4 ms·

I'm a fan of some of Google's work, but I also believe in strong protections against them abusing their position. However, does anyone really believe that cert

I'm a fan of some of Google's work, but I also believe in strong protections against them abusing their position. However, does anyone really believe that certain categories of competitor should be protected? Maps for example. If I search for something with a nearby physical location, I do not want Google to have to present their mapping product amongst a sea of others. I want a map displayed on my screen immediately. It seems that the vast majority of 'rivals' in this context are actually rival search engines which isn't really that anticompetitive, just straight up competitive. I guess we'll have to see which companies have filed constructive points, I have yet to read any of them.

icebraining 12y ago
Purely in terms of UI, one possibility regarding maps and similar services, would be to allow the user to choose a preferred provider the first time (s)he searched for a location, like in the Windows browser choice dialog the EU forced Microsoft to implement.
- magicalist 12y ago
  Of course the problem with that is if you search not logged in or in an incognito window, you'll get asked every single time (on the other hand, this is exactly what happens with the EU cookie warning, so...).
  - LLWM 12y ago
    So it's also in Google's interest because it encourages users to allow themselves to be tracked.
- tomjen3 12y ago
  As a user I don't want to be asked what map service I prefer. Make it an option in the settings if you want for those 0.1% who cares. Google is in the information business and geographical information is firmly in their business area. If the EU autocrats can't understand this, then Google should use its stores of information offensively.
  - Frompo 12y ago
    On the web Google is in the ad business, and their business is collecting personal information about anyone that touches them as a means for selling more expensive ads. Historically Google was also a big group of people many of which are engineers who were quite free to direct their work. Lately it is mostly the first description that applies.
tim333 12y ago
I'm not sure that's quite what they were thinking. A previous proposal was: >The deal, which would allow Google to avoid fines of up to $6 billion, requires the company to tweak the way it presents search results to address concerns that it favors its own services over those of rivals. Under the agreement, when Google promotes its own services and products—such as hotels, restaurants or shopping—the services of three rivals would be displayed in a comparable manner. The rivals would have to bid for the space through an auction. (wsj). They've dropped that idea - not sure what's next.
grey-area 12y ago
Taking the example of say hotels, here is what happens: https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=hotels%20in%20cambridge https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=hotels%20in%20cambri... A sort of booking widget appears, taking up the space of the first 4 results. Instead of web pages we are presented with google place entries (another google project), and a dates widget at top, which when you fill it in leads to a nice list of google place results, so they are channelling users through other web properties they control. This might seem superficially appealing to customers (personally I think it is great design, but used for evil ends), but it means that google controls that entire space, because people generally click on the first few results, and clicks after that diminish very very rapidly. So at some point when they start charging for google place entries or booking via google wallet or whatever, they can mint a huge amount of money purely because of the dominant search position they enjoy. They can also drive out of business anyone who wants to compete in that space, or force them to pay a toll to google - in fact I see they're already doing this as adverts for booking.com appear on google place bookings. Once we are used to them inserting non-organic results at the top of every search, they can start to charge for those results, and for everything associated with them. They will then have completed their transformation from a company organising the world's information to a company controlling and charging for the world's information. As to maps, I think we need to clearly delineate between search results and mapping results. People would be fine I think if google offered a small option to go to google maps when you do an address search, but if they take over half the page with a google map on these results, it is legitimate to ask whether they are leveraging their dominant position in one domain to enforce dominance in another (classic monopolist behaviour). This wouldn't be a problem if Google did not have 70-90% of the market share for search (depending on your country) - that is a near monopoly position. So Google are abusing their dominant position in search to promote their other properties, and to control which websites appear first in many domains (shopping, images, hotels, shops etc), and they are also in de facto control of the web due to their position in search, which is not good for anyone, least of all google.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  The counter argument Google uses is that booking.com and friends have no inherent right to exist. They either provide a service that people want or they don't. Hotel booking is a commodity business: other than reviews and the like there's a limited amount of value that can be added. If they add enough value people will go there directly. If all they do is provide a few calendar widgets and a billing backend then maybe Google can do that more effectively by inlining it into the results page. > People would be fine I think if google offered a small option to go to google maps when you do an address search, but if they take over half the page with a google map on these results, it is legitimate to ask whether they are leveraging their dominant position Wait so the outcome of a legal case depends on how many pixels the feature takes up? I don't see any rational basis in law for that. Why should a map not be large? If someone came along that did mapping much better than Google did, people could just go to that site directly, right? I remember a time before "universal search" when maps did not appear in Google web search at all. Yet Google Maps was still a popular service. So was Google Earth which had to be downloaded.
makomk 12y ago
The absurd thing is, one of the main companies pushing this is Microsoft and they know how important a feature this is - the main advantage of Bing that they advertised everywhere was that it included stuff like maps and other contextual information in the search results. Then Google rolled out the same feature and Microsoft tried to use anti-competition law to force Google to remove it.
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  I've said it the last time this popped up (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9236862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9236862) but when you have a dominant monopoly position, you can't always safely do what "everyone else" does. Antitrust laws are tricky like that. Nobody cares when Apple bundles a browser and media player with its OS.

icebraining 12y ago

Purely in terms of UI, one possibility regarding maps and similar services, would be to allow the user to choose a preferred provider the first time (s)he searched for a location, like in the Windows browser choice dialog the EU forced Microsoft to implement.

magicalist 12y ago
Of course the problem with that is if you search not logged in or in an incognito window, you'll get asked every single time (on the other hand, this is exactly what happens with the EU cookie warning, so...).
- LLWM 12y ago
  So it's also in Google's interest because it encourages users to allow themselves to be tracked.
tomjen3 12y ago
As a user I don't want to be asked what map service I prefer. Make it an option in the settings if you want for those 0.1% who cares. Google is in the information business and geographical information is firmly in their business area. If the EU autocrats can't understand this, then Google should use its stores of information offensively.
- Frompo 12y ago
  On the web Google is in the ad business, and their business is collecting personal information about anyone that touches them as a means for selling more expensive ads. Historically Google was also a big group of people many of which are engineers who were quite free to direct their work. Lately it is mostly the first description that applies.

tim333 12y ago

I'm not sure that's quite what they were thinking. A previous proposal was: >The deal, which would allow Google to avoid fines of up to $6 billion, requires the company to tweak the way it presents search results to address concerns that it favors its own services over those of rivals. Under the agreement, when Google promotes its own services and products—such as hotels, restaurants or shopping—the services of three rivals would be displayed in a comparable manner. The rivals would have to bid for the space through an auction. (wsj). They've dropped that idea - not sure what's next.

grey-area 12y ago

Taking the example of say hotels, here is what happens: https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=hotels%20in%20cambridge https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=hotels%20in%20cambri... A sort of booking widget appears, taking up the space of the first 4 results. Instead of web pages we are presented with google place entries (another google project), and a dates widget at top, which when you fill it in leads to a nice list of google place results, so they are channelling users through other web properties they control. This might seem superficially appealing to customers (personally I think it is great design, but used for evil ends), but it means that google controls that entire space, because people generally click on the first few results, and clicks after that diminish very very rapidly. So at some point when they start charging for google place entries or booking via google wallet or whatever, they can mint a huge amount of money purely because of the dominant search position they enjoy. They can also drive out of business anyone who wants to compete in that space, or force them to pay a toll to google - in fact I see they're already doing this as adverts for booking.com appear on google place bookings. Once we are used to them inserting non-organic results at the top of every search, they can start to charge for those results, and for everything associated with them. They will then have completed their transformation from a company organising the world's information to a company controlling and charging for the world's information. As to maps, I think we need to clearly delineate between search results and mapping results. People would be fine I think if google offered a small option to go to google maps when you do an address search, but if they take over half the page with a google map on these results, it is legitimate to ask whether they are leveraging their dominant position in one domain to enforce dominance in another (classic monopolist behaviour). This wouldn't be a problem if Google did not have 70-90% of the market share for search (depending on your country) - that is a near monopoly position. So Google are abusing their dominant position in search to promote their other properties, and to control which websites appear first in many domains (shopping, images, hotels, shops etc), and they are also in de facto control of the web due to their position in search, which is not good for anyone, least of all google.

mike_hearn 12y ago
The counter argument Google uses is that booking.com and friends have no inherent right to exist. They either provide a service that people want or they don't. Hotel booking is a commodity business: other than reviews and the like there's a limited amount of value that can be added. If they add enough value people will go there directly. If all they do is provide a few calendar widgets and a billing backend then maybe Google can do that more effectively by inlining it into the results page. > People would be fine I think if google offered a small option to go to google maps when you do an address search, but if they take over half the page with a google map on these results, it is legitimate to ask whether they are leveraging their dominant position Wait so the outcome of a legal case depends on how many pixels the feature takes up? I don't see any rational basis in law for that. Why should a map not be large? If someone came along that did mapping much better than Google did, people could just go to that site directly, right? I remember a time before "universal search" when maps did not appear in Google web search at all. Yet Google Maps was still a popular service. So was Google Earth which had to be downloaded.

makomk 12y ago

The absurd thing is, one of the main companies pushing this is Microsoft and they know how important a feature this is - the main advantage of Bing that they advertised everywhere was that it included stuff like maps and other contextual information in the search results. Then Google rolled out the same feature and Microsoft tried to use anti-competition law to force Google to remove it.

throwawaykf05 12y ago
I've said it the last time this popped up (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9236862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9236862) but when you have a dominant monopoly position, you can't always safely do what "everyone else" does. Antitrust laws are tricky like that. Nobody cares when Apple bundles a browser and media player with its OS.