It seems like this is a great example of the problem that Google faces. They have built up a good product line based off of the revenue from search and those products support search in turn by providing content and/or more opportunities for interactions(read advertising money). This in turn takes away from the sites that they are listing, making them the lifeline and the competition at the same time. The problem is making a search engine has evolved from listing the best websites for the user's request, it is about providing information as easy and quickly as possible. This optimization in turn takes away from sites dedicated to relaying that information. It makes Google seem as they are practicing monopolistic business, but they are really just trying to improve their product.
It appears as if resolution can only come from splitting up the search part of the company with the rest (assuming it is split into only two entities). I think Google can resolve this by splitting up the knowledge graph results from the rest of search by making the feeling lucky button analogous to showing only what knowledge graph and information cards. They still would have a very dominant share of search, mobile, etc. but it would alleviate the connection of Google the search engine provider and Google the 21st century thesaurus.
The other ironic factor is that Google derives revenue from many of these sites in the form of AdSense revenue (or Search Partner Network and Ad Exchange inventory).
So many intangible factors here. A big one being "does improving the overall search experience by providing the most relevant results in the SERP outweigh the opportunity cost of the lost display revenue?"
I wonder how this game will play out though since well-optimized sites tend to be very careful with what they put in the title/metadescription to encourage the click through, and ultimately an entire subset of sites have no incentive to create content if Google starts publishing results that don't necessitate further investigation (ie. clicking through to their site).
This is from the perspective of a site owner. From user's perspective, Google's best guess at the top, and a list of websites below is the optimal outcome (ie. what I want when searching). Splitting Google would result in a worse user experience.
I don't want to go to lyrics sites for lyrics. I have yet to find one that isn't awful, spammy, slow, popup and interstitial ridden.
Maybe if there were some that weren't utter shit, I'd agree. But the thing is that before this, the only results I was getting were inferior search results.
This is, once again, the copyright industry shooting itself in the foot; They actively go after lyrics sites, thus assuring that any that do exist are of maximal shittyness.
The fundamental problem is a technicality of the songwriting process; To assure that lyricists and composers both got fair shares, songs consist of two separate entities for copyright purposes; Their lyrics, and their music.
Therefore, when companies protect copyright, they need to protect copyright for the individual parts. Ergo, they go after lyrics sites, since they're committing wholesale infringement.
Rather than the record labels setting up their own distribution sites, so that they could control and monetize, they viewed these as valuable property - since, after all, they're half the value of the song! The same problem exists with Guitar tabs, though as they're more specialized the community has mostly rallied to make those sites palatable.
Out of curiosity what would you propose as an ideal solution? Of course with the understanding that it is unlikely to exist unless there is a way to monetize it.
Ironically, Genius tried to game search results and now almost never shows up in them (for me at least).
An (anonymous) search for "shake hands with beef lyrics" turns up azlyrics.com, lyricsfreak.com as #1 and #2, followed by Wikipedia (which doesn't have lyrics) and then metrolyrics.com - probably the best of a bad bunch.
Tack "genius" onto the search and it'll show up, but right now it's hardly competing for first-page search results.
How is it inferior? When I search for lyrics, most of the time I am looking for just that...lyrics. When I get clean lyrics free of popups, auto playing video ads and in one fewer click, it is superior experience than my previous experience. As for Google Play, all I see is a small logo. You don't have to visit Google Play to see the lyrics.
Its inferior pretty much by definition becuase it lost organically against other lyric sites and is now being propped up by an Act of Goog.
"We know millions of people chose to click on other results but since we make (more) money on this one we'll strongly suggest you click on it from now on."
"Our super algorithms give you the best results ... most of the time. Sometimes we'll give you a website we own that isn't the best result from the algo but you know it's cool because reasons."
It's disingenuous to suggest that they show the lyrics solely or even mostly because it makes them more money. As a user, I end up clicking on fewer ads because the lyrics are right there--not requiring a click.
> Spares you ads? The whole thing has been turned into a Google Play ad.
One ad is less than many other lyrics sources display, so even accepting your description, it still spares you ads.
> Nobody wants to go to Google Play for lyrics
If I want lyrics, I want accurate lyrics. If Google Play provides accurate lyrics, in a low-distraction format, then I definitely want to go to Google Play for lyrics.
> this is Google giving priority placement to an inferior search result.
Something about this seems familiar... Is there a legal distinction between a company forcing its operating system users to have its web browser preinstalled, and a company forcing its search engine users to have its lyrics search results "preinstalled"?
It very much seems to me the case of using its monopolistic position in one market to take advantage to enter into another market.
But I also see that many people here do not crunch through it even though I would expect contrary - we should see here more people who after a little thinking would see form of such behaviour as a threat to their (future) business.
Microsoft and its subsidiaries have been trying to convince the EU that there isn't. Unfortunately, they added these kinds of features to their search before Google and did a huge advertising campaign about how much better it made Bing, so it comes across as them trying to win by crippling the competition.
"forcing"? I think if you objectively reviewed Search's integration of other google services, almost every single time you will find it is to the benefit of the user(meaning they are not doing it just to get marketshare; it is actually a better user experience).
I think there is qualitative difference between comparing OS, which in case of Microsoft is ubiquitous[0], and a web site. Effort to use different from Google search is minimal, most people don't because Google is actually very good at providing relevant search results.
In the end it is a feature, that will stop abuse of some lyrics websites[1] and make you be able to find lyrics you care about faster.
Now a problem with this is that it gives Google more control over information we are presented with as they prioritize resources in their steadily expanding domain. In the long run I do not know whether this will be better for the users, but meanwhile immediate quality[2] of search results will definitely improve.
[0] Especially 10 years ago when "user friendly" and "Linux" had no business appearing in the same sentence. There was much work done in that area since then, and now there are distros with much more focus on layman usability.
[1] Shady SEO is very easy due to how repetitive lyrics is, it makes for perfect keywords. So you either need manual intervention to moderate the search results[1.1], or extensive tweaks to the search engine algorithm just for this niche, which is a hack. I rather think this feature is an elegant solution to that problem. Not quite same as prioritizing youtube helped reduce number of people going to shady sites to download songs, but in the same solution space.
[1.1] Which is widely done for some of the other terms such as "credit" and "loan".
[2] In the future Google could potentially censor some of the results which will lead to the decreased quality of search.
I'm almost certain MSFT's counsel used a very similar argument to you in the case! But eveningcoffee's point still stands - better user experience or not, it's still arguably anticompetitive behavior. Perhaps Google's counting on the lyrics aggregators not having licenses to the lyrics, and therefore not wanting to go to the courts?
It is not like they are showing only their lyrics block and not a list of links right below it. With or without their lyrics block, they still show 10 results, so their lyrics block isn't bumping other sites off the first page. If you still have endless love for AZLyrics, fine... click their link. You still have that choice. I'll choose to take advantage of the much cleaner UI at Google Play.
Not sure if it is pure innovative thinking or not having to worry about regulatory troubles but Bing has been innovating on ideas like this much earlier than Google.
Irrespective of which company you like, it is always good to have competition in any market...keeps the companies on their toes.
The Rap Genius licensing issue that took until 2014 [1] will be interesting with Google going after this space. Since Rap Genius seemed to get off the hook [2] with Google "easier" then others.
I imagine Google can offer better terms and/or soft-velvet glove (traffic) then Rap Genius.
I only bring up Rap Genius, because they seem to have taken over (admirable) as the foremost lyrics site.
> Won't rights owners try to sue Google the same way they whine about lyrics sites?
How do you know that Google hasn't acquired the rights to use the lyrics for promotional purposes for sale of the song and the Google Play Music service as part of the whole package of getting the songs on Google Play in the first place?
Really? The only lyrics sites I can stand are SongMeanings & RapGenius because they aren't coated in ads and people can explain stuff. AZLyrics is one of my least faves, with MetroLyrics coming in as a fave after the other two.
I don't understand how people can stand the modern internet without ad blockers and javascript off by default.
azlyrics is a bliss if you browse like me. They serve static webpages with just the lyrics. The pages load in fractions of a second as they are so tiny (~10 kilobytes often).
Now I tried RapGenius without blocking. It loaded 37 Megabytes (not a typo). That is simply insane. That's 10 times the MP3 version of a song. I guess it was my first visit that was so very VERY bad. But loading another song was still 5 Megabytes. The same song on azlyrics? 13 Kilobytes.
SongMeanings is ok size wise, ~500 Kilobytes, sadly normal nowadays. But there it is coated in stuff I am not interested in, comments, etc.
azlyrics is perfect if you just want the lyrics and if you are a privacy and performance aware internet user.
Google Now or Siri are killing the page as a medium for certain types of content, and I would not be surprised if the info providers transition to an API-first model where the primary target is layout-agnostic and possibly supported by micropayments.
Google's primary source for their knowledge graph is semi-structured data on web pages, not APIs. Notably, that claim 1200M "facts" (of which 8% have "high confidence") extracted by understanding web page DOM structure. That compares to 140M "facts" from human annotations on web pages, with 0.2% high confidence (ie, "semantic web").
Given that the premise of your point is wrong it seems your conclusions are likely to be too.
My point is that the semi structured content that makes up theses web pages is being parsed out and displayed directly alongside search results. The parsed DOM is used as a defacto API, killing the need to provide any layout information whatsoever and killing page views, too. If this continues, many content providers (like lyrics sites) could transition to an information-serving model (API focused) and just forget about layout altogether.
You realize there is a close correspondence between the DOM and the layout in most cases, right?
Google read the CSS as well, and uses the visual features as signal what humans will see as important on the screen.
That's impossible with APIs.
There are specialised cases where Google does use APIs: public transport and airline times. They are very special cases though, and for broad web search it seems unlikely Google will follow that model.
It appears as if resolution can only come from splitting up the search part of the company with the rest (assuming it is split into only two entities). I think Google can resolve this by splitting up the knowledge graph results from the rest of search by making the feeling lucky button analogous to showing only what knowledge graph and information cards. They still would have a very dominant share of search, mobile, etc. but it would alleviate the connection of Google the search engine provider and Google the 21st century thesaurus.