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Google Agrees to Change Business Practices to Resolve FTC Competition Concerns
- barista 14y agoThis is a huge win for Google. For a company that has near monopoly in search and online ad business to escape this is a big deal.
- melling 14y agoWhat is Google's market share? I thought it was under 70%. It's not like they've actually had a monopoly (90%) for almost 2 decades. Furthermore, it's not like you can't trivially change your search engine in the next 2 minutes.
- vibrunazo 14y agoIn his defense, he did say "near" :)
- greglindahl 14y agoThere are multiple ways of measuring market share. One way is by the number of searches, and by that measure, in the US, google's market share is under 70%. Outside of the US, google's share is over 90% in many countries. Another way to measure market share is by counting incoming clicks to websites from search engines. By that measure, google's share is higher.
- melling 14y agoYes, and in one really big country, it's under 5%. http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/11/06/google-search-maps-continue-downward-slide-in-china/ http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/11/06/google-search-maps-con... I bet Microsoft has a much more consistent desktop market share in more countries. That is, about 90% everywhere. And that's one monopoly that isn't going away any time soon.
- randomfool 14y agoRegardless of marketshare, low switching costs encourages competition. What we don't want is high marketshare and high switching costs which reduce the incentive of a company to continue to innovate.
- nostrademons 14y agoIf the share of incoming clicks to websites is higher than the share of searches, doesn't that imply that it's a more useful product, as a greater fraction of people seemingly find what they're looking for than on competitors?
- dangerlibrary 14y agoThe FTC never had a prayer on the "manipulating search results" charge. Google's search product is a great big "filter-and-sort." Regulating the "sort" was ridiculous. To my mind, the strange part of the settlement is the FTC's claim that websites benefit from hits coming from organic search but are somehow harmed by hits from Google local/shopping results. It seems the only sites harmed by being included in Google Shopping results are those with high prices. I didn't realize the FTC had a mandate to protect arbitrageurs.
- seiji 14y agoGoogle recently turned shopping search into a paid service for the seller. You have to pay for inclusion in results. Maybe that's the icky behavior they wanted to go after?
- natrius 14y agoHow is that practice anticompetitive?
- elsewhen 14y agojust because "regulating the sort" seems tricky doesn't mean you just throw your hands up and concede. what if google just put all of its own properties on the right column of the SERPs (search engine results pages) and all the organic results unfettered in the center. what google already does, and now will likely do more of, is intersperse its own results _among_ the organic results.
- dangerlibrary 14y agoIf Google's products answer my question / solve my problem, their search engine would be worse if those products were excluded from the results. If the government starts regulating the CSS, I'm even more worried.
- elsewhen 14y agodoes it bother you that cigarette companies are required to put warning labels on their products. is it a problem that the font-size, contrast, element size are also monitored. would it be ok for cigarette companies to put their warning messages in size-4 font in light grey inside the package?
- elsewhen 14y agoi think that the ftc's findings on "search bias" are going to deal a big blow to the online ecosystem. google now has a free hand to promote its own services. they have already shown a willingness to show subpar results above the fold. take the high positioning of google places for example, when there are much richer options available on the web (yelp etc.). large established players like tripadvisor, kayak and yelp will probably be fine because they already get traffic from other sources, but new companies will now have one less major way to get traction. it seems that this paves the way for a future where there are no organic results atf for many transactional queries. search for "flights from jfk to lax" and you'll only see ads and google flights atf (as opposed to hipmunk or kayak). i am not making a moral or business claim, just stating my opinion that this ftc ruling (be it right or wrong) will harm the ecosystem.
- greglindahl 14y agoIf Google over-promotes their own services, and that makes the result worse, users are more likely to switch to alternatives. Viable competition will improve the ecosystem.
- magicalist 14y agoThere is no such thing as unbiased search. There is no such thing as an objective ranking algorithm. Even ignoring the first amendment issues, what possible way are you going to regulate the "fairness" of the ordering of search results without completely hobbling the usefulness of that search engine? A MapQuest-fan's trash is another man's useful google map at the top of the search results. Far better for the FTC to actually enforce their rules about disclosure of site-provided results, which have been on the books for a decade. Danny Sullivan covers the lack of attention there well: http://searchengineland.com/a-letter-to-the-ftc-regarding-search-engine-disclosure-124169 http://searchengineland.com/a-letter-to-the-ftc-regarding-se...
- elsewhen 14y agoas i mentioned in another post on this page, you dont need to regulate the _ordering_. for example, the ftc could regulate the labeling and positioning. ie. google could be required to put all googley results on the right column.
- elsewhen 14y agoit is interesting to me that the stock is not moving on this news. i think if the shareholders knew how much of google's future profits relied on exploiting the SERPs, the stock would have soared today. http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog
- elsewhen 14y agoalso interesting, the market is not punishing those companies who stand to lose from this ruling: http://www.google.com/finance?q=yelp http://www.google.com/finance?q=yelp http://www.google.com/finance?q=kyak http://www.google.com/finance?q=kyak http://www.google.com/finance?q=trip http://www.google.com/finance?q=trip http://www.google.com/finance?q=pcln http://www.google.com/finance?q=pcln
- Steko 14y agoA general presumption of FTC inaction has probably long been baked into the markets.
- RestlessMind 14y agoToday's movements: MSFT: -1.30% FB : -1.11% AAPL: -0.68% NASDAQ: -0.26% GOOG: +0.28% So probably not moving down, and slightly moving up, is a good reaction.
- hayksaakian 14y ago
- adjwilli 14y agoIt looks like all of Google's new lobbying efforts have paid off. http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=d000022008 http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=d000022008
- fjarlq 14y agoInteresting. For comparison: Apple: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000021754 http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000021754 Amazon: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000023883 http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000023883 Facebook: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000033563 http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000033563 IBM: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000720 http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000720 Intel: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000804 http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000804 Microsoft: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000115 http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000115
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- barista 14y agoMoney Google spent is close to the sum of what all other companies above spent. Talk about not doing evil.
- codeka 14y agoWhy do you assume lobbying == doing evil?
- biesnecker 14y agoLobbying doesn't necessarily equate with doing evil, but it almost always equates with a person or group of people using their disproportionate power to push an agenda that individuals have little hope of pushing back on. Obviously the nature of the agenda itself is what makes it good or evil, and there are plenty of lobbyists that do work that I personally agree with, but at the same time I can step back and say that because of the way the system is set up that lobbying disempowers individuals with whom I disagree but who do not have access to similar resources, and that makes me uneasy.