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Google Chrome disables search engine selection in Russia
- yanw 15y agoIf they are the upstarts in these countries they can do whatever they want. It's just the ballot, you can change the search engine from the settings just fine. No other browser offers a ballot anyway.
- omgtehlion 15y agomost of (not so familiar with computers) users don’t change default settings.
- yanw 15y agoSo? that doesn't stop the other browsers (and it shouldn't). Google isn't the dominant player there and they can do whatever they want to grab market share, there is nothing wrong with that.
- omgtehlion 15y agoAnd you want g..gle to be dominant player everywhere?
- nextparadigms 15y agoMaybe he does, maybe he doesn't, but that's irrelevant. What's relevant is that Google wants to gain more market share there and you can't blame them for not promoting their competitors. It's like asking Apple to offer a choice of browsers in Mac OS, because Microsoft also does it (at least in Europe after EU forced them to do it).
- hullo 15y agoNobody has said Google had to do it. They just.. did. Until.. they didn't. The OP is questioning the hypocrisy, which is of course a common meme. Google wants to have it both ways. I'd wager having drawn attention that this particular decision will ultimately be reversed, as it can't possibly be as valuable as our collection assumption of google's will and benevolence.
- omgtehlion 15y agoMaybe better choice would be removing this dialog in Chrome, not Chromium?
- ash 15y agoMaybe, but then we wouldn't know about the details, right? :)
- ellyagg 15y agoAnd that's fine. And Google's reputation for the morality of its decisions should be equivalent to Apple's in that case, as well. But it's not, and that's the reason to point out issues like these, to puncture the undeserved "goodness" reputation that Google cultivates, but is at odds with reality. When Google offers users a choice, it appears that they're being fair, but Google offers that choice because they know that they won't lose market share. If they did start losing market share, the "choice" would be gone. That's not a choice, that's a calculated decision to foster the "goodness" reputation.
- itswindy 15y agois this Larry or Sergey? And when are you mass-penalizing travel sites not to compete with yours?
- bryanlarsen 15y agoWhen your motto is "don't be evil", don't be surprised when you're held to a higher standard.
- yanw 15y agoYou think this "evil"? In other markets Chrome doesn't have a default search engine, in this one it does. If trying to protect your investment while keeping choice and providing an opensource browser is "evil" then your standards are too fucking high.
- bryanlarsen 15y agoDefaulting a search engine isn't evil. But it's substantially less good than providing user choice the way google does everywhere else. But not providing that choice based solely on a user's location, that's worthy of criticism.
- yanw 15y agoHaving different business strategies for different markets is worthy of criticism?! The choice is there, you can change the settings, the ballot just doesn't popup.
- stanleydrew 15y agoI don't understand this. You are not criticizing other browser makers despite the fact that they have never offered this ballot. And in fact if Chrome had never introduced a ballot, you wouldn't have the chance to criticize when it was removed. It just seems that by your standards Google would have come out better off having never introduced the ballot, which was a good idea.
- ellyagg 15y agoI think the criticism here is hypocrisy. Google has a reputation of being extremely honest, open, fair, what-have-you. This reputation is exemplified by their offering a an initial choice in other markets. But, as this example illustrates, in the markets where it actually matters, they take that initial choice away. This is not really hard to understand. Google adores the reputation they have for somehow being above the fray and simply being the best. They cultivate this image. But over and over it's revealed that they are a normal company, who does things such as "delayed open source" to keep partners in line, purposely introducing systematic flaws in their Web search API, and of course the foregoing "special circumstances", all of which are sneaky ways to have the appearance of the image they want, while keeping their competitive advantage. I don't begrudge them these decisions, but all the Google fawning does get a little hard to take, as if they have some sort of moral superiority. The facts say otherwise. They are not altruistic. They do not make decisions that might hurt themselves in order to give others an equal chance. Google has replaced Apple is the PR machine extraordinaire in the modern corporate world.
- barista 15y agoIE does have a ballot in europe.
- PJones 15y agoThat's for the browser itself, not the search engine.
- dchest 15y agoYandex has their own fork of Chromium: http://chrome.yandex.ru/ http://chrome.yandex.ru/ It's called "Хром" (Chrome). Edit: this link is also the first one* if you search for "chrome" (or "хром") on Yandex: http://yandex.ru/yandsearch?text=chrome&lr=13461 http://yandex.ru/yandsearch?text=chrome&lr=13461 Note that Yandex is the market leader. *) Actually, it's zeroth (an ad that looks like search result) and 6th (the actual result).
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Wilya 15y agoI didn't know that. Given that the "No-search-choice" code is in Chromium's codebase (as opposed to Chrome's), this might mean that neither Google nor Yandex want that change. From what I saw, in Russia, Yandex has more reach to distribute its own fork than Google. So leaving the choice of the search engine isn't beneficial to any of the two. It could be more of an agreement between Google and Yandex than a Google offensive.
- omgtehlion 15y ago> Given that the "No-search-choice" code is in Chromium's codebase (as opposed to Chrome's), this might mean that neither Google nor Yandex want that change. In fact, this changeset came from google employee.
- billybob 15y agoIn Soviet Russia, search engine... selects you? Sorry, couldn't resist.
- JadeRobbins 15y agoI saw your comment when looking through the comments to see if anyone had done it yet. It had to be done.
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- esutton 15y agois it evil that google only advertises its own products on its homepage? The idea that google on occasion expends efforts to keep people in their ecosystem, whether its what happened on the Russian chrome, or the way they use the android marketplace to prevent fragmentation, is wrong is ridiculous. Google is a company not a charity. The fact that people expect it to be selfless is a testament to their actions, not a talking point that should be used to bludgeon them.
- ellyagg 15y agoThey make a lot of money out of the mileage they get for their reputation for "goodness". Everyone needs to understand that Google doesn't make selfless decisions, like you understand it. Without pointing out these examples, people will continue to harbor a mistaken impression of Google's motives.
- VladRussian 15y agothere is some irony in that it disables the ballot not for Russia geographical (like IP based), it disables if you run in Russian locale anywhere in the world, ie. it disables it for Russia in mental space. Seems like pretty correct reflection of the fact that notion of ballots, choice, etc ... is foreign to Russian mentality.
- eps 15y agoBut was Yandex on the list of search engine choices that got disabled? Because if it wasn't, then does it mean Google is trying to absorb Yahoo and Bing's shares?
- tori-amos-fan 15y agoThe interesting fact is that the "fix" coincides with the ongoing huge advertising company for the Google Chrome browser on the major Russian TV channels. Seems like the Google really doesn't want its browser to leak a share of newcomers to the Russian major search engine Yandex. A kind of optimization, yeah.