Google Promises To Point To Competitor's Results To Settle Antitrust Claims In Europe
from the what-does-that-do? dept
Europe has been threatening antitrust charges against Google for quite some time now, and it appears that European regulators have now reached a bizarre settlement with Google in which the company promises "to give rivals more prominence in its promoted results," using a process in which those companies can bid on these slots. Here's how the NY Times describes it:That includes displaying results from three competitors every time Google shows its own results for searches related to products, restaurants and hotels.I'm at a loss as to how this makes any sense for anyone. First, why are European regulators involved in determining what Google should or should not show anyone? If Google users don't like the results they get, they don't have to stick with Google. Second, this actually gives Google's competitors less incentive to build a better product, because they get an easy in to be included in Google. How does that benefit anyone?
Rivals will have to pay Google each time their results are shown next to the search giant’s own results through a bidding process overseen by an independent monitor, according to European officials.
Yes, any time a company gets big, there are risks of them abusing their position -- and that's clearly what European regulators are concerned with. But what is the evidence of actual abuse here, and how does this solution prevent that abuse? That doesn't appear to be explained anywhere. This whole process, from the beginning, has appeared to be mostly a Microsoft-driven attempt to dump an annoying regulatory process on Google, just because it, too, has had to waste time with European regulators. Rather than compete by building better products, the focus has been on using the political process to try to slow down a competitor.
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Filed Under: antitrust, competition, eu, europe, search
Companies: google, microsoft
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'Restaurants and hotels'? Wasn't aware google was branching out that much, though I suppose this could just be another indication as to how little thought was actually put into the ruling.
At least the ruling gets one thing right, and treats those 'Sponsored results' as what they are, forced advertisement, meaning they have to pay google each time their result gets added to search results as part of the 'deal', though I'm sure they had been hoping to just force google to promote them without having to pay for it.
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Google shows its own results, Ie. their own ads. That is what this is about. Google ads are what is causing the problem. Had Google not owned an ad company there wouldn't have been a case here. Google has a "do no evil" frontend, but their ad-network is not part of that.
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I mean, to be honest, I don't care too much on the search engine "market share" Google has, as long as they don't do underhanded stuff like hide links to services that compete with one of Google's.
If I don't think the results are what I'm looking for? Eh, I can always move over to something else, like DuckDuckGo or (well, okay, probably not) Bing.
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Can this be used to game the search results?
So, the fine dining establishment "Joe's Rat and Roach Hole" has been unable to get good placement. Even when using shady SEO companies, but I am being redundant.
So, Joe's brother Jim starts up a "competitor" to Google, Jim's Search Finder Keeper Sticky Finger.
Jim's search finder bids for top placement in Google's competitive results. Naturally Jim gives Joe's RatRoach top placement.
Like government fingers in the pie Magic(tm), suddenly Joe's RatRoach is near the top of the search results!
Or am I misunderstanding something?
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Re: Can this be used to game the search results?
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"time a company gets big, there are risks of them abusing their position"
"But what is the evidence of actual abuse here, and how does this solution prevent that abuse?"
And the puzzling! Maybe Google paid or coerced them to get a ruling it wanted, thinly disguised.
Where Mike's "no evidence of real harm" means he wants to let secretive mega-corporations continue to grow. (12 of 198)
10:37:02[l-370-2]
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Or another scenario,
The regulatory body is being paid off by lobbyists to try to get their corporate friends a piece of Google's pie.
Could go either way....
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Clearly?
Maybe I'm slow today; please explain to me what's so clear about it. Use small words.
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Re: Clearly?
There are other examples, but this is 'clearly' another one, although some feel it is misguided, as no-one forces anyone to use Google, whereas Microsoft had a much more captive audience.
�nțelegi acum?
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Funny, that's precisely my response to the whole net neutrality debacle. I am glad we finally agree on something Masnick.
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Except that only works if there's competition and switching costs are effectively low. In search, that's true. In broadband, it's not.
But, you know, you've never been big on basic things like "facts."
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http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2289560/Googles-Search-Market-Share-Shoots-Back-to-67
There's far more competition in broadband between telcos, cable companies, over-the-air and satellite.
Try again.
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removal of net neutrality threatens this choice if the telcos decide to restrict access to search engines according to shady backroom deals. And they can do that because they only have competition in name only.
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Guess what is in that other 1/3?
It is called the competition.
How can 1 person be so wrong so often.
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Yes. There's Bing and Yahoo and Ask and Blekko and DuckDuckGo and Startpage and a bunch of others. And to use any of them costs nothing with no real switching costs.
Marketshare does not indicate whether or not there's competition. If all the competitors suck, well... how is that Google's fault?
There's far more competition in broadband between telcos, cable companies, over-the-air and satellite.
That's laughable and clearly not true.
Also you of course skipped over the point that I raised about switching costs. Because you're dishonest. Even worse, you're paid to be dishonest.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Feb 5th, 2014 @ 2:56pm
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Next week's lawsuit
Step 1. Sue Google to force them to promote our results.
Step 2. Sue Google again for using our results.
Step 3. Sue Google for stopping to use our results.
Step 4. Repeat.
Step 5. Laugh all the way to the bank.
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I tend not to reward those practices I despise with my usage.
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Da fuq?
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Re: Da fuq?
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"time a company gets big, there are risks of them abusing their position"
"But what is the evidence of actual abuse here, and how does this solution prevent that abuse?"
And the puzzling! Maybe Google paid or coerced them to get a ruling it wanted, thinly disguised.
Where Mike's "no evidence of real harm" means he wants to let secretive mega-corporations continue to grow. (12 of 198)
12:04:23[n-17-5]
The prior post lasted more than an hour before censored! By coincidence, The Masnick posted here just before my check, so it's a fair conjecture that most of the repeated censoring is by Mike hisself.
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Re: "time a company gets big, there are risks of them abusing their position"
was that ever in any doubt?
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Re: Re: "time a company gets big, there are risks of them abusing their position"
And are you really, really that sad and pathetic to check that, and to feel that Mike has nothing better to do than hit report lots, when if he even remotely care enough about you he could just spam-filter all your posts?
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we interpret interference as spam and route around it
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Just look at broadcasting monopolies. Did the government pass the current state of laws all at once? No, it was a gradual process. Kinda like boiling a frog into a pan slowly vs throwing it in all at once. The government can't immediately grant corporate interests broadcasting monopolies because that would outrage the public. No, they have to start little by little until ... eventually ... you have a broadcasting system where monopolistic corporations have broadcasting and cableco monopolies at consumer expense. The govt established monopolists no longer have to compete for their customers by providing them with a better product and so they can get away with overcharging you and bombarding you with commercials and propaganda.
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wow, you HONESTLY believe that ?? this was done because in the past Microsoft had a run in with European regulators, so they said "lets get Google!"
Amazing !!!
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Hey That's okay.. Think of the crowd sourcing that people who hate Microsoft (Bing) could do by searching specific things just so that Micro$oft can start paying absolutely huge amounts of money to Google.
10,000 hits per day * $1000 = $10M per day... WOOT!!!
Really... did ANYONE actually think of the knock on Payment affect of this to these so called 'competitors'? IDIOTS!
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The end users aren't the only people involved...
So if Google decides to promote its own e.g. map services above other ones, it is using its dominant position as a search engine to give its map service a competitive advantage, and there's nothing its competitors can do to affect how many of the Google searchers find their site. No matter how much they improve it, they won't be found by people using Google, i.e. the majority of Internet users.
It is a competition law issue not because of the direct affects on searchers, but on people who want to be found.
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"time a company gets big, there are risks of them abusing their position"
"But what is the evidence of actual abuse here, and how does this solution prevent that abuse?"
And the puzzling! Maybe Google paid or coerced them to get a ruling it wanted, thinly disguised.
Where Mike's "no evidence of real harm" means he wants to let secretive mega-corporations continue to grow. (12 of 198)
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Fun time
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How about you instead explain how that benefits anyone?
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My god, a company has THEIR software on THEIR operating system, the nerve of them. EVIL I say. EVIL.
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More like a nice trick!
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I can see where the regulators are coming from
People seem to think that it's Restaurants and Hotels complaining about not being placed prominently enough. It is in fact brokers and travel agents (like Kayak or TripAdvisor) or restaurant and entertainment guides (TimeOut for example) who are complaining.
Google bought various companies in these fields. The most recent large acquisition being ITA the company which controls the booking systems of most major airlines. They previously also purchased Zagat and Frommer.
What these brokers, review sites etc are seeing is Google buying a key competitor, integrating their data and then using that data in plus boxes on Google which are set apart and very visually distinct from the offerings of other broker or review sites.
For example, if you do a search for "hotels in san francisco" you get a prominent white plus box (marked as "sponsored" but separate from the "ads") showing a selection of hotels and room prices which when clicked on leads you to "Google Hotel Finder". The fact that the box is white is important as historically the background color was always used to distinguish ads from organic results.
There is an equivalent Google service for Flights and Google maps and places products (which are very much integrated from a Google search perspective) includes rating and reviews for restaurants, venues, hotels etc.
Google Shopping is encroaching on the various deal finder sites that had popped up and again results from that show up in boxes separate from the general ads.
Also, note that unless you pay Google you will never show in the Google Shopping results. I am not sure if this also the case with the Hotel results (since I have not run campaigns for Hotel clients) but given the "sponsored" mark I am pretty sure that even if that is not the case now it will be the case soon. In any case, people who pay Google will be much more likely to show up in the results than the poor schlubs who don't.
To conclude, even if Google's competitors in this space offer a fuller featured service or better deals Google currently gives more prominence to info from services and offerings it controls and gets money for.
Now, remedy wise I believe the ruling is to force Google to give direct access to Google's competitors to these "sponsored" plus boxes etc. That's what I read into it from the brief snippet though so it might be missing some important nuances elaborated on in the full text.
I should also add that unlike in the US where Bing and Yahoo still manage to account for just about 20% of traffic their share globally is sub 10% and Google's overall share around 90%. Looking at Europe alone their share is around 92 to 93%.
Ben Edelman, who previously hit my radar due to his investigations into spyware and internet privacy violations by various toolbars etc, did some research and has written about the impact on travel sites of Google's plus boxes:
http://www.benedelman.org/news/052913-1.html
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Google fanboy
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Re: Google fanboy
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Re: Re: Google fanboy
This is flat out not true. You can read the details here:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120824/12563220150/apparently-im-google-shill-i-didnt-even-k now-it.shtml
As you'll note, nothing in there says that we got any money from Google.
As for the idea that we treat Google with undue reverence, that's also clearly bullshit. We've regularly criticized Google activities.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091228/1803277526.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/article s/20131211/17365325537/youtube-fails-explaining-flood-takedowns-lets-play-videos.shtml
http://www.tec hdirt.com/articles/20110414/14442013897/youtube-launches-myth-perpetuating-copyright-school-dismisse s-remixes-as-not-original.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131215/23475125574/disappointing- google-removes-great-privacy-feature-android.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120217/00515617 789/eff-condemns-google-circumventing-safari-privacy-protections.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articl es/20120820/02045620096/google-launches-patent-attack-apple-disappointing-first-company.shtml
I know that my usual critics think this is all some sort of Google front, but that's simply lies and smears from a concerted group of idiots.
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Re: Google fanboy
We've gone over this multiple times and it's not true. Yes, Google has sponsored events we've run twice in the past, but for very low amounts. At times we've used Google's ads, which pay next to nothing. And that's it.
However, it is not what the end user ultimately wants, which is strange because Techdirt has a give-the-user-what-they-want view on things, except when it comes to Google.
You're right that we believe strongly in give-the-user-what-they-want. But I'm confused as to how the EU stepping in to force Google to point to competitors does anything to give the user what they want? That's my issue with it.
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surely
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I dont see where is the problem here.
"why are European regulators involved in determining what Google should or should not show anyone?"
How dare anyone oppose a 'merican company??!?
You guys are ridiculous
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I dont see where is the problem here.
You have evidence of Google accepting payments to move the top players to the top of the list then. Show it to us.
How dare anyone oppose a 'merican company??!?
You guys are ridiculous
It's called 'sovereignty.' All Google really needs to do is close up their European offices and operate purely from the US. That they choose not to do so subjects them to European laws. This doesn't make the situation any less ridiculous, nor does it lead to what you seem to think is 'Merican Arrogance. Of course, it's so cool to hate on the US, isn't it?
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