
Here’s How Google’s New Search Results Will Look Under EU Antitrust Settlement - chaz
http://recode.net/2014/02/15/heres-how-googles-new-search-results-will-look-under-european-antitrust-settlement/
======
spacemanmatt
There is a lot to like about the EU, but its restrictions on speech (Google is
NOT convicted of antitrust violations, this is not a structured settlement,
this is extortion) and its censorious libel laws are not among them.

~~~
captainmuon
I don't know, having lived in Germany and the US, I feel I have more practical
freedom of speach in Germany (or Europe).

Over here, kids don't get thrown into jail because they made a bad joke on
Facebook.

I also find the gamut of acceptable political positions to be much wider here.
Someone with a fairly regular middle-left point of view in Europe would be
considered a socialist crackpot in parts of the US. There are restrictions on
what you might call "hate speach" which I appreciate. Saying you want the Nazi
party back, or want to kill the Jews, or wearing a Swastika is not covered by
free speach.

One thing I also like is the strong protection of customers. Decieving your
customers is also never covered as free speach. There are some laws that seem
silly, governing the way products are advertized. E.g. you must use metric
units, if you use imperial units (mainly for screens), the metric units must
be displayed more prominently, you must have certain package sizes, you have
to display the price for 100g / 1kg beneath goods in shops, etc.. I never
appreciated these laws until I noticed how confusing and customer-deciving
pricing is in the US. Like Mac & Cheese, 20 cents a package, but in the fine
print it says only if you buy 10, otherwise its 80 cents. It's a silly
example, but I feel more confident in Germany that I'm not going to get
screwed over by a company then elsewhere.

------
zues
I find it interesting to apply the same logic to other sites. Imagine for a
minute if Amazon needed to feature product prices from Newegg on each Amazon
search. It starts to sound a little bit ridiculous when you apply it that way.
I know some will say "wait, Google is so big" but isn't Amazon too? I use
Amazon in my examples but there are other good examples. Phooey..

~~~
tzs
Note: I'm not taking any position on whether the EU regulators were correct or
not. I'm not familiar with either EU antitrust law or with how Google shopping
actually works.

You go to Amazon because you want to see what Amazon is selling. When Amazon
in response to that shows you products they are selling, it is hard to see how
that could raise antitrust issues, no matter how big Amazon is.

You go to Google's search page because you want to search the web. Google
responds by showing you the hits on the web, AND by showing you things they
think you might want to buy through their shopping service. They are using one
line of business to give a boost to a different line of business. That's the
kind of thing that does draw antitrust scrutiny.

An analogous situation with Amazon would be, perhaps, if when you searched for
books on Apache or MySQL or other server software, they also showed you deals
on AWS hosting.

~~~
gettingreal
Yeah, like how amazon uses their dominance in "SHOPPING" to sell kindle fires?

*edit for clarity

~~~
coldtea
No, nothing like that.

For one, Amazon is not that dominant in the first place (Google has 80% of the
world's searches, Amazon has nowhere near 80% of e-commerce -- estimated to
get to around 20% in 2016).

Second, they can't really use their (non)dominance in Shopping to sell kindle
fires. At most, they can promote them to their users. Most of which haven't
bought one, and wont buy one, according to number of Amazon users vs estimated
Kindle Fire sales numbers.

------
SwellJoe
I'm on the fence on this. Google does have a dangerously powerful position in
the market, though I tend to support letting the market sort those kinds of
things out (when there aren't artificial barriers preventing competition, as
in the Internet last mile market, which needs a _lot_ better and smarter
regulation). But, I'm not sure if this helps the consumer or not.

On one hand, I use Duck Duck Go (for privacy reasons), and I've come to
appreciate the seeming agnostic way in which DDG will pull results from all
sorts of sources, with the goal being to provide the best experience. It isn't
perfect, and sometimes it does confusing things. I just looked up "what's my
IP" on DDG a few minutes ago, and it weirdly came back as a clickable thing
that sent me to a map when I tried to copy paste the IP. I have no idea why I
would want a freakin' map of my own IP address (I know where I am).
Nonetheless, this looks a little like the DDG experience, where you get a
variety of shopping options, or a variety of sources for information, and
they're all first class citizens.

And, so, Google isn't exactly a walled garden, but it has become a lot less
likely to refer me somewhere else if they can monetize what I'm looking for in
some way.

On the final hand (I don't know how many hands I've laid out here, probably
three or four, so far), these also kinda feel like ads. But, they're ads for
companies that are arbitrarily chosen (by whom?). Google now has the power to
select who to bless with the mighty Google hammer in these competitor spots.
What will they do with that power? Will that actually make the consumer
happier? I don't know how it'll play out.

I assume this isn't going to happen on the US results pages, so I guess we'll
have some A/B data to compare.

~~~
danmaz74
Who they should display is specified in the settlement, as magicalist found
out:
[http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/google_commitments](http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/google_commitments)
(in Annex 1 - Selection And Ranking Of Rival Link)

The solution isn't perfect and I'm not a Google basher, but I'm glad about
this. Even more important than the actual provisions of the settlement is the
fact that Google - like any other big company - should know that they need to
be careful how they use their dominant position in one market to try to
capture a different market.

------
s3r3nity
I've been following this for a bit and I'm satisfied at the outcome. I don't
"hate" Google by any means, but they get away with a lot of sketchy behavior
simply because of their brand and with a cult hacker following.

Nevertheless as someone who has tried to run campaigns with Google before and
had to go through the hassle, this is a step in the right direction towards
allowing better competition.

------
etherealG
I was under the impression that the difficulty in switching providers was the
crux of antitrust law. Surely if it's as easy as typing a different search
provider (or shopping one like amazon) into an address bar, how can this be
anticompetitive?

~~~
vidarh
There are _three_ parties here: Consumers, Google and competing services. Even
if there are no immediate benefits to consumers, there may still be anti-trust
considerations on the basis that consumers can be hurt long term if
competitors to Google are shut out from a large part of the market today.

These competitors are extremely unlikely to be able to affect the search
market.

------
alexeisadeski3
This is ridiculous.

~~~
s3r3nity
Not sure why this was up-voted as a productive comment, but I'll bite. Why is
this ridiculous? I mean when you hold almost 99% of the search market (in
Europe at least...in the US there's a bit more competition) you can't pull off
these kinds of anti-competitive moves.

Google has a bunch of smart people, and they knew that they weren't going to
win this case -- what they were doing was blatantly against antitrust laws.

~~~
magicalist
Even in Europe where it's approaching 90%, 99% is quite a stretch. And "what
they were doing was blatantly against antitrust laws" is just a ridiculous
statement (and kind of puts the lie to your earlier more "measured" response.
I mean seriously, was it "blatant" or was it "sketchy"?).

At the very least it would have been a very complicated antitrust case. I
don't think anyone but Fairsearch would argue that anything was blatantly
against antitrust law (and the settlement would certainly not have only
involved including competitor's shopping results if it had been).

------
hayksaakian
so they're forcing Google to add paid affiliate links in search results?

if I'm an advertiser, how do your they decide which third party ad results
must show on Google?

~~~
magicalist
It's all in the full settlement.

[http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/google_commitments...](http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/google_commitments_full_2014.pdf)

(in _Annex 1 - Selection And Ranking Of Rival Link_ )

------
benologist
More honest about what the ads are _and_ more useful.

~~~
notatoad
How is it more honest or more useful? the google shopping and flights promoted
results are already clearly marked as ads. All i see more of is more
advertising, not more utility.

~~~
captainmuon
This is a lot more useful. I've never used Google's shopping reccomendations
since they changed them a while ago from a price aggregator to a kind of
store. The problem is that I don't trust them to give me a full overview of
the market, and to find the best offers. Thus I always visited a couple of
independent sites _, and relied on the general search results not the shopping
ones.

I expect from a search engine - at least a giant general-purpose search engine
- that it is completely objective and honest. Only showing certain offers, or
products from their affiliates, completely defeats the purpose. But if they
are legally bound to fairly represent "competitors" (or products that are sold
by sites that are not their affiliates), then I can use their product search
without fearing that they are hiding something from me.

(_ In Germany: guenstiger.de and heise.de have price search engines, then I
look at amazon and ebay simply because they are so large, and then at a few of
the largest specific web sites, e.g. alternate.de for computers. I only trust
the "regular" google search results for shopping.)

------
youngtaff
This is a farce in the same way that the EU forcing the browser choice screen
on Windows users was.

If people aren't happy with Google then they can another search engine.

~~~
dmoo
Not so obvious on android for most users.

~~~
icebraining
Why not? It's just a matter of installing it:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.bing&hl=en)

~~~
eddiedunn
You inadvertently proved his point:

"This item is not available in your country".

------
ulfw
Actually the EU result page looks better than the original to me.

------
dhoulb
Much spam. So clutter.

