14 ms·

Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps

346 points by cpeterso 5y ago

SquareWheel 5y ago
Repost? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29160156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29160156
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  Not the same site/story/perspective.
charcircuit 5y ago
Good. The government shouldn't be getting in the way of companies trying to make great products and services. It seems like if you are too good at playing the game people will want the government to slap you with things like anticompete / antitrust to try and give you a handicap since you are too good at being competitive.
- henvic 5y ago
  Guess what... The more regulation, the harder it is to compete against too-big-to-fail well stablished corporations. It's like no one here ever heard what regulatory capture or lobby is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture Google is right in this case, but people will fail to recognize it, and ask for more state overreach that will end up making it harder to have multiple options in the future.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    Competition is important for the well-being of consumers. However, it is in the nature of markets that over time they will experience consolidation and centralization, due to the benefits of network effects and economies of scale. This consolidation reduces competition, harming consumers. It is the necessary role of government to occasionally step in and break up such companies, to forcibly reintroduce competition. That's the form of regulation that we need right now. Break these megacorporations up.
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      So just because someone was so good at competing that they dominate a market that means that they should be punished? I don't think punishing success provides good incentives.
    - henvic 5y ago
      > It is the necessary role of government to occasionally step in and break up such companies, to forcibly reintroduce competition. That's the form of regulation that we need right now. Break these megacorporations up. What you're mentioning is both unjust and unproductive if the company grows thanks to satisfying customers. It's also a recipe for disaster: Trying to break down megacorporations usually ends up creating even bigger megacorporations. You try to do so, and what you end up with is lobby groups, even more powerful conglomerate/holdings well established somewhere they can do it with advantages over the regular Mom and Pop stores that don't have access to this level of economies of scale and so on.
netcan 5y ago
It's almost a microcosm of the issue. OOH, Google can do what they want. Why can't they campaign for or against stuff, enlist their customers, and such. OTOH... Google are the gate to online information. Google "lobbying" is not like a normal company lobbying the public.
- t0mas88 5y ago
  They can do what they want, but it's the role of the media to call out bullshit so the public is more informed. That's what this article is doing, pointing out how extreme Google is framing things here while the thruth could be very different.
  - netcan 5y ago
    I disagree. First, Google (and FB/amzn, which also have dogs in this) are extremely powerful within the media industry. So, their shadow looms very long here. Second, thinking of these issues as running via media through to an informed public to an attentive political structure is far too naive. Political mechanisms are rarely about for Vs against. It's about defining the debate, legislation and it's details. Google have a ton of influence in many sectors. Small businesses are one. News media is another. Enlisting these to achieve their political goals is corporatism.
    - izacus 5y ago
      > First, Google (and FB/amzn, which also have dogs in this) are extremely powerful within the media industry. So, their shadow looms very long here. In what way? They've received nothing but trashing from media these last few years and very little positive coverage.
      - tremon 5y ago
        For example, many media around here (NL) are positively salivating over Facebook's Metaverse, uncritically chanting like it's the best thing since sliced bread.
tchalla 5y ago
I am wondering when GOOG gets in the same bracket as FB / Meta. They have all the necessary ingredients and Youtube gets pretty much sidelined in the entire "FB / Meta / Social Media" discussion.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Related: “How can we tame the tech giants now that they control society’s infrastructure?” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/06/how-can-we-tame-the-tech-giants-now-that-they-control-societys-infrastructure https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/06/how-ca...
- KingOfCoders 5y ago
  Slightly off topic. (I left Facebook et al., threw out all Echos, try to minimize Google) People treat this as something new. The new is the global. In the past the local newspaper had total control over your business. It might have been easier to deal with the local newspaper than with Google though (from my experience deeling with Google as a small business). On the other hand in a lot of small cities (in Germany), there is a clique of people deciding everything about a city including the journalist from the newspaper, hard to get something changed for you business (At least that was my experience in some startups that were not part of the clique).
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    That's not true. The local newspaper didn't have control over the paper maps people had and tourists bought, They didn't control the phonebook, they didn't handle your mail, they didn't track every store you entered and article you opened. I think you gravely overestimate the power that local newspapers had.
    - KingOfCoders 5y ago
      They did all the local reviews and reporting on businesses. YMMV but growing up in the 70s and 80s and working in the 90s in several startups in Germany, the local newspaper and their clique in smaller towns (50-100k people) controlled business perceptions and could make you fly or crash. I'm happy for Google reviews today, because Google has an agenda, but not about ratings on your businesses - not like the local newspaper which is controlled by the pals of your competition.
      - 5y ago
durnygbur 5y ago
I cannot comprehend how the developed world gave up the POI landscape to one American company. Without a fight or second thought.
- vosper 5y ago
  Didn’t Google put a lot of the POI data together themselves? And aren’t there lots of competitors? And nothing but money stopping another player from entering the market?
  - jiggawatts 5y ago
    When Apple Maps got released and everbody made fun of how bad it was, it was revealed that Google Maps had something like 6000 people working on it for years and years, funded through Alphabet corporation's search monopoly and ad revenue. Not the maps ad revenue, that's a pittance. The search revenue. And note that a company that was the world's biggest (or nearly so) at the time failed to catch up, and has still failed, despite also dipping deep into an unrelated (near-monopolistic) source of funding. They apparently "only" had 1000 staff. There aren't lots of competitors, and nobody has a hope in the world of catching up with Google Maps and their illegal use of their monopoly to dominate other markets. Even other companies illegally abusing their own near-monopoly position have failed!
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      I don't understand this take. Google Maps is one of the world's greatest modern achievements. It's an incredible resource, and it's free. I have no idea what the actual numbers are but if you told me it collectively saved hundreds of billions of dollars a year i wouldn't be surprised. Not to mention the cultural value of being able to teleport virtually anywhere in the world and see the streets, visit places etc. Isn't it a good thing that Google, for all their ills, put their money to work on this? Isn't this one of those capitalism success stories so many people here rave about?
      - xapata 5y ago
DeathArrow 5y ago
Google donated too much money to the politicians for anything to change.
kiryin 5y ago
This is inexcusably disgusting. Reminds me of the bullshit Amazon feeds their employees about unions.
- BurningPenguin 5y ago
  I may be wrong since i'm not american, but it seems like unions are generally a controversial topic in the US.
  - danuker 5y ago
    Not all people realize the bargaining power of a huge corporation is much different than that of an individual. If a company of 100 people fires a worker, they lose 1% of productivity. If a worker loses their job, they lose 100% of income. This fundamental asymmetry makes me support unions. On top of that, the corporation can afford paying to shift people's opinions.
    - eru 5y ago
      Compare and contrast https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/ https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      I don't really get this argument. You lose 100% of income, assuming this is your only job, but only until you get another one, which could be right away, and in the meantime if they terminate you without cause you get unemployment for long enough that most people will be able to find another job. Meanwhile this criticism is inversely correlated with the utility of a union. If you're in a market where the company is hiring unskilled fungible peons, and you try to unionize, they can just let the union walk out and hire a bunch of different unskilled fungible peons. So it doesn't work for e.g. Amazon warehouse workers. For a strike to mean anything, the company has to have high turnover costs in replacing employees or a scarcity of skilled labor. But then that's true of the individual employees as well. So then it isn't needed for e.g. programmers to be able to negotiate beneficial working conditions, and you're paying the overhead for what you could get without it. What does that leave for where the union is doing something good?
giga_chad 5y ago
Google has us all by the balls. As a small business owner, in my particular market, I can't survive without their services, even though they suck and I hate them, and their entire company. My business can be destroyed by Google on a whim at a moment's notice. How did it get to be so bad?
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Same way that Apple, Amazon, or Facebook got to where they are: working to give users what users want (or think they want).
  - chalst 5y ago
    Are you aware that both Facebook and Amazon have used their market dominance and ability to buy smaller firms to prevent serious threats from emerging?
- swiley 5y ago
  Work to get away from them and try to think ahead next time you use online services.
  - giga_chad 5y ago
    I don't use their services and yet my livelihood is entirely dependent on them (and Facebook). That's how bad it is.
    - amundsentb 5y ago
      You get a service that your livelihood depends on. It seems to me like the proper response is more like gratitude.
      - d3nj4l 5y ago
        I'm very grateful that the mob didn't break my thumbs.
yosito 5y ago
Google Maps may silently be Alphabet's most powerful property. As someone who has spent the last 8 months religiously degoogling my life, I've found that Google Maps features are incredibly hard to replace, while at the same time, giving Google direct abilities to influence behavior in the physical world. People see it as "just a map", but it's so much more. OSM-based map tools are pretty good as maps, but they utterly fail at being real-world information directories and functional tools for coordinating physical activities. I do have hope. It seems that there has been a lot of new enthusiasm for these tools lately, and some of them have key features in development. Two low hanging fruits: 1) location bookmarking features that can be synced between mobile/desktop with third party sync tools. 2) Link conversion features that can take Google Maps (or other map links) as input and open the location in OSM tools, and vice-versa. The real-world information directory is a much bigger challenge, but if the low hanging fruit features are developed enough that the average person could easily use open source / OSM tools for everything except a modern phone book, while still coordinating with peers who use Google Maps, then we'd have a much better foundation for tackling the issue.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I think OSM is amazing. Way better at mapping than Google. When I hike I'm just walking in a green square in Google maps. OSM has every trail and hillslope etc. But what OSM lacks is real-time integration with public transport. If my bus is slow or redirected Google will tell me. I don't think this can be improved by the users. It really needs a data feed from the transport operators :'(
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    I've found that overall, for public transport, HERE maps is a feasible alternative in most cases, here's a quick example of how a route might look (though there is a mobile app available as well, IMO the performance is much better than Google Maps'): https://wego.here.com/directions/publicTransport/Riga-International-Airport,-P133,-M%C4%81rupe,-1053:428ud15c-6ec73a7d31504213be85af5badf1f5af/Br%C4%ABv%C4%ABbas-gatve,-Riga,-LV-1006,-Latvia:56.98342,24.20300?map=56.95233,24.09137,13,grey https://wego.here.com/directions/publicTransport/Riga-Intern... Now, of course, Google probably still has more real time data in this regard, especially since it's possible for them to aggregate it due to a large amount of users and so on. It would be nice to have more FOSS projects pop up that would deal with providing company listings and reviews on the map like Google does, as well as would provide more real time transport information as well. But hey, at least OSM gives us a really good starting point, the rest is a matter of building it and getting the data!
mariushn 5y ago
Notes on "Now / After" screen: 1. What they don't mention is that first results are usually ads, usually to competition. If you really want to be the first result then your business name is searched, you must pay for an ad too. Just tested this. 2. Hovering over an ad link on Chrome, it shows in bottom bar the link as going to brand.com . How can this be done, it's just an <a href="..."> ? Inspecting or right-click shows the true link to www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk...
- authed 5y ago
  > Hovering over an ad link on Chrome, it shows in bottom bar the link as going to brand.com . How can this be done, it's just an <a href="..."> ? Inspecting or right-click shows the true link to www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk... Google has been doing this since forever (for any search results too)... They update the link target on-click using javascript to be able to track everything you click on.
  - mariushn 5y ago
    Thanks for clarification.
    - authed 5y ago
      no problem... I always hated this about Google... feels deceptive... I wish that it was not even possible to change the destination of a link when you click on it (most people probably don't even notice it).
- hansel_der 5y ago
  on 2: afaik this rewrite of the link target is done throu javascript. it's despicable but apparently the only way for google to count the click.
- contravariant 5y ago
  Am I weird for preferring the "After" screen? It's still got the most relevant result on the top but manages to fit in two other possibly relevant results as well.
cyberpsybin 5y ago
Google as it stands is the worst threat to privacy and security on internet. Far worse than Facebook, Apple or Amazon. It's shocking how much they get away with!
DJF3487 5y ago
Undo

346 points by cpeterso 5y ago

SquareWheel 5y ago

Repost? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29160156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29160156

stronglikedan 5y ago
Not the same site/story/perspective.

charcircuit 5y ago

Good. The government shouldn't be getting in the way of companies trying to make great products and services. It seems like if you are too good at playing the game people will want the government to slap you with things like anticompete / antitrust to try and give you a handicap since you are too good at being competitive.

henvic 5y ago
Guess what... The more regulation, the harder it is to compete against too-big-to-fail well stablished corporations. It's like no one here ever heard what regulatory capture or lobby is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture Google is right in this case, but people will fail to recognize it, and ask for more state overreach that will end up making it harder to have multiple options in the future.
- kibwen 5y ago
  Competition is important for the well-being of consumers. However, it is in the nature of markets that over time they will experience consolidation and centralization, due to the benefits of network effects and economies of scale. This consolidation reduces competition, harming consumers. It is the necessary role of government to occasionally step in and break up such companies, to forcibly reintroduce competition. That's the form of regulation that we need right now. Break these megacorporations up.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    So just because someone was so good at competing that they dominate a market that means that they should be punished? I don't think punishing success provides good incentives.
  - henvic 5y ago
    > It is the necessary role of government to occasionally step in and break up such companies, to forcibly reintroduce competition. That's the form of regulation that we need right now. Break these megacorporations up. What you're mentioning is both unjust and unproductive if the company grows thanks to satisfying customers. It's also a recipe for disaster: Trying to break down megacorporations usually ends up creating even bigger megacorporations. You try to do so, and what you end up with is lobby groups, even more powerful conglomerate/holdings well established somewhere they can do it with advantages over the regular Mom and Pop stores that don't have access to this level of economies of scale and so on.

netcan 5y ago

It's almost a microcosm of the issue. OOH, Google can do what they want. Why can't they campaign for or against stuff, enlist their customers, and such. OTOH... Google are the gate to online information. Google "lobbying" is not like a normal company lobbying the public.

t0mas88 5y ago
They can do what they want, but it's the role of the media to call out bullshit so the public is more informed. That's what this article is doing, pointing out how extreme Google is framing things here while the thruth could be very different.
- netcan 5y ago
  I disagree. First, Google (and FB/amzn, which also have dogs in this) are extremely powerful within the media industry. So, their shadow looms very long here. Second, thinking of these issues as running via media through to an informed public to an attentive political structure is far too naive. Political mechanisms are rarely about for Vs against. It's about defining the debate, legislation and it's details. Google have a ton of influence in many sectors. Small businesses are one. News media is another. Enlisting these to achieve their political goals is corporatism.
  - izacus 5y ago
    > First, Google (and FB/amzn, which also have dogs in this) are extremely powerful within the media industry. So, their shadow looms very long here. In what way? They've received nothing but trashing from media these last few years and very little positive coverage.
    - tremon 5y ago
      For example, many media around here (NL) are positively salivating over Facebook's Metaverse, uncritically chanting like it's the best thing since sliced bread.

tchalla 5y ago

I am wondering when GOOG gets in the same bracket as FB / Meta. They have all the necessary ingredients and Youtube gets pretty much sidelined in the entire "FB / Meta / Social Media" discussion.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Related: “How can we tame the tech giants now that they control society’s infrastructure?” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/06/how-can-we-tame-the-tech-giants-now-that-they-control-societys-infrastructure https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/06/how-ca...

KingOfCoders 5y ago
Slightly off topic. (I left Facebook et al., threw out all Echos, try to minimize Google) People treat this as something new. The new is the global. In the past the local newspaper had total control over your business. It might have been easier to deal with the local newspaper than with Google though (from my experience deeling with Google as a small business). On the other hand in a lot of small cities (in Germany), there is a clique of people deciding everything about a city including the journalist from the newspaper, hard to get something changed for you business (At least that was my experience in some startups that were not part of the clique).
- SahAssar 5y ago
  That's not true. The local newspaper didn't have control over the paper maps people had and tourists bought, They didn't control the phonebook, they didn't handle your mail, they didn't track every store you entered and article you opened. I think you gravely overestimate the power that local newspapers had.
  - KingOfCoders 5y ago
    They did all the local reviews and reporting on businesses. YMMV but growing up in the 70s and 80s and working in the 90s in several startups in Germany, the local newspaper and their clique in smaller towns (50-100k people) controlled business perceptions and could make you fly or crash. I'm happy for Google reviews today, because Google has an agenda, but not about ratings on your businesses - not like the local newspaper which is controlled by the pals of your competition.
    - 5y ago

durnygbur 5y ago

I cannot comprehend how the developed world gave up the POI landscape to one American company. Without a fight or second thought.

vosper 5y ago
Didn’t Google put a lot of the POI data together themselves? And aren’t there lots of competitors? And nothing but money stopping another player from entering the market?
- jiggawatts 5y ago
  When Apple Maps got released and everbody made fun of how bad it was, it was revealed that Google Maps had something like 6000 people working on it for years and years, funded through Alphabet corporation's search monopoly and ad revenue. Not the maps ad revenue, that's a pittance. The search revenue. And note that a company that was the world's biggest (or nearly so) at the time failed to catch up, and has still failed, despite also dipping deep into an unrelated (near-monopolistic) source of funding. They apparently "only" had 1000 staff. There aren't lots of competitors, and nobody has a hope in the world of catching up with Google Maps and their illegal use of their monopoly to dominate other markets. Even other companies illegally abusing their own near-monopoly position have failed!
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    I don't understand this take. Google Maps is one of the world's greatest modern achievements. It's an incredible resource, and it's free. I have no idea what the actual numbers are but if you told me it collectively saved hundreds of billions of dollars a year i wouldn't be surprised. Not to mention the cultural value of being able to teleport virtually anywhere in the world and see the streets, visit places etc. Isn't it a good thing that Google, for all their ills, put their money to work on this? Isn't this one of those capitalism success stories so many people here rave about?
    - xapata 5y ago

DeathArrow 5y ago

Google donated too much money to the politicians for anything to change.

kiryin 5y ago

This is inexcusably disgusting. Reminds me of the bullshit Amazon feeds their employees about unions.

BurningPenguin 5y ago
I may be wrong since i'm not american, but it seems like unions are generally a controversial topic in the US.
- danuker 5y ago
  Not all people realize the bargaining power of a huge corporation is much different than that of an individual. If a company of 100 people fires a worker, they lose 1% of productivity. If a worker loses their job, they lose 100% of income. This fundamental asymmetry makes me support unions. On top of that, the corporation can afford paying to shift people's opinions.
  - eru 5y ago
    Compare and contrast https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/ https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    I don't really get this argument. You lose 100% of income, assuming this is your only job, but only until you get another one, which could be right away, and in the meantime if they terminate you without cause you get unemployment for long enough that most people will be able to find another job. Meanwhile this criticism is inversely correlated with the utility of a union. If you're in a market where the company is hiring unskilled fungible peons, and you try to unionize, they can just let the union walk out and hire a bunch of different unskilled fungible peons. So it doesn't work for e.g. Amazon warehouse workers. For a strike to mean anything, the company has to have high turnover costs in replacing employees or a scarcity of skilled labor. But then that's true of the individual employees as well. So then it isn't needed for e.g. programmers to be able to negotiate beneficial working conditions, and you're paying the overhead for what you could get without it. What does that leave for where the union is doing something good?

giga_chad 5y ago

Google has us all by the balls. As a small business owner, in my particular market, I can't survive without their services, even though they suck and I hate them, and their entire company. My business can be destroyed by Google on a whim at a moment's notice. How did it get to be so bad?

sokoloff 5y ago
Same way that Apple, Amazon, or Facebook got to where they are: working to give users what users want (or think they want).
- chalst 5y ago
  Are you aware that both Facebook and Amazon have used their market dominance and ability to buy smaller firms to prevent serious threats from emerging?
swiley 5y ago
Work to get away from them and try to think ahead next time you use online services.
- giga_chad 5y ago
  I don't use their services and yet my livelihood is entirely dependent on them (and Facebook). That's how bad it is.
  - amundsentb 5y ago
    You get a service that your livelihood depends on. It seems to me like the proper response is more like gratitude.
    - d3nj4l 5y ago
      I'm very grateful that the mob didn't break my thumbs.

yosito 5y ago

Google Maps may silently be Alphabet's most powerful property. As someone who has spent the last 8 months religiously degoogling my life, I've found that Google Maps features are incredibly hard to replace, while at the same time, giving Google direct abilities to influence behavior in the physical world. People see it as "just a map", but it's so much more. OSM-based map tools are pretty good as maps, but they utterly fail at being real-world information directories and functional tools for coordinating physical activities. I do have hope. It seems that there has been a lot of new enthusiasm for these tools lately, and some of them have key features in development. Two low hanging fruits: 1) location bookmarking features that can be synced between mobile/desktop with third party sync tools. 2) Link conversion features that can take Google Maps (or other map links) as input and open the location in OSM tools, and vice-versa. The real-world information directory is a much bigger challenge, but if the low hanging fruit features are developed enough that the average person could easily use open source / OSM tools for everything except a modern phone book, while still coordinating with peers who use Google Maps, then we'd have a much better foundation for tackling the issue.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
I think OSM is amazing. Way better at mapping than Google. When I hike I'm just walking in a green square in Google maps. OSM has every trail and hillslope etc. But what OSM lacks is real-time integration with public transport. If my bus is slow or redirected Google will tell me. I don't think this can be improved by the users. It really needs a data feed from the transport operators :'(
- KronisLV 5y ago
  I've found that overall, for public transport, HERE maps is a feasible alternative in most cases, here's a quick example of how a route might look (though there is a mobile app available as well, IMO the performance is much better than Google Maps'): https://wego.here.com/directions/publicTransport/Riga-International-Airport,-P133,-M%C4%81rupe,-1053:428ud15c-6ec73a7d31504213be85af5badf1f5af/Br%C4%ABv%C4%ABbas-gatve,-Riga,-LV-1006,-Latvia:56.98342,24.20300?map=56.95233,24.09137,13,grey https://wego.here.com/directions/publicTransport/Riga-Intern... Now, of course, Google probably still has more real time data in this regard, especially since it's possible for them to aggregate it due to a large amount of users and so on. It would be nice to have more FOSS projects pop up that would deal with providing company listings and reviews on the map like Google does, as well as would provide more real time transport information as well. But hey, at least OSM gives us a really good starting point, the rest is a matter of building it and getting the data!

mariushn 5y ago

Notes on "Now / After" screen: 1. What they don't mention is that first results are usually ads, usually to competition. If you really want to be the first result then your business name is searched, you must pay for an ad too. Just tested this. 2. Hovering over an ad link on Chrome, it shows in bottom bar the link as going to brand.com . How can this be done, it's just an <a href="..."> ? Inspecting or right-click shows the true link to www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk...

authed 5y ago
> Hovering over an ad link on Chrome, it shows in bottom bar the link as going to brand.com . How can this be done, it's just an <a href="..."> ? Inspecting or right-click shows the true link to www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk... Google has been doing this since forever (for any search results too)... They update the link target on-click using javascript to be able to track everything you click on.
- mariushn 5y ago
  Thanks for clarification.
  - authed 5y ago
    no problem... I always hated this about Google... feels deceptive... I wish that it was not even possible to change the destination of a link when you click on it (most people probably don't even notice it).
hansel_der 5y ago
on 2: afaik this rewrite of the link target is done throu javascript. it's despicable but apparently the only way for google to count the click.
contravariant 5y ago
Am I weird for preferring the "After" screen? It's still got the most relevant result on the top but manages to fit in two other possibly relevant results as well.

cyberpsybin 5y ago

Google as it stands is the worst threat to privacy and security on internet. Far worse than Facebook, Apple or Amazon. It's shocking how much they get away with!

DJF3487 5y ago

Undo