Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint

Re:Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint by ewzimm on Thursday August 27, 2015 @12:52PM (#10130559)

The only thing that seems suspicious there is the claim that traffic to aggregators has increased by 227% in the last decade. Overall Google traffic has increased by something like 500% in the last decade, so that would indicate a decrease in the percentage of redirections. I'm not sure if shopping aggregators are more or less popular, but that still seems like a deceptive number.

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Re:Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint by ChuckMcM on Thursday August 27, 2015 @02:01PM (#10130984)

One of the interesting counter arguments (one in favor of monopoly) is that Google went from spending $337M a quarter on "paid distribution" (paying people to send their search traffic to Google) in Q1 2011, to $968M/qtr for paid distribution in Q4 2014. So Google is spending nearly $4 billion dollars a year to send traffic to their web site.

They can do that because their ad business is very profitable, but how much of that 'value' is because its worthwhile? And how much because its got the most volume?

One argument would be that Google's dominant position in the search advertising market allows them to fund this giant traffic buy, which prevents competitors from entering the search market. That is the classic Sherman Antitrust violation kind of thing in the US (and I believe much of the basis for the US Microsoft case where things were forced to be bundled by OEMs providing windows on their platforms, using Microsoft's dominant OS position to force their browser (internet explorer) on to the masses.

The trick is search an adjacent market to search advertising or the same market? I don't know, I can imagine arguing either side of that question.

Personally, I see Google's eroding CPC numbers as a sign they are losing their dominant position organically. It may not be happening as quickly as some competitors would like but it seems to be consistent. I also see that squeezing margins and driving changes like Alphabet, but that is simply speculation.

As a shareholder I think their decision to 'fight' here is probably not in their best interest long term (so many companies come out the other side of an anti-trust fight damaged for years and years).

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Re:Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint by cromwellian on Thursday August 27, 2015 @01:01PM (#10130616)

Just because overall traffic increased 500% that doesn't imply a decrease if you don't know what the distribution of searches are. If most of that 500% were looking for sports scores for example, then a 227% increase would be very impressive. Without more detailed data I don't think you can draw any conclusions.

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Re:Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint by ewzimm on Thursday August 27, 2015 @01:21PM (#10130738)

Yes, that's what I mean about not knowing if aggregators got more or less popular over the last decade. I'm still not sure, but from a few searches, here's what I got:

Google Shopping is the #1 shopping aggregator according to this site: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/shopping-websites

The #2 Coupons.com, is going downhill fast: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/coupons.com

The #3, Bizrate.com, is also going downhill fast: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bizrate.com

So it does seem like Google Shopping is taking over traffic from other aggregators.

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Re:Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint by merb on Thursday August 27, 2015 @03:06PM (#10131375)

All 3 aren't widely used in the EU. Especially not in Germany where the people from the EU who said these things coming from. Also the biggest price aggregator from Germany, Austria and others, are still rising and rising according to Alexa. I mean less people go through searches to these sites however thats caused by the fact that they have a really easy name.

What the EU government does is toxic. It does what it get's told by smaller companies that aren't satisfied with their sales. Thats more than toxic since it changes the free market, however thats what the european government always did, they don't make goods for the people they make goods for the money.

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Re:Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint by ewzimm on Thursday August 27, 2015 @03:12PM (#10131424)

Google Shopping isn't usually accessed directly but rather through the main Google search. Good to hear that there are other ones rising too.

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Re:Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint by dingaling on Thursday August 27, 2015 @04:07PM (#10131746)

Not being familiar with any of those ( probably a sheltered UK life ), I went to www.coupons.com to see what it's about.

At the bottom of the page is an About.. link, but they have infinite scrolling and I'm not fast enough to catch it. Quite an awful UI.

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Re:Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint by tyingq on Thursday August 27, 2015 @01:43PM (#10130870)

Some background that's related.

http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/img/ftc-ocr-waterm...

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Re:Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint by dynofuz on Thursday August 27, 2015 @01:01PM (#10130609)

and they only started displaying the product ads in the last 3-4 years. What happened to other shopping site traffic in that period?

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