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scarface74

A quick Google lookup for the definition of “consumer”

a person who purchases goods and services for personal use.

And definition of “customer”

a person or organization that buys goods or services from a store or business.

In both cases the consumer or customer is the person paying. Who is paying and what is the “product”?

I hate to go back to the tired saying but, the people who search on Google are the “product” that Google is selling to the customer - the advertiser.

Why would anyone expect Google to optimize for anyone else except for the paying customer/consumer?

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That's why I said in "American vernacular" because it's not the dictionary definition. Typically businesses/regulators distinguish between business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions, the former is what you're describing, the latter is what OP is describing, and relates to any transaction between a business and an individual. it's also why we have markets like "consumer electronics" which refers to products sold to individuals, ie "consumers", and not industrial/business sectors.

I don't want to argue semantics though, since it's very clear to any native English speaker what "consumer" means in the context of regulation - it means individuals, not businesses. I get that the connotation of the word may be lost in translation, and that's what I was getting at.

In addition, "payment" isn't strictly hard currency, it's the exchange of value. Consumers are purchasing Google services with their data. They aren't the literal product that Google sells to advertisers, the data is.

> They aren't the literal product that Google sells to advertisers, the data is.

Google does not sell data. They sell attention, like all advertising companies. They make a lot of money because 1. they have a lot of attention to sell and 2. they do a better job than most advertisers at finding the particular bits of attention that will be most valuable to the buyers. The data is part of what allows them to do that, or so the story goes.

Also, although I agree with your conclusion, I think you've been slightly misled as to what matters in the antitrust investigation. It is not the colloquial understanding of the word "consumer" that matters, it's the legal one. I'm under the impression that, as it happens, the legal one here comports with the colloquial one. I.e., what matters is the impact of Google's policies and practices on individual private citizens and residents. The impact on other businesses does not matter except inasmuch as such impact transitively harms private consumers.

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