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Comment by Cozumel | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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! ;)

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.

> 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.

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.

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