Google Gets Record $2.7B EU Fine for Skewing Searches | Hacker News Reader

Google Gets Record $2.7B EU Fine for Skewing Searches

bloomberg.com

63 pointsrinze33 comments

Potential dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643712

While I think net neutrality (as it is defined) is important Google is a serious consolidation risk. Gmail has 1b users the internet has 3.2-3.5. Google probably controls 2/3 of that. Not only is search quality going down, but this is absurdly dangerous. Controlling shopping results is tame compared to the potential for misuse

> Not only is search quality going down [...]

How so? I like to think Google Search is constantly improving. Do you care to elaborate?

Because the first page (at least above the fold) is literally all adds, for many searches.

I haven't seen an ad on desktop for years thanks to adblock. But mobile is getting pretty awful, true.

Adverts and also vapid content-mill sites.

I wish there would be a similar reaction to Google "skewing" searches in general towards what seems to be the most popular and highly-SEO'd, but also not very useful nor informative sites. When searching for more obscure things I sometimes have to go beyond 3-4 pages to find the good content, repeat with small variations of the query, etc. I often even go to the "last" page of results, without finding anything (and think to myself, "this is the Internet, where all of human knowledge is supposed to be; and yet, why can't I find anything about X?") I also seem to trigger the "you may be a bot" CAPTCHA more frequently than before.

Of course, that's unlikely to happen because there's no money in it...

IMHO the usefulness of Google as a search engine has decreased rather noticeably within the past few years. It's become less precise, less thorough (they've always been inflating the result count, but recently it seems worse), and nearly hostile to those "advanced seekers" who know exactly what they're looking for. I still remember, many years ago, discovering new and interesting "corners" of the Internet with Google. If Fravia were still alive, he may have something similar to say.

To a huge majority of the Internet-using population, Google is the Internet. It holds a huge amount of power in controlling the information people can find, and that's absolutely scary. It's something that governments have always wanted.

When I'm performing a precise search, where the search engine should do exactly what I tell it, I use Duck Duck Go. I use Google when I want to rely on their "smart" algorithms. Basically I default to DDG, and if I'm not finding the results I want, I see if Google's magic can do better.

Although I don't like advertisement, my understanding is that Google provides massive added value there. So why on earth do they have to skew their results ?

Or, maybe I don't properly understand "skew", i.e. the european commission condemned not so much a voluntary bias from Google rather than a "natural" bias from Google...

The good news is that if we can constraint Google on economical ground, we can also constraint them on more ethical stuff, such has fight against terrorism...

For the european market there is the product search engine https://geizhals.eu/ which is in all aspects better than Google Product Search ever was.

However, when you search for a product on Google Search, for example, "intel 7600k", Google Search displays the side bar "Google Shopping Results" but no link to this site.

I imagine people who do not know about geizhals tend to just use Google Shopping then..

Because people loosing their jobs has nothing to do with ethnics.

Here is it google had a product. Other people had products. Googles product sucked so they put in higher in the rankings. That's "skewing"

A fine of this scale sets a dangerous precedent. How hard would it be wrong everything that Google has built with the same logic? Aren't inline word-meanings hurting revenues of the dictionary sites? How about currency conversions?

Google is a private company/website, couldn't they just put a disclaimer up saying something like 'we're only going to show you results from our stores, if you don't like it, go elsewhere'.

People aren't forced to use Google, and Google can show you what they like. Is that the real issue, that they were saying they treated all companies fairly but didn't?

Except Google has pretty much a monopoly on search. It is barely an option 'not to use google'. Once you reach a status like that, different rules apply than saying 'we can do what we want because we are a private comoany'.

If you have questions and ask someone, they tell you to search on google. Same if you ask on chat channels and forums.

Like hell they do(have a monopoly)! there are plenty of other searchengines out there, and ther is nothing that forces you towards google (unlike some other services, all search engines are available everywhere, barring government censorship in some countries)

try Bing.com, duckduckgo.com, or even yahoo.com (and there are many more)

and then tell me google is the one that should be sued because of the results in their searchengine

A really hate when people confuse "better than everyone else,with margins" with "has a monopoly". It's not even like their searchengine gets pushed on computerbuyers by the software installed by default, since that software would normally be windows with accompanying browsers, that all try to push Bing.com as their default search engines...

but people use google anyway because they generate the best results to searches, if they stop doing that, there's nothing to stop everyone from switching, that's why they have to keep it good. there's no lock-in.

what really pisses me of with these decisions is that if you replace "google" and "alphabet" with placeholder-names, none of their arguments holds water to any reader. try it yourself! ;)

> Like hell they do(have a monopoly)! there are plenty of other searchengines out there, and ther is nothing that forces you towards google...

90% market share.

Besides, I keep hearing that argument but it never made sense to me. The monopoly is not (mainly) about the users of the search engine - they could in theory switch to something else (even though for some mysterious reason, most of them don't. See above.) The actual monopoly is for the sites that depend on Google to be found. The simple choice for then is to submit to Google's standards or lose the majority of their traffic. So talk of force is justified here.

I have shied away from certain designs because Google has very specific ideas about how a site should be structured, rooted in the pre- web app days. If Google had real competition, they would adapt to better index "modern" designs and architectures. Instead, developers/designers have to limit ourselves if we want Google to not only index our content, but not penalize our rankings.

Well, that or look at your headers and serve the googlebot what it expects, and show everyone else what you actually want to show - as long as it's not too different content-wise.

With power comes responsibility.

I think they gladly pay the fine.

What would be the nuclear disaster would be a low that requires them to share user interactions with other search engine operators, so they can also improve their results.

Google has 92% search engine marketshare in Europe. That's basically monopoly. Law forbids abusing monopoly.

> People aren't forced to use Google

And google isn't forced to do business in EU :)

>People aren't forced to use Google.

This argument is silly. No you are not forced to use google, but a majority of internet users don't even know they are using google when searching. They also don't know there are alternatives.

The idea is that Google has a monopoly in search. Monopoly is generally viewed as not a good thing. One thing you can do when you have a monopoly in one market is to try and extend it into another market. This is what Google is doing by showing their shopping results for searches. This would be viewed as acceptable for, say, Bing to do because Bing doesn't have a search monopoly.

Nope.

Users have no motivation and/or knowledge to go elsewhere (they might not have been looking for a price comparison site in the first place)

Competing stores can't go elsewhere because users don't go elsewhere.

Even if your accepted the argument, what's to keep Bing/Yandex/Weibo/etc from doing the same to promote their respective stores?

Good point- Airports and movie theaters with their super high pricing come to mind.

Although in this case, the monopoly example would be akin to a hospital or gas station in a small town raising prices 3x and saying if you don't want to pay, go to the next town.

You can be quite certain if google recognised their revenue in in France, not Ireland, this would not have happened. Yet another shakedown, no matter what you think of the merits of the case

Why so low? (Not sarcasm)

Yet... the EU still wonders why they don't have a Silicon Valley.

For a society where you don't go bankrupt for being ill and less than a percent of the population is in jail I am willing to trade not having Silicon Valley.

    Don't feed the trolls

And plenty of us have looked at Silicon Valley and decided we don't want Silicon Valley.

I take it that you are aware that the US has anti-trust laws too?

But you don't see Google getting penalised by US though

This was just a low quality comment.

Google are in the wrong here, and essentially saying that SV's ignorance towards anti-competitive and despotic behaviours is a good thing is just stupid.

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