
Google Agrees to Change Business Practices to Resolve FTC Competition Concerns - k2enemy
http://ftc.gov/opa/2013/01/google.shtm
======
dangerlibrary
The FTC never had a prayer on the "manipulating search results" charge.
Google's search product is a great big "filter-and-sort." Regulating the
"sort" was ridiculous.

To my mind, the strange part of the settlement is the FTC's claim that
websites benefit from hits coming from organic search but are somehow harmed
by hits from Google local/shopping results. It seems the only sites harmed by
being included in Google Shopping results are those with high prices. I didn't
realize the FTC had a mandate to protect arbitrageurs.

~~~
elsewhen
just because "regulating the sort" seems tricky doesn't mean you just throw
your hands up and concede. what if google just put all of its own properties
on the right column of the SERPs (search engine results pages) and all the
organic results unfettered in the center. what google already does, and now
will likely do more of, is intersperse its own results _among_ the organic
results.

~~~
dangerlibrary
If Google's products answer my question / solve my problem, their search
engine would be worse if those products were excluded from the results. If the
government starts regulating the CSS, I'm even more worried.

~~~
elsewhen
does it bother you that cigarette companies are required to put warning labels
on their products. is it a problem that the font-size, contrast, element size
are also monitored.

would it be ok for cigarette companies to put their warning messages in size-4
font in light grey inside the package?

~~~
dangerlibrary
Gmail doesn't cause cancer.

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adjwilli
It looks like all of Google's new lobbying efforts have paid off.
<http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=d000022008>

~~~
fjarlq
Interesting. For comparison:

Apple: <http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000021754>

Amazon: <http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000023883>

Facebook: <http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000033563>

IBM: <http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000720>

Intel: <http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000804>

Microsoft: <http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000115>

~~~
barista
Money Google spent is close to the sum of what all other companies above
spent. Talk about not doing evil.

~~~
codeka
Why do you assume lobbying == doing evil?

~~~
biesnecker
Lobbying doesn't necessarily equate with doing evil, but it almost always
equates with a person or group of people using their disproportionate power to
push an agenda that individuals have little hope of pushing back on.

Obviously the nature of the agenda itself is what makes it good or evil, and
there are plenty of lobbyists that do work that I personally agree with, but
at the same time I can step back and say that because of the way the system is
set up that lobbying disempowers individuals with whom I disagree but who do
not have access to similar resources, and that makes me uneasy.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
>Lobbying doesn't necessarily equate with doing evil, but it almost always
equates with a person or group of people using their disproportionate power to
push an agenda that individuals have little hope of pushing back on.

This assumes both that the ones doing the pushing aren't just pushing back
against someone else, and that the someone else is a group of defenseless
individuals rather than other corporate entities.

If you think about where all this got started you can kind of see where all
the money goes. On the one hand you have Microsoft waging a PR campaign
against them and funding front companies to make questionable antitrust claims
against them.[1] So then they have to spend money telling their side of that
story to members of Congress before the smear campaign can influence
legislation. Then you have Facebook doing much the same thing for different
reasons.[2] And they'll be pushing different legislation, so now they've got
to pay someone to talk to different legislators.

At the same time, Apple is waging a patent war against Android, so now Google
has got the incentive to go in and see if anything can be done to address the
insanity that allows software to be patented in the U.S.

And then there's Rupert Murdoch, who seems to think that Google is the cause
of all that is wrong with internet and the destruction of the publishing
industry, and wants to make search engines pay to link to other websites. And
the RIAA/MPAA accusing them of facilitating piracy and trying to pass SOPA and
PIPA. And that whole Google Books thing with the authors guild. And AT&T and
Verizon wanting to monopolize payment processing on mobile devices and
anticompetitively excluding Google Wallet, or violating the open access terms
on the recent spectrum auction, or whatever else greedy utility companies like
that can imagine to do to negatively impact Android.

Oh, and China continues to harangue Google for not wanting to censor and so
that they can advantage their own domestic search competitor, so now Google is
under market pressure to go in and lobby the executive branch and try to get
them to push back under the various trade treaties that ostensibly prohibit
what China is doing.

I don't mean to paint the picture as "poor defenseless Google getting picked
on by everybody else" because they're hardly poor and defenseless, and "don't
be evil" doesn't mean that they're a bunch of saints or that you should trust
them -- but holy crap. That's a lot of political fronts to be fighting at the
same time. You can kind of see how it could be pretty expensive.

[1] [http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/02/how-microsoft-pays-big-
money...](http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/02/how-microsoft-pays-big-money-to-
smear-google-audaciously/)

[2] <http://www.wired.com/business/2011/05/facebook-google-smear/>

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elsewhen
i think that the ftc's findings on "search bias" are going to deal a big blow
to the online ecosystem. google now has a free hand to promote its own
services. they have already shown a willingness to show subpar results above
the fold. take the high positioning of google places for example, when there
are much richer options available on the web (yelp etc.).

large established players like tripadvisor, kayak and yelp will probably be
fine because they already get traffic from other sources, but new companies
will now have one less major way to get traction.

it seems that this paves the way for a future where there are no organic
results atf for many transactional queries. search for "flights from jfk to
lax" and you'll only see ads and google flights atf (as opposed to hipmunk or
kayak).

i am not making a moral or business claim, just stating my opinion that this
ftc ruling (be it right or wrong) will harm the ecosystem.

~~~
magicalist
There is no such thing as unbiased search. There is no such thing as an
objective ranking algorithm.

Even ignoring the first amendment issues, what possible way are you going to
regulate the "fairness" of the ordering of search results without completely
hobbling the usefulness of that search engine?

A MapQuest-fan's trash is another man's useful google map at the top of the
search results.

Far better for the FTC to actually enforce their rules about disclosure of
site-provided results, which have been on the books for a decade. Danny
Sullivan covers the lack of attention there well:
[http://searchengineland.com/a-letter-to-the-ftc-regarding-
se...](http://searchengineland.com/a-letter-to-the-ftc-regarding-search-
engine-disclosure-124169)

~~~
elsewhen
as i mentioned in another post on this page, you dont need to regulate the
_ordering_. for example, the ftc could regulate the labeling and positioning.
ie. google could be required to put all googley results on the right column.

~~~
magicalist
Positioning is, again, an untenable idea, as you're enshrining the search
results of a decade ago as what a search engine _should_ return, while
requiring anything else (whether that's search verticals, which is what you
seem to be objecting to, or newer approaches like synthesized results) to be
literally marginalized.

In other words, you would be requiring Google to remain static, while the rest
of the market can explore the search result presentation space. That might
help competitors, but it's bad for users.

You're also special-casing google, when, as noted in Jon Leibowitz's speech
today: "Tellingly, Google's search engine rivals engaged in many of the same
product design choices that Google did, suggesting this process can benefit
consumers." Considering that today's result is because there was no evidence
that consumers are being harmed here, would you be OK with your hypothetical
labeling and positioning rules being applied to _all_ search engines? Then we
just need to decide what defines a search engine...

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elsewhen
it is interesting to me that the stock is not moving on this news. i think if
the shareholders knew how much of google's future profits relied on exploiting
the SERPs, the stock would have soared today.
<http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog>

~~~
elsewhen
also interesting, the market is not punishing those companies who stand to
lose from this ruling:

<http://www.google.com/finance?q=yelp> <http://www.google.com/finance?q=kyak>
<http://www.google.com/finance?q=trip> <http://www.google.com/finance?q=pcln>

~~~
Steko
A general presumption of FTC inaction has probably long been baked into the
markets.

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barista
This is a huge win for Google. For a company that has near monopoly in search
and online ad business to escape this is a big deal.

~~~
melling
What is Google's market share? I thought it was under 70%.

It's not like they've actually had a monopoly (90%) for almost 2 decades.
Furthermore, it's not like you can't trivially change your search engine in
the next 2 minutes.

~~~
greglindahl
There are multiple ways of measuring market share. One way is by the number of
searches, and by that measure, in the US, google's market share is under 70%.
Outside of the US, google's share is over 90% in many countries.

Another way to measure market share is by counting incoming clicks to websites
from search engines. By that measure, google's share is higher.

~~~
melling
Yes, and in one really big country, it's under 5%.

[http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/11/06/google-search-maps-
con...](http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/11/06/google-search-maps-continue-
downward-slide-in-china/)

I bet Microsoft has a much more consistent desktop market share in more
countries. That is, about 90% everywhere. And that's one monopoly that isn't
going away any time soon.

