This article is written by someone who would personally profit from Google’s regulation. It’s an ad for his company disguised as virtue signaling.
Users, overwhelming, do not change defaults. Period. Unless there is a step where they are shown a range of options and select one, this is not an active choice for them.
You're missing the point. The anti-competitive behaviour isn't harmful against other search engines - it's against companies in the other domains where Google can leverage its nigh total search engine dominance to push its other products, e.g. Google Flights and Google Shopping. How is a flight booking service supposed to fairly compete with Google Flights when Google owns the top of the funnel where users go to search for these services? It's exactly the same thing that Microsoft did with Internet Explorer in the 90s: leverage their control of the platform (in that case, an OS) to exclude competitors for their other products (web browsers).
No personal computer comes with Chrome installed by default unless the OEM made a deal with Google to bundle it along with other crapware. Users have to explicitly download Chrome.
It’s a lot easier to change your default search engine than change your operating system.
The proof is in Google’s dominance. Google became popular when IE was the default browser on PCs and Safari was the default browser on Macs.
Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google came to prominence by being able to execute. Even MD stayed relevant while the other four were growing through better execution.
Why would anyone think that the government has all of the sudden become competent when it comes to regulating tech when we have forty years that shows just the opposite?
Did you see the dog and pony show when it the government trotted out the 4 tech CEOs? Would you really trust them to be both competent and not corrupt.
Search engine web interface doesn't require users to accept anything. Search crawler indexes the web without any contractual relations with web site owners.
> you can use a competitor
As a search engine user, I can and I do.
However, the party most affected by the monopoly is web site owners. They can't do that.
> start with the ISPs and restore net neutrality
Where I live, I have a choice of 2 wired broadband ISPs, 3 wireless with comparable speeds (30-40 mbit/sec in practice). To my knowledge, none of them filters or prioritizes traffic. I generally support net neutrality but I'm not affected my the lack of these laws. This is unlike search engine monopoly: despite I don't personally use google search, most other people do.
robots.txt is obeyed by (ethical) search crawlers, including the ones from big search companies. If you don't want to be indexed, you have many tools to block things or to be served only by specific search engines.
If I had a web site that actually makes money as opposed to only consuming money for domain and hosting, I would want it to be indexed, and I would want search results from that index to be fair.
By “fair” I mean I want it to only depend on the content of the site. I’m OK for search results to depend on the content of other pages on the internets which might link to it, helps to rank pages making search results more relevant. I don’t want search results to depend on my choice of web technologies (see AMP), or commercial relations between search engine and third parties.
I don’t do web development, but I have some understanding of the tech involved, and I think many people have reasons to be unhappy with the status quo.
(I work at Google, but not on search).
My understanding is that AMP doesn't actually affect ranking. Performance affects ranking, and AMP affects performance. But so do many other things.
There's also a similar conversation about placement (the "carousel"), which isn't ranking exactly, and that is affected by web technologies, in that certain placements require certain types of structure in the underlying site (metadata, etc.). AMP is one, but not the only, way to achieve this.
> By “fair” I mean I want it to only depend on the content of the site.
This is a definition of fairness, but it's certainly not the only one, and it may not be the best one. As a user, I want my search results to be tailored to me, which means that your ranking would depend on third parties (my priors).
Like, as an alternative, Google could list all search results alphabetically by url, like a phone book. That's fair too. But probably worse. So discussions of fairness don't make sense, because there are tons of terrible but "fair" ranking strategies, and for basically any query, there's someone who thinks they should be higher and that the reason they aren't is that the system is unfair.
> or commercial relations between search engine and third parties.
Do you mean ad space, or something else?
They tell they use AMP versions to measure performance, and the performance affects ranking. AMP is hosted by the same google who does ranking, they gonna measure better performance because it’s their local network. Not sure it was an oversight, looks more like cheating.
Apparently, they’re planning to revert in 2021, but I think it’s too little too late. I think they only doing it due to public and political pressure. Unless regulated, they’ll continue to implement features which maximize their profit at the expense of everyone else on the internets, both users and web site owners.
> As a user, I want my search results to be tailored to me
I certainly don’t, BTW that’s one of the reasons why I’m using duckduckgo instead. Why would you want personalized results? Doesn’t it effectively limit search space to things you already know, or like? That thing probably ain’t a filter technically, and neither it’s censorship legally, but practically speaking reordering stuff to later pages is as good as filtering.
> Do you mean ad space, or something else?
UX patterns to blur the line between fair and paid results. Try to disable ad.blockers, search for something generic and advertised worldwide like “web hosting”, and compare search result pages between google and DDG. Google’s “Ad” is barely noticeable, DDG’s “Ad” has very noticeable outline. Google doesn’t show URL, DDG does.
Also, too much garbage in general. Google shows maps despite completely irrelevant for online-only services like web hosting. The result is more than a page of garbage before the first fair search result, and that’s on my 27” 4k monitor. Will probably be couple pages of garbage for a user with average display and without ad blockers.
> Google’s “Ad” is barely noticeable, DDG’s “Ad” has very noticeable outline. Google doesn’t show URL, DDG does.
This is personal preference (and possibly subject to experiments), but when I searched "android phone", I found it easier to differentiate ads on Google (which shows "Ad" at the beginning of the line) than DDG (which shows "Ad" at the end, or on a second line if the title overflows). Both show URLs.
I don’t think it’s too important. What’s important is enforceable regulations. There’re many industries that aren’t public utilities but are heavily regulated for safety reasons, e.g. food production and air transportation.
> This is personal preference (and possibly subject to experiments)
http://const.me/tmp/web-search/g1.png Just two “Ad” letters with no other visual cues.
http://const.me/tmp/web-search/g2.png The first fair search result, note the scroll bar position on the right, there’re 2 pages of garbage above. No URLs anywhere. Right click / copy link is broken as well, copies “google.com/url?” something.
http://const.me/tmp/web-search/ddg.png “AD” is uppercase, outlined, also note the “Report Ad” text. The combination of these 3 things makes ads clearly marked as such, unlike google’s result page. Note the initial portion of the result URL is visible, not just the domain. Right click / copy link works. The fair search results start at the top of the page, immediately after a paid one.
There’s no motivation for google to be friendlier towards users or web site owners. Quite the opposite, they have strong financial incentive to mix ads into fair results. The only way to fix that is legal pressure with laws and/or antimonopoly prosecution.
It worked with Microsoft in 1998-2001. In 2000 a court ordered breakup of MS. They won the appeal so it didn’t happen, but they were really scared apparently. They were also forced to change a lot of things in their products, which benefit both end users, and third-party developers. I don’t see how de-facto monopoly in web search is different from de-facto monopoly in PC OSes.
What? "www.techradar.com" is a URL.
> Right click / copy link is broken as well, copies “google.com/url?” something.
No it doesn't, unless you try to copy the link to an advertisement, in which case it uses a link tracker, in the same way that DDG does (try it!).
> Just two “Ad” letters with no other visual cues.
But, unlike DDG, those are the first things you see, which means I can visually filter away ads if I don't want them, while on DDG I have to read the entire result name before I can see whether or not something is an ad.
> Note the initial portion of the result URL is visible, not just the domain.
No actually I have no clue what you're talking about. The URLs look the same to me, unless you mean "https://" being visible which doesn't matter unless you're expecting a result accessible via gopher.
I'm honestly confused now. Your statements disagree with your own screenshots.
The result URL is much longer than www.techradar.com. Here’s more information on the syntax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier#Ge...
> No it doesn't, unless you try to copy the link to an advertisement, in which case it uses a link tracker
Yes, it does. The only difference, URLs from ads start with google.com/aclk as opposed to google.com/url for fair search results.
> unlike DDG, those are the first things you see
That just 2 letters, not even uppercase. And these 2 letters are the only thing to distinguish ads from fair search.
I understand their business is more profitable this way, but as a user I don’t like their design and I’d like them to fix that, despite they gonna lose money doing so. Essentially, they only implemented absolute minimum to comply with the regulations: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/nat... Nothing inherently bad with the approach, most businesses all over the world do that all the time. The right way to fix that is not public shaming, but adjusting the regulations. Classifying them as a public utility might be a big step in the right direction.
> And these 2 letters are the only thing to distinguish ads from fair search.
Like I said, "This is personal preference". You can have a different preference, but you aren't correct. Much like your definition of "fairness" isn't objective. A bold prefix marking something as an ad is pretty clear. For me it was easier to distinguish ads on Google than on DDG. You may have a different subjective experience. That's okay, but we shouldn't base legislation on your subjective experience.
> Here’s more information on the syntax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier#Ge....
I'm going to leave it at that and disengage.
However, Google has had a number of practices in the past that were anti-competitive. So much so that the EU fined them 1.5 Billion last year[0]. Anti-trust law is not so simple as "Is there any competition?".
In my personal opinion, Google has ongoing anti-competitive practices, but IANAL and I am far from an expert.
[0] https://twitter.com/EU_Commission/status/1108324107446300672...
(1) https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
This is the central problem. Yes, Google use market dominance to push their products. But by and large their products were also better. Gmail was better than Yahoo/Hotmail. Chrome was better than Firefox/IE. Maps better than MapQuest. Android was better than what non-Apple phone makers were using.
The antitrust case was about bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. It was called the Browser Wars and related to preventing Netscape from competing. The result is pretty obvious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
Now instead of having an operating system vendor with 80% market share now we have an ad vendor. Win????
Meet the new boss....
Isn't this whole conversation around Google being a monopoly? Yes, a new boss and hopefully a new antitrust case. Hopefully more sticks this time.
And the largest anti trust lawsuit before that in technology was IBM. It started in 1969 and it was dismissed in 1983 and nothing came of it.
Maybe the government is just incapable of understanding let alone regulating tech?
While I _really_ want to agree with you here, in all due respect this is a naive view on antitrust theory.
Elasticity of demand - the ease at which you as a consumer can switch to competitive offerings if price were to suddenly skyrocket - is only one factor of the calculus regarding whether or not Google is anti-competitive.
You also need to look at the elasticity of supply: in this example, is it easy to enter the search market? You can learn to make a SERP or an algorithm for indexing / ranking results in an algorithms 101 class...but let's not pretend there's not a SIGNIFICANT investment needed in indexing BILLIONS of pages of documents just to be a viable competitor. This is not free by any means, and requires $millions (dozens? hundreds?) of upfront capital just to maybe get a few % points market share.
In historical experience, part of the disconnect with the latter piece when discussing this with other tech people is that the easy answer is "oh you can compete with Google: you just need a better algorithm." Of which I'm not sure I can fully agree / disagree - but I _would_ press on the fact that the machine learning scale required would still be a significant upfront investment that makes market entry have steep odds.
This is not as convincing for your argument as you may think. All it sounds like is "you took a big risk, you succeeded, and now that we see it's a pretty neat thing, we're going to take it away from you, thanks, please take more risks and make more cool things so we can take them from you".
The fact that this doesn't happen often is why we can have nice things. As soon as you start seizing things that become successful, the nice things stop.
If that was _all_ they did for the past 20 years to get to where they are today, there wouldn't be any problem. The issue is when you leverage this market gain to punish competitors and expand into spaces at below cost (read: negative profits) to wipe out competitors and gain footholds. See examples regarding: Maps (Mapquest), reviews / answer boxes (Yelp), among others.
As a parallel example: Amazon reinvested profits to near 0 margins in their core business for years so that they could legally gain market share without resorting to anticompetitive behavior.* That's why you don't see similar breakup dialog against Amazon: they don't use this market dominance as leverage to own other markets in the same way Google has done. (Now, if they had done this for, say, boosting market share for AWS, then it _would_ be problematic.)
[*] There have been some examples pointed out regarding using third-party seller data in nefarious ways, but as of current evidence and testimony those examples have been so limited that the impact to market share are virtually nil to marginal at best.
You could say Apple engages in a similar anti-competitive tactic by preloading all iPhones with Apple Maps. Yet, Google Maps is still used far more by iOS users than Apple Maps even though they have to manually download it. Why? Because it is a much better product.
I'm not saying the big tech companies don't use their position in the market to promote their products, they obviously do, but whether or not this constitutes as anti-competitive behavior, I don't think it does.
Now if Apple or Google were to prevent users from installing Google Maps, or crippling it for the sole purpose of degrading its user experience, then that would be anti-competitive behavior in my eyes. Sure, there have been disputes between Apple and app makers, but when you dig into the details of these stories, it isn't as cut and dry as some lead you to believe.
Mapquest and google maps are fundamentally different products. Google maps is a geo database that happens to also give good driving directions. Mapquest just gave people directions. A better example would be google's Waze acquisition, but even that one is not very comparable.
Yelp is basically a protection racket whose sole purpose is to squeeze money from small single location restaurants. They actively harm their customers by promoting reviews based on whether or not you pay them. They are a modern day BBB
Amazon absolutely uses its "flywheels" to dominate other markets. UPS and FedEx are presently facing a competitor with a trillion-dollar market cap, several cash-machine businesses, a decade-scale investing strategy, and a "your margin is my opportunity" focus. Through tenacity and bankroll, Amazon can enter and compete in new markets in ways few existing market participants can oppose.
Indeed, I suspect that Amazon has begun to corner the market on long-term investors, too. Why risk investing in a smaller company that intends to duplicate Amazon's strategy when one could, instead, invest in the original zero-margin-so-we-can-take-over-the-world behemoth with a track-record of success?
No one would expect Google to not suppress search results that harms its business. It is called capitalism.
And internet citizens should know that and actively make use of competing offers.
It's like going to a Honda car dealer and expecting to get offered the best deal on a Toyota.
As someone who is pretty much exclusively against regulation - I agree with you. However regulation to ensure competitive markets is totally appropriate for government responsibility.
>No one would expect Google to not suppress search results that harms its business. It is called capitalism.
This is fine if Google were some upstart or new entry to the market. Example: Bing has done this for years with promoting its own products / services like Office 365 in search results. The issue comes when you own a _massive_ share of the market, then in the eyes of the law it becomes anticompetitive.
> It's like going to a Honda car dealer and expecting to get offered the best deal on a Toyota.
Not quite an apt comparison, as the car market is very competitive, and Honda / Toyota only have ~7-10% market share within the US, respectively. So in your example, YES it would be dumb to assume that. However if Honda had 95% market share and therefore could undercut any price Toyota offered by taking negative profits in the short-term, then it would absolutely be problematic.
It would be a monopoly if there's no way for a competitor to enter the market. But you are the market. It is your decision to go try a different search engine.
Following your argument, google would have never made it against AltaVista, Lycos...
You agreed to their terms and services.
If you don't like that, you can use a competitor. As long as there's an open internet infrastructure, there's no anti-competitive behavior. Everyone can be a google competitor of one of its services. Case in point, DuckDuckGo etc.
If you want to regulate something, start with the ISPs and restore net neutrality.