
Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint - Libertatea
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34076597
======
kazinator
Google has the right to make whatever content they want appear when you
navigate to their website and type something into the search box. Just like
you and I have a right to put nearly whatever we want in our private web page.

They are not a public utility.

If you don't like what you see on Google, go search somewhere else.

If you don't like anywhere else, then run your own web crawler and build your
own index.

The world does not owe you a spam-free, ad-free, impartial, quasi-complete
search index with a query engine that responds in under a second. Such a thing
takes a lot of research and money to produce and operate.

~~~
mangeletti
If Google purports to be a search engine and then gives preference to search
results that benefit them, it's ethically similar to an fiduciary adviser
recommending things that make him rich without regard for your well being.
Google is not in a fiduciary relationship to you, but a similar ethical
situation arises because fair competition (which laws protect in most
countries - e.g., including anti-trust laws here in the US) is hard to be had
when one company is tricking its customers (by making their ads look similar
to search results) into thinking they're getting more for less (e.g., getting
free search when in actuality they're being led to potentially less desirable
products for Google's monetary gain).

If Google instead purported to be a "find products we like to recommend"
engine, this situation wouldn't arise. I suspect less people would use their
service in this case, and that should illustrated the point: if the value of
your service decreases when you tell the truth, then you're, by definition,
gaining an a business advantage by being dishonest.

~~~
kazinator
People using Google search are not customers. They are visitors to a free web
site where you can type stuff into a box, and other stuff appears of that web
site's choosing. There are various assurances made or implied about what that
stuff consists of. Those come from the website itself, so you're foolish if
you completely believe them.

How about people who use other free stuff? People who load up GNU/Linux and
log in to a Bash promp --- are they "GNU customers"? Does GNU have a monopoly
because the users don't bother to find out about other operating systems and
believe all the evangelizing which tells them that GNU/Linux is the best?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
That is true. As we all know, if you use Google, you're the product being
sold.

------
ewzimm
The only thing that seems suspicious there is the claim that traffic to
aggregators has increased by 227% in the last decade. Overall Google traffic
has increased by something like 500% in the last decade, so that would
indicate a decrease in the percentage of redirections. I'm not sure if
shopping aggregators are more or less popular, but that still seems like a
deceptive number.

~~~
cromwellian
Just because overall traffic increased 500% that doesn't imply a decrease if
you don't know what the distribution of searches are. If most of that 500%
were looking for sports scores for example, then a 227% increase would be very
impressive. Without more detailed data I don't think you can draw any
conclusions.

~~~
ewzimm
Yes, that's what I mean about not knowing if aggregators got more or less
popular over the last decade. I'm still not sure, but from a few searches,
here's what I got:

Google Shopping is the #1 shopping aggregator according to this site:
[http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/shopping-
websites](http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/shopping-websites)

The #2 Coupons.com, is going downhill fast:
[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/coupons.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/coupons.com)

The #3, Bizrate.com, is also going downhill fast:
[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bizrate.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bizrate.com)

So it does seem like Google Shopping is taking over traffic from other
aggregators.

~~~
merb
All 3 aren't widely used in the EU. Especially not in Germany where the people
from the EU who said these things coming from. Also the biggest price
aggregator from Germany, Austria and others, are still rising and rising
according to Alexa. I mean less people go through searches to these sites
however thats caused by the fact that they have a really easy name.

What the EU government does is toxic. It does what it get's told by smaller
companies that aren't satisfied with their sales. Thats more than toxic since
it changes the free market, however thats what the european government always
did, they don't make goods for the people they make goods for the money.

~~~
ewzimm
Google Shopping isn't usually accessed directly but rather through the main
Google search. Good to hear that there are other ones rising too.

------
dogma1138
"If users search for "price comparison" they will get Google's own ads before
links to rival services"

Ehm no it wont....

If you search for price comparison you get nothing but price comparison sites,
if you search for price comparison computers you get nothing but price
comparison sites again, if you search for price comparison [buy] computers you
will get some direct advertisement with prices.

I've started using Google Shopping in many cases it finds items which are
cheaper than Amazon (for the most part discounting Argos and some other bigbox
marts the cheapest Retailers in the UK at least as far as London goes). Unlike
many price comparison sites it's easy enough to find a local store near you
with the item you need in case of an emergency (If it's not on Amazon now ;))
and some times the price difference can be sufficient to not use a service
like Amazon (30 days no hassle return is more than worth the occasional
premium on Amazon for me). While I understand that this might be driving some
people out of business price compression sites are just behind the curve and
as "skewing" search results go than those sites are a much bigger offender
than Google is.

Heck if i got to Pricegrabber (UK) now and search for "lenovo yoga 2 pro" I
only get 1 relevant result on the 1st unfiltered page for what i want for
999gbp if I click the filters on the left and select laptop computers that
result wont be shown, that result wont show up and the lowest result will be
for 1098 GBP.

If i use Google Shopping i only get relevant results, the cheapest one is for
a refurbished 494GBP and the cheapest new one is for 539 for a better model
that there is on Pricegrabber....

The price comparison sites are just utter garbage, they don't update the
product pages, they don't verify if the product is in stock or not, they don't
give you alternative options and they give you an order of magnitude less
results.

Google just grabs everything from it's index, the EU complaints is like
telling email providers in the 90's that they need to stop offering mail-to-
fax services and telegram services because it hurts the postal service...

If pricerunner, pricegrabber and the 1000 other price comparison sites weren't
utter garbage this wouldn't be an issue you cannot legislate progress or lack
of it.

------
magicalist
Wait, was the EU statement of objections only about comparison shopping?

~~~
kuschku
No, not at all.

The statement was mostly about Google scraping data and not linking back.

One case: They post a review about a restaurant on Yelp!

Soon later Google Places displayed the same review text, but did not link back
to Yelp!

When Yelp! complained, Google suggested Yelp! should just use robots.txt to
unlist their site complete, or put up with the scraping.

In return, Yelp! and other companies went to the EU and complained.

~~~
magicalist
> _No, not at all._

> _The statement was mostly about Google scraping data and not linking back_

That's been somewhat the narrative around here, but that doesn't appear to be
true at all:

> _The Statement of Objections takes the preliminary view that in order to
> remedy the conduct, Google should treat its own comparison shopping service
> and those of rivals in the same way. This would not interfere with either
> the algorithms Google applies or how it designs its search results pages. It
> would, however, mean that when Google shows comparison shopping services in
> response to a user 's query, the most relevant service or services would be
> selected to appear in Google's search results pages._

[http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_MEMO-15-4781_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_MEMO-15-4781_en.htm)

I didn't realize this. I thought it was more wide ranging.

~~~
germanier
There is a separate formal investigation on Android currently:
[http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cf...](http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cfm?proc_code=1_40099)

Additionally, the EC currently looks into Google's "copying of rivals’ web
content (known as 'scraping'), exclusivity in its agreements with advertising
partners and undue restrictions of advertisers' ability to use competing
advertising platforms" ([http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_STATEMENT-15-4785_en.ht...](http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_STATEMENT-15-4785_en.htm)) but that hasn't reached the formal stage
yet.

~~~
magicalist
So the answer to my question is still "yes", the statement of objections was
only about comparison shopping :)

> _but that hasn 't reached the formal stage yet_

and it may never, considering the changes made for the FTC.

