was no connecting partner with a US airline.
kingo55 6y ago
Even before it gets to that point, they routinely display snippets off regular websites and show ads next to it. Keeping users from clicking through to organic results helps them generate more revenue.
- killjoywashere 6y ago
  Here’a a thought: most companies don’t actually want to serve a ton of extra pages. For example, airlines just want to fly passengers. They don’t care who puts those butts in seats and they would fully acknowledge that they aren’t able to deliver a better flight search than Google can. I mean, sure, some small team of web developers at every airline is pissed, but the CEO needs butts in seats to keep the pilot and service unions off her back. Her own web dev team is the least of her problems.
  - hawaiianbrah 6y ago
    Sure, but if you aren’t controlling the experience of getting butts in seats, it’s harder to upsell and make even _more_ money from those butts.
  - tyingq 6y ago
    "For example, airlines just want to fly passengers. They don’t care who puts those butts in seats" Not sure who you talked to, but I've never heard that before. They all want to sell more direct and forego GDS fees and/or other types of fees and commissions. I'd love to see a quote from an airline VP or above that they don't care about their distribution model, boosting direct sales percentages, etc.
  - chii 6y ago
    the OP wasn't talking about google competing with airlines, but with other flight aggregating and search/booking services, by abusing their monopoly on web search.
markdown 6y ago
> Google lets the data dictate which markets to enter and on one hand they can jack up advertising fees on customers/competitors and unfairly build their own service into search above both ads and organic results. Just like Amazon with Amazon Basics.
Cullinet 6y ago
isn't the solution to disaffective aqui - hiring the restoration of the ability to IPO companies like ITA Software so there's another way to reach financial security for talented programmer - entrepreneurs? for that matter, do the conditions for recreating the frequency of lower level programmer millionaires (hardly a family home debt free today) like Microsoft created, require the recreation also of senior executive abuse of option schemes? It seems to me that making it a reasonable chance of becoming at least financially secure for not irrational amounts of dedication and 90 weeks, and underwriting that with the greater robustness of larger companies and hence livable salaries, instead of trying to sustain the apparent startup free for all figuring to a common heat death of the advertising budgetary universe?

marshmallow_12 6y ago

Aren't there anti trust laws to prevent this kind of thing?

samuelizdat 6y ago
That depends, would Google let us know?
- rijoja 6y ago
  not if they could avoid it
adamcstephens 6y ago
Yes, but they lack enforcement.
midoBB 6y ago
Anti-trust in the US tend to not hit the big tech players as much they do other sectors. Also there is actually a debate in the judicial system about the extent of Anti trust laws themselves.
- sitkack 6y ago
  Chicago school basically published a bunch of position papers that made feudal corporations a legal entity that "aren't monopolies" because the give things away for free. Because the consumer isn't paying, it can't be bad.
supernovae 6y ago
Just tell people to stop using google. Go direct.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  Upvoted - regardless how pointless some people might think this comment is, it really is the ONLY way that Google is going to drop out of its aggregate lead position. Enough people realizing Google is trapping and cannibalizing traffic to the other sites it feeds off of, and choosing to do other things EXCEPT touching Google properties, is THE ONLY way they'll be unseated. No clear legal path to stop a bully means it's an ethical / habit path. Not saying there's any easy way, just that this is it.
  - smaryjerry 6y ago
    I find those little snippets actually mostly worthless, maybe because I’ve seen enough of them taken out of context or basically using a snippet from someone who figured out SEO properly, meanwhile the correct information may be down a couple links or not there at all.
Majromax 6y ago
Antiturst laws are hard to enforce in the United States. Monopolies themselves aren't illegal. To be convicted of an antitrust violation, a firm needs to both have a monopoly and needs to be using anticompetitive means to maintain that monopoly. The recent "textbook" example was of Microsoft, which in the 90s used its dominant position to charge computer manufacturers for a Windows license for each computer sold, regardless of whether it had Windows installed or was a "bare" PC. Depending on how you define the market, Google may not even have a monopoly. It's probably dominant enough in web search to count, but if you look at its advertising network it competes with Facebook and other ad networks. In the realm of travel planning (to pick an example from these comments), it's barely a blip. Furthermore, Google can potentially argue it's not being anticompetitive: all businesses use their existing data to optimize new products, so Google could claim that it not doing so would be an artificial straightjacket.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Is web search even a "market" independent of ads?
  - rijoja 6y ago
    yes
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      Where's the money?
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        That's like arguing that newspapers are not a market, because it makes money from ads.
        pmiller2 6y ago
        No, I was asking if web search was a market independent of ads. BTW, newspapers also make money from subscriptions and sales of copies, so your analogy is doubly wrong.
sangnoir 6y ago
The current anti-trust doctrine in the US has a goal of protecting consumers - not competition. What Google is doing is arguably great for consumers but awful to their competitors/other organizations. Technically, companies can simply block Google using robots.txt - but in reality that will lose them more money than the current partial disintermediation by Google is costing them - and Google knows this. It's a tall order to convince the courts that Google's actions consumers, or is illegal: after all, being innovative in ways that may end up hurting the competition is a key feature of a capitalist society - proving that a line has been crossed is really hard, by design.
- speeder 6y ago
  consumers are in this case the advertisers. google has a monopoly on search ads and does enforce it, being a drain on the economy since in many fields you only succeed if you spend on search ads
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    > consumers are in this case the advertisers. If someone could convince the courts that this is correct, then I'm sure Google would lose. However, I bet dollars to donuts Google's counter-arguement would be that the people doing the searching and quickly finding information are also consumers, and they outnumber advertisers and may be harmed by any proposed remediation in favor of advertisers.
  - basch 6y ago
    googles answer to this at yesterdays hearing.. Search isnt a single category. If you break it down, they arent a monopoly. For example. 1/2 of PRODUCT SEARCHES begin on Amazon. It's probably hard to argue Google as a monopoly if who they see as their main competitor has half the market share.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      That's so disingenuous there should be a new term for it.
throwaway_kufu 6y ago
Laws are one thing and enforceability another. In fact Google had to make certain concessions in order for the Google Flights acquisition to get regulatory approval. IIRC a Chinese firewall between Google data and Google Flights...but like many regulations they were likely written by Google lobbyists aka the industry experts. Because at the end of the day Google flights: 1. Still has the built in widget above organic results and 2. They still bid on their own ad spots jacking up costs on competition which is ultimately passed on to consumers.

danielscrubs 6y ago

Be careful when using Google Flight, last time I checked they use significantly less margins between flights so it’s shorter trips but much riskier.

slymon99 6y ago
Can you elaborate on this? Do you mean shorter layovers?
- bombcar 6y ago
  It sounds like it - and third-party companies will often show you flights that involve different companies on the different legs - which can leave you in a pickle because technically each airline's job is to get you to the end of THIER flight, not the entire journey.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    And sometimes with a change of airport!
    - foepys 6y ago
      I remember when in Germany some budget airlines used to say they'd fly to "Frankfurt" (FRA) but actually flew to "Frankfurt-Hahn" (HHN) - 115km away. After arrival in HHN they put you on a bus to FRA that took about 2 hours.
aetherane 6y ago
You can screwed any time you book a connecting flight on two different airlines even if the times aren't tight. For instance if one is cancelled. If you use the same airline they will make sure you get to the destination.
- matwood 6y ago
  That's true, but it can save you a ton of money. You just have to be aware of the risks and plan accordingly. I have typically used this strategy when flying back to the US from the EU. Take an EZJet or similar low cost airline from random small EU city to a larger EU city like Paris, London, Frankfurt, etc... and book the return trip to the US from the larger city. I've also been forced to do this from some EU cities since there was no connecting partner with a US airline.

kingo55 6y ago

Even before it gets to that point, they routinely display snippets off regular websites and show ads next to it. Keeping users from clicking through to organic results helps them generate more revenue.

killjoywashere 6y ago
Here’a a thought: most companies don’t actually want to serve a ton of extra pages. For example, airlines just want to fly passengers. They don’t care who puts those butts in seats and they would fully acknowledge that they aren’t able to deliver a better flight search than Google can. I mean, sure, some small team of web developers at every airline is pissed, but the CEO needs butts in seats to keep the pilot and service unions off her back. Her own web dev team is the least of her problems.
- hawaiianbrah 6y ago
  Sure, but if you aren’t controlling the experience of getting butts in seats, it’s harder to upsell and make even _more_ money from those butts.
- tyingq 6y ago
  "For example, airlines just want to fly passengers. They don’t care who puts those butts in seats" Not sure who you talked to, but I've never heard that before. They all want to sell more direct and forego GDS fees and/or other types of fees and commissions. I'd love to see a quote from an airline VP or above that they don't care about their distribution model, boosting direct sales percentages, etc.
- chii 6y ago
  the OP wasn't talking about google competing with airlines, but with other flight aggregating and search/booking services, by abusing their monopoly on web search.

markdown 6y ago

> Google lets the data dictate which markets to enter and on one hand they can jack up advertising fees on customers/competitors and unfairly build their own service into search above both ads and organic results. Just like Amazon with Amazon Basics.

Cullinet 6y ago

isn't the solution to disaffective aqui - hiring the restoration of the ability to IPO companies like ITA Software so there's another way to reach financial security for talented programmer - entrepreneurs? for that matter, do the conditions for recreating the frequency of lower level programmer millionaires (hardly a family home debt free today) like Microsoft created, require the recreation also of senior executive abuse of option schemes? It seems to me that making it a reasonable chance of becoming at least financially secure for not irrational amounts of dedication and 90 weeks, and underwriting that with the greater robustness of larger companies and hence livable salaries, instead of trying to sustain the apparent startup free for all figuring to a common heat death of the advertising budgetary universe?