I didn't downvote but I do disagree. I see this argument often, but in practice the Google widgets tend to be well implemented and allow me to get the information I want even quicker. That's exactly the purpose of a search engine. It makes me a satisfied user.

I really don't have a problem with them denying traffic to other sites by providing users with information directly.

Agree that they are well implemented from user point of view, I use them all the time. What I do not like is that they do not have to compete with others, especially when it comes to search results. I didn't follow it in details but I believe they did get in trouble with Froogle in EU[0] for similar reasons. I guess in that case they were against big businesses who were able to fight it out but for snippets it's against hobbyist and small time one developer sites.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_1...

Not a downvoter, but I find this line of argument to be very poorly thought out.

Why shouldn't google be able to paste ads for its products on certain searches? Why shouldn't amazon be able to do the same with product searches? Why shouldn't apple be able to build feature X into the OS that's currently a category of app? It's literally their product!

We can't possibly have a conversation about "regulating algorithms" like google search until there are reasonable proposals about how to do so, and I've seen exactly zero -- so until then I feel I have to assume that people making this argument just want google to just stop changing, which is a death sentence in the age of the internet.

> Why shouldn't google be able to paste ads for its products on certain searches?

Because their monopoly in search business is an illegal advantage for the other business they are promoting. (Not my words - taken from [0]). I guess it ends up being what one thinks of one business v/s others. For me, content search should be a different business from content creation.

App bundling is another area where I side with un-bundling, something Google have had issues as well[1]

I have no intention of trying to have a conversation regarding "regulating algorithms" and such, just that Google should compete fairly with other content creation and keep search business separate from others.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_1... [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/09/27/1040889789/google-eu-android-...

So an EU commission thinks google should not be allowed to show you results from their specialized product search at the top of a results page when it thinks you're comparison shopping because rival comparison shop services can't do that? Because:

there would be a risk that a company once dominant in one market (even if this resulted from competition on the merits) would be able to use this market power to cement/further expand its dominance, or leverage it into separate markets

I mean -- yes. This is how many/most businesses grow. They leverage their existing dominance in one market to fund their entry into the next. Lather, rinse, repeat. I don't have a problem with that at all.

Is there kind of a slippery slope fear here? That if a business takes this to the extreme that they will swallow up all the other companies and then consumers will have no choice but to subject themselves to the abuse of this one company that has no incentive to treat their customers well?

Maybe that could happen, but we've never been close to that in the western world as far as I can tell. Until we get there, can we hold off on yanking the "government" ripcord? It seems to me whenever we've done that in the past, it's almost always lead to entrenchment of a particular business and not to more competition.

Also, have you taken a look at other comparison shopping sites? I mean, google shopping is far from great, but these other sites are just downright awful. Perhaps they should spend more time on bettering their product and less time schmoozing EU bureaucrats. And if they didn't do that, then certainly those EU bureaucrats have some more important issues to focus on that actually matter to the citizens they serve than inventing imagined "crimes of monopoly" that have zero victims.

To the downvoters: I would love to hear your counter argument and change my view.

The argument right now would likely be that it doesn't show up in the google search for "guitar tuner" and needs "google guitar tuner" to be found coupled with an assumption that this is how it will always be.

It's a fair enough argument. But they should make it in response not just downvote like so many google employees not wishing to engage with a discussion about abuse of market power at all. I think I tend more toward your point of view personally, what is now isn't what will always be in search engine rankings etc, but there it is.

OP does have a point but I think a better example is when google scrapes a truncated paragraph from a website and presents that.

Agree, I take back the specific example of tuner since it doesn't show up searching only for guitar tuner or such terms. But I still stand by other snippets.

You're assuming the downvotes are due to a difference of views, and not because your writing style hasn't found its home yet. It's not that most people disagree with the substance of your commentary - there's a comment with similar argument but with a different tone as yours, currently trending on this post - but that your writing has a natural resonance with the downvote button, similar to singing the perfect note to break a wine glass with sound.