The thing is, personally I prefer getting integrated results from Google's other search services when I do a Google search. I like getting Google Maps results when I search for a location, I like getting Google Flights results etc. When I do a Google search I am not just using it as a simple website search. I want it to use it to search the whole Google suite of services. If they are forced to stop doing this it will make my search experience worse for me.
Random, maybe silly idea. Maybe they could start providing two search streams. One would just be a simpler website search while the other would be a more involved google services search as well as a general website search. This way search users could explicitly say that they want to see direct integrated results from the whole Google ecosystem.
Because it works for you, it doesn't mean it works for everyone else.
Of all Google's services I don't care about:
- Google Shopping, I never saw a reason to use it and I never did, I prefer to use local shops or Amazon
- Google Maps, I actually prefer Open Street Maps. The amount of detail on OSM is staggering and in many ways, I think the data is much more complete than Google Maps
- Google reviews about restaurants and businesses, I prefer to use TripAdvisor
- Google Books, I prefer using Amazon and Kobo Store
- Google Flights, I was never able to get anything useful out of this service. I usually use Momondo
As you can see, the only thing that is interesting to me about Google is the search engine and yet, it keeps throwing to my face all these services I don't use and that I don't care about.
Conversely, just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean everyone else feels it's broken. At the same time Google was introducing the shopping results that the Commission says were illegal, Microsoft was running advertisements with the slogan "Bing and Decide" that advertised how great a feature it is to do essentially the same thing.
So even if you don't believe Google, there's at least some evidence that a lot of people actually do like services showing up.
>So even if you don't believe Google, there's at least some evidence that a lot of people actually do like services showing up.
Yes, and this is exactly what the decision entails, these services should be ranked on their own merit. Google shouldn't be allowed to artificially prioritize their services on searches but let them compete with others.
"It [Google] gave prominent placement in its search results only to its own comparison shopping service, whilst demoting rival services."
>- Google Shopping, I never saw a reason to use it and I never did, I prefer to use local shops or Amazon
I use Google Shopping for price comparisons across mutliple retailers. (The service was originally named Froogle.) I originally used Pricewatch.com but switched to Froogle/GoogleShopping because it had better results.
Unfortunately, the local shops and Amazon don't offer the same breadth of comparisons. E.g. if I want to buy a new harddrive, Google Shopping tells me whether the lowest price is at Newegg, BHPhoto, or somewhere else.[1]
If there is a superior substitute to Google Shopping, I'd love to know about it.
Those websites are primarily american, so I am assuming you live in America. In Europe, I would say Google Shopping is more bothersome than it is useful. Whatever point you were trying to make by highlighting the usefulness of the service in your region, you forgot to take into account the rest of the world.
Besides, if you like to use Google Shopping, no one is stopping you.
>Besides, if you like to use Google Shopping, no one is stopping you.
I have no irrational loyalty to Google Shopping. I was genuinely asking for better price comparison alternatives. Not sure what prompted your petty sniping.
What's the superior European price comparison website you're using that should be ahead of Google Shopping results?
Interestingly, Google Shopping (when it was Froogle) used to be quite good - back when any eCommerce site could just send in the feed of their stock.
At some point they moved towards Google Checkout (Google Merchant/Wallet?) verification and the number of stores you could actually find with it dropped dramatically.
Now it's just high street retailers, a handful of the bigger online places and eBay. Not only is it not as useful, it's killed off the sites that came before it as they tried to adapt and survive.
On operating systems you set preferences for which service/program to open when a certain extension is clicked. Similarly Google should be forced to allow you to set your preferences through your browser, i.e. not forcing you to login, on where you want to go when you type certain types of queries, like for instance directions or products. That would improve competition and give other service providers at least a good chance of their services being used instead of Google. And keep the system more competitive. Then Google can go and claim that this is what their users actually prefer.
This could work through cookies that the browser always makes available to certain or all sites that indicate preferences of the user.
You could simply store an "anonymous" cookie. They already do it anyway for other settings. The first time I go on google on a new computer it asks me to review the privacy policy, it could also ask about those widgets.
> If they are forced to stop doing this it will make my search experience worse for me.
This seems to be the whole point of the fine. Currently Google's services just so damned conveniently integrated that no one uses competitors' services, even if they are better.
The thing is, though, I am totally with you here. I don't want to use one of the other services for maps, or flights, or these snippets for information. They are just search results for me. The integration is more important for me than ... better filtering, or whatnot. I can always go to one of those sites, but there really is no need, And frankly, it would really, really suck if I had to now.
Edit: From the text:
> Google has to apply the same processes and methods to position and display rival comparison shopping services in Google's search results pages as it gives to its own comparison shopping service.
What does that even mean? Right now Google has a link for Maps, Images, Shopping, Videos, ... in the top bar. Do they need to change it to Maps, Images, Shooping (Google), Shopping (Idealo), Shopping (yet another service), ...? Embedding results would not work. Have a link called Shopping that does not list results, but points to more shopping sites, maybe with the search term already preappended? Meh...
> Currently Google's services just so damned conveniently integrated that no one uses competitors' services, even if they are better.
Here's the thing: they're not really better, because they're not integrated. Google tools tend to suck in many different ways, but their integration usually more than makes up for it.
> The thing is, though, I am totally with you here. I don't want to use one of the other services for maps, or flights, or these snippets for information. They are just search results for me. The integration is more important for me than ... better filtering, or whatnot. I can always go to one of those sites, but there really is no need, And frankly, it would really, really suck if I had to now.
I feel the same way. I described this point further yesterday in AMP thread:
Sure, but the question is, where the line will be drawn.
A "Shopping" link next to "Maps" and "Images" is probably OK, but it's also completely useless. I'd be surprised if more than a fraction of people doing comparison shopping actually clicked that link.
Intentionally pushing down results of competitors via algorithmic criteria is obviously bad, but say they stopped doing that. What about the inline shopping box at the top of search results? That's still putting their own service in a prominent position. Probably bad...
... but then this concern immediately applies to translations, song lyrics, unit conversions, maps, shopping hours, etc. The kind of results that as a user I want to see. Will that be disallowed to? If so, this will make Google Search a significantly worse product.
I personally reckon that making Google Search a significantly worse product is part of the reason why this happened. One of the companies pushing for this is Ciao, a comparison shopping service owned by Microsoft and used to provide the equivalent feature for Bing search results. Microsoft clearly know how useful these kinds of contextual results are, because before Google had them they were promoting them as Bing's big advantage over Google. Now they've managed to get the EU to restrict Google's ability to compete by offering them.
>The kind of results that as a user I want to see. Will that be disallowed to? If so, this will make Google Search a significantly worse product.
From the article the issue is not that Google services appear in the search results, rather it is that they artificially make their own results appear first without regards to normal search algorithms.
"Google has abused this market dominance by giving its own comparison shopping service an illegal advantage. It gave prominent placement in its search results only to its own comparison shopping service, whilst demoting rival services."
I actually read it again. Maybe I misunderstand it, but for me it is about the Google shopping comparison service: "Google has abused its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service." What that means was this: "When a consumer enters a query into the Google search engine in relation to which Google's comparison shopping service wants to show results, these are displayed at or near the top of the search results."
ow are they going to fix this now? Show five results, one of which is from Google, four from competitors? Which competitors? How bad can the results be, as long as they are returned by Google's request to their service? Can I exclude competitors? I don't want my data to go to Idealo, for example, I only have an account with Google.
I fear this is just opening a can of worms, becasue ultimately I am searching for something, go to a search engine for this, and want results. If I wanted results from a different search engine, I would have used that one. Now I get mixed results that I did not want to see. Is it really so bad that Google (the search engine) "understands" what I was probably really searching for and offers a specific type of search results - links to shops where I can buy SearchedProduct(tm)?
The problem too is that the competing services aren’t even that good. For example, if I search for a specific type of Miele oven from here in France, I can type the model number and Google gives me an array of choices from various stores it was awesome. If Google didn’t do that, then what results should it return? A bunch of other shopping sites on which I would do the exact same thing but not have the same quality of results? French comparison services just outright suck. The interfaces are barely a step up from Minitel.
I am definitely not a Google fanboy; I don’t like Android and I’m not big into their cloud apps, but when it comes to search, they are the best. EU companies could try and compete but they haven’t. Has any EU company tried to build a high quality search experience? If they aren’t succeeding then why?
The problem in France, as I see it is government. As an example, DailyMotion rivaled YouTube for a short time, as soon as DailyMotion was about to be acquired for a huge sum by Yahoo, the French government blocked the sale because Yahoo wasn’t French. That immediately sent a signal that if you put a lot of VC/investment into a French company, your exits were subject to the whims of a protectionist government bureaucracy, which makes investing in French companies relatively more risky than investing in American companies in terms of ROI.
Did the DailyMotion deal contribute to the current Google dominance? I think it definitely had a chilling effect on high growth unicorn chasing in the EU which means the “French Google” hasn’t been born because it is much much harder to access funding than a similarly positioned company in the US. I am not saying the French startup scene is dead or bad, but the ultra-high level moonshots that are fairly common in the US are extremely rare in France because of the bureaucratic environment. Blah Blah Car raises $200 million against a $1.6b valuation, but that is pretty much an outlier and likely the result of an investor play against Uber’s French difficulties.
My point: if the EU wants to prevent monopoly situations, member states ought to be doing more to get out of the way of innovation. They can do that by lowering taxes. Even if you have a winning investment in France, an investor gets butchered in capital gains taxes thus requiring a 10x investment to actually be a 25x investment to be worth it. With such a low hit rate for VCs in general what incentive do they have to kneecap themselves by investing in places like France?
This is basically the EU protecting other corporations even if most of the populations benefit from Google's current practices. Corporatism at its worse.
I wouldn't be so sure if they benefit. Not every Google service which is pushed upwards by their tight integration is top notch.Also the better ones may have room for improvement and innovation which we might not see from a monopoly in a comfortable position.
If they didn't benefit, if using those services were a net loss, then people wouldn't be using them.
Also, I like to draw a line between monopolies imposed by force (eg taxi offering horrible services making competitors illegal through licensing) and those used by people voluntarily because they enjoy the services. Google is used voluntarily, because people enjoy it, like Microsoft during the 90's. As I read elsewhere, Microsoft lost relevance to tech because OSS took servers, web took applications and mobile took the client. Antitrust didn't do much.
With Google, the only thing the EU is doing right now is forcing Google to offer a lower quality service. What should make Google less useful should be innovators making them less relevant and ubiquitous like the web, OSS and mobile did to Microsoft. iOS and Siri already made Google Search much less relevant on mobile, I'm sure there will be more in the future. Monopolies used voluntarily usually don't last long unless they keep innovating, but if they do keep innovating then forcing them to offer lower quality services seems really bad and it doesn't motivate other people to out-innovate them if the government will just help make Google worse, we all lose. Innovation should be bottom up, not top down.
> If they didn't benefit, if using those services were a net loss, then people wouldn't be using them.
1. They may benefit more from better services. 2. As far as I know Google operates a lot of services which are not profitable by themselfs.
> Also, I like to draw a line between monopolies imposed by force (eg taxi offering horrible services making competitors illegal through licensing) and those used by people voluntarily because they enjoy the services. Google is used voluntarily, because people enjoy it, like Microsoft during the 90's.
Today a lot of people don't know of anything else. The search might even be used voluntarily by many but it's a major information gateway because of its dominance (it's more or less infrastructure). If this is used to cross market other services and even to make competitors harder to find it's a form of mild force. It's a bit like when (in the old days) the major phone company is founding a taxi service and offers you a taxi before calls to competitors are routed through and placing their own service way more prominent inside the phone book.
> iOS and Siri already made Google Search much less relevant on mobile, I'm sure there will be more in the future.
Maybe inside the relatively small Apple world. The mass uses Android where Google makes sure its services stay at the top of everything by forcing all or nothing contracts onto manufactures. They managed to make sure nothing is not an option for most.
> As I read elsewhere, Microsoft lost relevance to tech because OSS took servers, web took applications and mobile took the client.
Microsoft was never that dominant in the server space, Linux and co. mostly replaced the commercial unix offerings. They tried to use their client dominance to push their server OS forward by making it hard for competitors to be compatible, did not work out entirely (and they also got fined by the EU for that later). Web had to be taken from them first, this worked mostly because they got far too lazy with IE (and later a bit of help from, again the EU).
> Antitrust didn't do much.
Antitrust could do more but it is often too slow for the fast world of IT and it is often too weak.
> Monopolies used voluntarily usually don't last long unless they keep innovating,
Microsoft was dominant on the client for over a decade and still is in a lot of areas. It took a long time and a shift to new device categories to partly break that monopoly. And finally what happened is only a shift to a new dominant player called Google.
> unless they keep innovating, but if they do keep innovating then forcing them to offer lower quality services seems really bad and it doesn't motivate other people to out-innovate them if the government will just help make Google worse, we all lose. Innovation should be bottom up, not top down.
They have to innovate a lot less overall. Sure if they do absolutely nothing somebody may beat them regardless but if they do only as much as necessary to keep the friction high enough even innovative competitors are out of luck. Only exceptionally big innovations which are so different to even overwhelm the monopolist have a chance.
> 1. They may benefit more from better services. 2. As far as I know Google operates a lot of services which are not profitable by themselfs.
So what? Billion dollar companies subsidizing tech for the masses (even selfishly) is not a bad thing. That's one of the best thing about capitalism.
> It's a bit like when (in the old days) the major phone company
No, it's not like that, phone companies were granted monopolies by governments enforced by the law and force of the state. Google is not enforced by the use of government force or law, it's just pleasant to use and so people use it willingly, huge difference.
> this worked mostly because they got far too lazy with IE
You're proving my points, monopolies that are used willingly and not enforced by the government are forced to innovate to survive, if they don't people will check alternatives.
> Microsoft was dominant on the client for over a decade and still is in a lot of areas. It took a long time and a shift to new device categories to partly break that monopoly. And finally what happened is only a shift to a new dominant player called Google.
So a company had a great technology and marketshare that lasted ~15 years only, how is that something to worry about exactly? They had the best tech and grabbed the market until they didn't have the best tech. What's wrong exactly here? Google has the best Search right now and most of the market, if their tech starts lagging, they will lose their marketshare. Again, not seeing the issue here.
> Only exceptionally big innovations which are so different to even overwhelm the monopolist have a chance.
Again, that's exactly my point, trying to bring down monopolies by force only discourages/postpones exceptionally big innovations from happening. Also, Google itself was a huge innovation by itself, why is it a bad thing that only another huge innovation could beat them?
Erm, Microsoft lost it’s dominance in part because it too lost an anti-trust case. Are you saying you wish Microsoft had been powerful enough to stifle Google the way Google is now powerful enough to stifle its competitors? What’s another 15 years?
Nope. Microsoft was forced to discontinue its anti-competitive bundling tactics, which they otherwise would have used to throttle competition as they did with Netscape.
For that matter, Apple only exists today because of Microsoft’s investment, which was in part done only to keep their competitor alive so that they could claim not to have a complete monopoly.
Apple and Google’s products certainly were better, but they would have been crushed by anti-competitive practices if Microsoft had not already lost their antitrust case.
Anecdotal experience: I switched browsers on android because android's default browser kept opening map links in google map. Firefox mobile didn't seem to suffer from that issue.
While google's tight integration lead to a positive experience for you, it lead to a very poor experience for myself or others who want to use something not google. I'm not asking for the EUC to fine google, I'm asking for choice.
Not 100% but I thought that android asks you the first time you click on a maps/wiki etc link would you rather use browser or app and whether you want to do it once or always.
I agree with you that choice is good. That is kinda why I proposed my very simplistic solution of Google offering two ways of searching. One stream which tightly integrates with the Google Ecosystem which would be a plus for many people (like myself) and another where they just give you the results without any integration.
Additional bonus, Firefox Android has extensions, so you can get uBlock Origin and such :)
I have a similar problem with Google Maps. I don't want it tracking my location history to my Google Account (integration I never asked for), but when I disable this it even refuses to remember my search history for addresses and such (no reason that needs cloud storage except Google wanting to get their hands on this info). Therefore I most often use Open Streetmaps with Maps.me. Which has other advantages too, so it's not all bad.
As a counter, perhaps if it were more open & their shopping results had to compete with other providers in a fair way then your experience would be better. Right now they can be OK but simply more prominent and win.
I think it really depends on the product (e.g. having Google Maps integrated is not a bad idea, because that's what you usually want to access if you enter a address in Google).
But honestly, I don't know anyone that is happy with the Google Products service in Germany. They don't even show links to Amazon here, although they often have the best total price (because of free shipping). I even know a lot of people that go directly to Amazon or a price comparison site because the results presented by Google are so crappy.
As results might be different based on country, region and cookie, here is a screenshot comparing idealo (a large price comparison site) with Google Product search (I just picked this specific product randomly): http://imgur.com/a/MByay
I like getting results when I search, not necessarily Google ones. Google Flights/Hotels sucks, for example, I'd rather get Orbitz or Hotwire. Like how Google does it for Uber/Lyft when you pull up a Maps location.
I think the right way to do what you're asking is to serve Google specific content to users that are logged in to their Google account. This should be easy to justify legally as well.
It was also more convenient to have Internet Explorer ship with Windows.
But it happened to be part of MS strategy to sideline other browsers, and gain enough power to become the de-facto standard. We got lucky and avoided that, but doing only what's most convenient at any given point in time can be harmful over the longer term. After all, Microsoft at that time tried to established their (patent-covered, binary-blob) .doc as the format for the web, instead of the open HTML.
Random, maybe silly idea. Maybe they could start providing two search streams. One would just be a simpler website search while the other would be a more involved google services search as well as a general website search. This way search users could explicitly say that they want to see direct integrated results from the whole Google ecosystem.