

Is Google Degrading Search? Consumer Harm from Universal Search - mhomde
http://www.slideshare.net/lutherlowe/wu-l

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mhomde
"While Google is known primarily as a search engine, it has increasingly
developed and promoted its own content as an alternative to results from other
websites. By prominently displaying Google content in response to search
queries, Google is able to leverage its dominance in search to gain customers
for this content. This yields serious concerns if the internal content is
inferior to organic search results. To investigate, we implement a randomized
controlled trial in which we vary the search results that users are shown ­
comparing Google’s current policy of favorable treatment of Google content to
results in which external content is displayed. We find that users are 45%
more likely to engage with universal search results (i.e. prominently
displayed map results on Google) when the results are organically determined.
This suggests that by leveraging dominance in search to promote its internal
content, Google is reducing social welfare ­ leaving consumers with lower
quality results and worse matches."

