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Welp, there it is. As clear cut a case of the dangers of Google basically holding the keys to the internet for the masses as I've ever seen.

How's the ads on Facebook and Instagram doing?

Awful, honestly. The last set we ran on Facebook cost us $40 per booked appointment...not even break-even for us.

We are working on video ads for pre-roll YouTube, etc., but it takes $ for tools (like cameras) and production. On Google, we learned how to optimize our ads and we were doing really well.

Have you tried advertising on DuckDuckGo? There's not as much traffic, but it could be worth it.

How many people do you know who use DuckDuckGo? How many of them would consider a repair shop instead of doing it themselves?

About as many as I know who would consider repairing their device at all instead of buying a new one.

FWIW, I use DDG, I’d still go to a repair shop rather than try to repair an iPhone personally.

I’m perfectly happy building a PC or messing with something that’s meant to be user-serviceable, or even replacing the stereo in my car, but when it comes to small things that are glued together I’d look at a professional. I can’t even manage to get screen protectors to go on perfectly straight in past experience...

I also use DDG and would use a shop. I used to even repair iPhones for myself and others, but I just don’t have the tools or expertise these days.

I use DDG and would consider going to a repair shop. Used to fix them myself, but stopped around the iPhone 6 era as they became too fiddly to bother.

The last straw was when I knackered a motherboard because I mixed up two screws and severed a vital copper trace. So frustrating.

I would definitely use a shop, there isn't enough time to read/watch up on how to do it myself

I've heard that Bing also works well

Yeah, that sucks. For very occasional purchases like repair FB ads stink because so few of your potential targeted customers need a repair at any moment - you really need search ads to hit on the moment of intent. Could definitely see YT ads doing well if you target repair videos.

Sounds like phones should have cracked-glass (etc.) sensors.

A lot of responses along the lines of “and HOW would Apple have done this?”

Google pays Apple how much every year to remain their search engine of choice? Their corporate relationship isn’t exactly distant.

Objectively, Facebook ads have recently gotten _a lot_ worse because they removed most of the targeting abilities. Targeting was always the competitive edge FB had.

(Whether this an overall good or bad thing I leave as an exercise to the reader.)

Wait, why? I thought the whole point of facebook being super invasive was so they could use that data for advertisers

> If independent repair shops can't be found on Google, is that Google and Apple's way of muting third-party repair?

Disappearing from Adwords is not the same as disappearing from Google.

People can still find the business by searching "<businessname> repair shop" as well as possibly "repair ship <cityname>" but the issue is not being able to advertise on terms like "fix iphone 8" or "ifixit iphone".

Not to be that guy, but why do you feel you are entitled to advertise on somebody else's trademark?

It's obviously an instance of fair use. Otherwise no indy auto repair shops could advertise, for example.

Where the problems come in is when the actual name of the business includes a third party trademark. Try calling your business "Joe's Cut-Rate Porsche Service" and you can expect a C&D order.

Yes, you'll likely get a C&D order, however that doesn't mean you'll lose. As an example, Ferrari a few years ago went after all the independent "Joe's Ferrari Service" type places in the US with C&Ds against them using Ferrari's name in their business name. Most of the shops banded together and all sent legal letters telling Ferrari to $%*# off as it was fair use. Ferrari backed off.

Good on them.

I'd probably be a bit nervous about taking my Ferrari to Joe's Ferrari Service though.

He's not advertising "on sombedoy else's trademark". He's advertising a business that offer third party repair services of a product name <trademark>. You are commenting on an article titled "Support for right-to-repair laws slowly grows", so perhaps his feeling of "entitlement" is the topic of the article?

Free Market... and the fact Google allows it.

Next thing you're going to do is tell us that Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, and eBay were making explicit back room deals to rig employee compensation and using the threat of patent litigation to force competition in line, resulting in the transfer of literally tens of billions of dollars of wealth transferred from employees to shareholders, considering the secondary effects of depressed wages industry wide.

Give the conspiracy theories a break.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Oh hi. I'm an independent IT person in NZ. I've lost pretty much 100% of my new leads thanks to this policy change too. What's crazy is that I have not seen a single mainstream news provider mention that this has happened. I've messaged multiple local news media, and tried to contact absolutely anyone from Google and gotten nothing.

I've never been a believer in conspiracy theories, but Google just "turned off" finding independent or small IT companies from their platform in favor of big established players with huge organic results... and nobody gives a shit.

So Google shut down ads for an entire industry because of bad actors? Are the percentages that bad to warrant it? If so, isn't that Google's claim to fame - finding the high value results?

A few years ago, Amazon shut down anyone selling Chromecast on their store. "Too much fraud" was the reason given.

They shut down Apple TVs too. No ulterior motives, I’m sure,

You might want to contact the Justice Department to contribute to their anti trust investigation against Google.

"Have you considered just phoning up the government?" has got to be the pinnacle of armchair activism.

Having been directly involved contributing towards a government investigation that resulted in the conviction and incarceration of someone for white collar crime, I would disagree with your assessment. Doing something > doing nothing. You have to start somewhere, and a phone call is a fine place to start.

"Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand."

How did you get involved with that? Did you just phone up and offer your services?

I'd imagine it going something like this:

"Hello, I have information that would likely be useful as evidence for the antitrust lawsuit against Google."

"Thanks, but I think we have it covered" -or- "Thanks, let me take a note so we both feel good about this interaction and never actually follow up on this."

When one wonders how the status-quo came to be, they need look no further than the dismissive attitudes they wield.

When the GP said "Doing something > doing nothing", try to see the value in such a mindset, irrespective of whether or not some action was taken by person on the receiving end of the information.

If nobody voices their concerns, the people have no voice.

Do you imagine or do you have experience? My contacts with the government has been okay, not amazing but okay. Shouldn’t we try to increase communication between the government and its citizens?

Yes! We very much should, even if every interaction isn’t perfect or results in a slam dunk outcome.

Googled government office performing investigation, call general number, ask for someone assigned to case X. "I have documents and electronic data that might be pertinent to an ongoing investigation you have open. Where can I send them?", which led to an in person meeting.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Or perhaps he's European, where phoning the govt actually works

Why would Google give up all that ad revenue to help Apple?

Because Google sells phones too.

That nearly everyone in this thread has missed this fact so far is baffling.

Their ad revenue must be several orders of magnitude higher than their phone sales revenue, though.

But not higher than their repair ad revenue, nor their value in their buisnes relations to apple.

But I suspect in this case it is more likely a "don't care" attitude from google to that small market.

Yeah, I think they've practically been losing money on phones since they started. I mean they're not losing YouTube levels of money, but it's not very profitable. And anyway compared to any search ads everything else is peanuts.

Controlling what people do with their devices protects their revenue stream.

Like on the ads they'll see on their devices.

Hey, what big change did Google make to Chrome with regard to Adblockers recently for Enterprise users?

You can still spend money/resources/take action to protect one's loss leader's position in the market.

If that's the narrative, then they didn't do it because they wanted to help Apple, they did it to help themselves (and helping Apple is simply a byproduct of that). Either way, it's a big stretch to blame Apple for Google helping themselves.

Apple is attempting to do whatever it takes to monopolize the after-market.

Google is not. Search "pixel3 repair" or "iphoneX repair" on google and in both cases, you might get a couple of official apple or google hits at the top as you'd expect, and then scores of hits for iFixit and independent repair shops including maps.

I absolutely believe GP got nailed by adwords, but it doesn't seem like the search itself is being warped to pretend like there's no options.

Google sells an estimated 1 million phones a year - Google’d revenue from phones is a rounding error.

> Google unilaterally took away AdWords in our industry.

It's one thing when a government regulates a market, yet another when a company does it ...

So Apple is killing the right go repair because of Google’s well known lack of customer service?

Google screws you over and you blame Apple. How does that work?

She explained that in these two lines:

> I write all of this because the prevailing theory in our industry is that this is Apple's way of fighting against right to repair.

> If only Apple authorized service providers are allowed to advertise on Google for repair-related keywords, Apple will have taken more teeth out of "right to repair."

Well, there is the important connection between how Apple was able to get Google to implement a ban on advertising. That was glossed over. I don't think it's impossible, but it's not such an easy leap as to not need any explanation.

That doesn't explain how it's Apple's fault. Google is unlikely to restrict advertising just because it's in Apple's interests.

If Google didn't have a reason to do so in its own self-interest, Apple would have to use a threat or a bribe to get Google to reduce its own advertising revenue in this way. The comment provides no evidence of that.

You trust google more than I do. I'm sure there was a tit for tat exchange or back room deal if it went down. It wouldn't be the first time for these companies.

I don't trust Google in the sense I think you're implying. I have no trouble believing Google would do something unethical that it believed it would profit from and get away with. That includes back room deals.

But the original comment didn't offer any evidence of one. I'd like to know if there is any beyond it being a plausible explanation.

Apple in the past has made back door deals to not hire the employees of other companies, I believe Google was one of them. Wouldn't surprise me if this was the case here.

To me it smacks of constructional reasoning, in the sense of fabricated a justification to support a pre-conceived narrative. As a prompt to investigation or a search for evidence, ok, fine, but on its own it’s just a conspiracy theory.

He explained that in these two lines:

(slight correction, it's "she explained")

It's a hypothesis. It's also Google's call, and Google is the one they're paying for ads.

It's really seems like a stretch without any evidence or more detailed reasoned argument. I mean, why would Google support Apple in doing this?

Apple and Amazon recently came to similar terms on search inside of Amazon- they cut out 3rd party non-Apple approved resellers from selling on their platform, so there is pretty direct precedent for Apple pushing for similar agreements:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/21/18624846/amazon-marketpla...

Google locked you out of advertising and that's Apple's fault? I'm not sure you've really got a good grasp of the situation.