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Something about this seems familiar... Is there a legal distinction between a company forcing its operating system users to have its web browser preinstalled, a

by btown 12y ago

Something about this seems familiar... Is there a legal distinction between a company forcing its operating system users to have its web browser preinstalled, and a company forcing its search engine users to have its lyrics search results "preinstalled"?

caractacus 12y ago
And a company pushing users searching for a music track to YouTube as a first result.
zaidf 12y ago
"forcing"? I think if you objectively reviewed Search's integration of other google services, almost every single time you will find it is to the benefit of the user(meaning they are not doing it just to get marketshare; it is actually a better user experience).
- TrainedMonkey 12y ago
  I think there is qualitative difference between comparing OS, which in case of Microsoft is ubiquitous[0], and a web site. Effort to use different from Google search is minimal, most people don't because Google is actually very good at providing relevant search results. In the end it is a feature, that will stop abuse of some lyrics websites[1] and make you be able to find lyrics you care about faster. Now a problem with this is that it gives Google more control over information we are presented with as they prioritize resources in their steadily expanding domain. In the long run I do not know whether this will be better for the users, but meanwhile immediate quality[2] of search results will definitely improve. [0] Especially 10 years ago when "user friendly" and "Linux" had no business appearing in the same sentence. There was much work done in that area since then, and now there are distros with much more focus on layman usability. [1] Shady SEO is very easy due to how repetitive lyrics is, it makes for perfect keywords. So you either need manual intervention to moderate the search results[1.1], or extensive tweaks to the search engine algorithm just for this niche, which is a hack. I rather think this feature is an elegant solution to that problem. Not quite same as prioritizing youtube helped reduce number of people going to shady sites to download songs, but in the same solution space. [1.1] Which is widely done for some of the other terms such as "credit" and "loan". [2] In the future Google could potentially censor some of the results which will lead to the decreased quality of search.
- btown 12y ago
  s/google/microsoft s/search/windows I'm almost certain MSFT's counsel used a very similar argument to you in the case! But eveningcoffee's point still stands - better user experience or not, it's still arguably anticompetitive behavior. Perhaps Google's counting on the lyrics aggregators not having licenses to the lyrics, and therefore not wanting to go to the courts?
curiously 12y ago
as long as it gets me the answer I want faster with minimal maintenance, it is always welcomed.
eveningcoffee 12y ago
It very much seems to me the case of using its monopolistic position in one market to take advantage to enter into another market. But I also see that many people here do not crunch through it even though I would expect contrary - we should see here more people who after a little thinking would see form of such behaviour as a threat to their (future) business.
makomk 12y ago
Microsoft and its subsidiaries have been trying to convince the EU that there isn't. Unfortunately, they added these kinds of features to their search before Google and did a huge advertising campaign about how much better it made Bing, so it comes across as them trying to win by crippling the competition.

by btown 12y ago

caractacus 12y ago

And a company pushing users searching for a music track to YouTube as a first result.

zaidf 12y ago

"forcing"? I think if you objectively reviewed Search's integration of other google services, almost every single time you will find it is to the benefit of the user(meaning they are not doing it just to get marketshare; it is actually a better user experience).

TrainedMonkey 12y ago
I think there is qualitative difference between comparing OS, which in case of Microsoft is ubiquitous[0], and a web site. Effort to use different from Google search is minimal, most people don't because Google is actually very good at providing relevant search results. In the end it is a feature, that will stop abuse of some lyrics websites[1] and make you be able to find lyrics you care about faster. Now a problem with this is that it gives Google more control over information we are presented with as they prioritize resources in their steadily expanding domain. In the long run I do not know whether this will be better for the users, but meanwhile immediate quality[2] of search results will definitely improve. [0] Especially 10 years ago when "user friendly" and "Linux" had no business appearing in the same sentence. There was much work done in that area since then, and now there are distros with much more focus on layman usability. [1] Shady SEO is very easy due to how repetitive lyrics is, it makes for perfect keywords. So you either need manual intervention to moderate the search results[1.1], or extensive tweaks to the search engine algorithm just for this niche, which is a hack. I rather think this feature is an elegant solution to that problem. Not quite same as prioritizing youtube helped reduce number of people going to shady sites to download songs, but in the same solution space. [1.1] Which is widely done for some of the other terms such as "credit" and "loan". [2] In the future Google could potentially censor some of the results which will lead to the decreased quality of search.
btown 12y ago
s/google/microsoft s/search/windows I'm almost certain MSFT's counsel used a very similar argument to you in the case! But eveningcoffee's point still stands - better user experience or not, it's still arguably anticompetitive behavior. Perhaps Google's counting on the lyrics aggregators not having licenses to the lyrics, and therefore not wanting to go to the courts?

curiously 12y ago

as long as it gets me the answer I want faster with minimal maintenance, it is always welcomed.

eveningcoffee 12y ago

It very much seems to me the case of using its monopolistic position in one market to take advantage to enter into another market. But I also see that many people here do not crunch through it even though I would expect contrary - we should see here more people who after a little thinking would see form of such behaviour as a threat to their (future) business.

makomk 12y ago

Microsoft and its subsidiaries have been trying to convince the EU that there isn't. Unfortunately, they added these kinds of features to their search before Google and did a huge advertising campaign about how much better it made Bing, so it comes across as them trying to win by crippling the competition.