Re:Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint
by dogma1138 on Thursday August 27, 2015 @06:46PM
(#10132638)
"If users search for "price comparison" they will get Google's own ads before links to rival services"
Ehm no it wont....
If you search for price comparison you get nothing but price comparison sites, if you search for price comparison computers you get nothing but price comparison sites again, if you search for price comparison [buy] computers you will get some direct advertisement with prices.
I've started using Google Shopping in many cases it finds items which are cheaper than Amazon (for the most part discounting Argos and some other bigbox marts the cheapest Retailers in the UK at least as far as London goes).
Unlike many price comparison sites it's easy enough to find a local store near you with the item you need in case of an emergency (If it's not on Amazon now ;)) and some times the price difference can be sufficient to not use a service like Amazon (30 days no hassle return is more than worth the occasional premium on Amazon for me).
While I understand that this might be driving some people out of business price compression sites are just behind the curve and as "skewing" search results go than those sites are a much bigger offender than Google is.
Heck if i got to Pricegrabber (UK) now and search for "lenovo yoga 2 pro" I only get 1 relevant result on the 1st unfiltered page for what i want for 999gbp if I click the filters on the left and select laptop computers that result wont be shown, that result wont show up and the lowest result will be for 1098 GBP.
If i use Google Shopping i only get relevant results, the cheapest one is for a refurbished 494GBP and the cheapest new one is for 539 for a better model that there is on Pricegrabber....
The price comparison sites are just utter garbage, they don't update the product pages, they don't verify if the product is in stock or not, they don't give you alternative options and they give you an order of magnitude less results.
Google just grabs everything from it's index, the EU complaints is like telling email providers in the 90's that they need to stop offering mail-to-fax services and telegram services because it hurts the postal service...
If pricerunner, pricegrabber and the 1000 other price comparison sites weren't utter garbage this wouldn't be an issue you cannot legislate progress or lack of it.
Ehm no it wont....
If you search for price comparison you get nothing but price comparison sites, if you search for price comparison computers you get nothing but price comparison sites again, if you search for price comparison [buy] computers you will get some direct advertisement with prices.
I've started using Google Shopping in many cases it finds items which are cheaper than Amazon (for the most part discounting Argos and some other bigbox marts the cheapest Retailers in the UK at least as far as London goes). Unlike many price comparison sites it's easy enough to find a local store near you with the item you need in case of an emergency (If it's not on Amazon now ;)) and some times the price difference can be sufficient to not use a service like Amazon (30 days no hassle return is more than worth the occasional premium on Amazon for me). While I understand that this might be driving some people out of business price compression sites are just behind the curve and as "skewing" search results go than those sites are a much bigger offender than Google is.
Heck if i got to Pricegrabber (UK) now and search for "lenovo yoga 2 pro" I only get 1 relevant result on the 1st unfiltered page for what i want for 999gbp if I click the filters on the left and select laptop computers that result wont be shown, that result wont show up and the lowest result will be for 1098 GBP.
If i use Google Shopping i only get relevant results, the cheapest one is for a refurbished 494GBP and the cheapest new one is for 539 for a better model that there is on Pricegrabber....
The price comparison sites are just utter garbage, they don't update the product pages, they don't verify if the product is in stock or not, they don't give you alternative options and they give you an order of magnitude less results.
Google just grabs everything from it's index, the EU complaints is like telling email providers in the 90's that they need to stop offering mail-to-fax services and telegram services because it hurts the postal service...
If pricerunner, pricegrabber and the 1000 other price comparison sites weren't utter garbage this wouldn't be an issue you cannot legislate progress or lack of it.