1) Doesn't it make sense for them to do that? After offering the search engine for free for ages (not that paid search engines are a thing) and playing an important role in building the internet? For most, all the internet they know is thanks to Google
2) Wouldn't you do the same? Keep in mind they're a public company and we know how incentives are aligned when you're a public company
I’m no google fan but I don’t think evil is an appropriate word nor would I call them a monopoly when it comes to search. There are plenty of other options out there from all over the world, the fact that they aren’t that great isn’t googles fault (and it would need to be for them to be considered a monopoly).
There are lots of great search engines. But when Google has the largest share of web analytics and can literally track you around the internet, how can other search engines who respect you as a user even have a chance? Give search engines a level playing field. Google is the default search engine on the most popular web browser. Google is the default search engine on the largest mobile operating system. Please stop defending Google. They have a monopoly on search, and its time for them to get the MS IE treatment.
Again, I stay away from google for privacy reasons but just because they don’t respect privacy doesn’t have anything to with monopoly status. You can argue for privacy protecting legislation against google but again, that has nothing to do with monopoly status. Other search engines could choose to track you as well. That is a business decision not unfair advantage.
It'll be very challenging to win a serious court case where the Google search monopoly could be conquered by a user typing bing.com at the top of the screen. Never before has a 'monopoly' been so easy to stop using.
Citation? For one, I don't think Facebook uses Google ads.
It's the other way around, for these and other such shennanigans by other such megacorporations colonizing our protocols (rather than "building the internet"): yeah, it might make sense for them, in a selfish, short-term, myopic kind of way, but it harms the greater good. Apart from making it rather deplorable how they ate/eat chalk to get their foot in the door.
> For most, all the internet they know is thanks to Google
How so? Because most people "just google things"? You might as well say all the internet they know is thanks to whoever provided the electricity at the time.
People who make good websites made the interwebs something to flock something to in the first place, even though hardly anyone in the real world cared or knew about the web. These days, everybody is on the web because everybody is on the web, and people share workarounds for the latest corporate BS, and "hope" they will "listen" etc. That there are people for whom that's all they know doesn't mean those should be catered to.
*not that this was your point
They then did a version of Hotmail with a worse GUI, but virtually limitless disk space.
Google just poaches talent away from more deserving companies, and puts it to work making their products a little worse every year than they were the year before. I'm not thankful for Google. I'm sad because they stifle progress.
which role would that have been? internet was fine before google streamlined the web.
> For most, all the internet they know is thanks to Google
search, youtube and maps were great additions to the web, but i think most ppl here can share the mixed feelings about bringing the masses on the web.
4) Shouldn't we, as members of a democratic system of government, be concerned that this has become the case? And express that concern to others in order to spread understanding and continue the democratic process?
5) Isn't it strange how Hacker News comments so often take the position of large companies, as if those individuals aren't going to suffer from a small number of multi-trillion dollar companies ingesting entire industries in the long term?
I would very much like Google to experiment with new technologies and services (translate, flights, etc.) but I wish they'd spin them out as separate services and have them pay for placement in search results or fight it out for SEO placement.
As it stands they can launch mediocre products that do well as the new products get "free" premium placement.
They are in enterprise, but I digress
There isn't any point being fearful/hateful/etc about stuff that it doesn't make sense for someone to do. If someone is acting against their own self interests it makes sense to speak persuasively. And they will likely stop doing it in time even if left to themselves.
It's right here! http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html This was who they were and what they believed! Check out Appendix A, it's entirely about the mixed motivation of funding a search engine with ads.
Yet not only did they make an ad company that has a search engine, they increasingly made their ads less distinguishable from organic results over time. Big highlighted yellow boxes have become search results with a tiny Ad marker hidden in the paragraph. Because deceiving people into clicking on ads is more profitable than getting them to the best organic result.
When DoubleClick was bought they promised they'd keep the data separate to get the acquisition approved. Once it happened, they merged the data. Now they're saying the same about your Fitbit data...
Yes, the entire concept of Google is against Larry and Sergey's original paper on the matter. They sold out, and college Larry and Sergey would be ashamed of their present day counterparts.
So if you look at the Appendix example below,
> A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries
...That is actually what Google itself is doing today, in a very real and practical sense. They claim it's different because ads aren't search results, but since users can't tell the difference anymore, the result is the same.
Another example in the Appendix is about trademark squatting:
> For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine.
Google does a slightly modified version of this too: It places competitors' ads above the real result for the airline's brand. This means that, in order for the airline to be the "top result" for it's own brand name, it has to pay Google for an ad that Larry and Sergey conclude "shouldn't be required".
If you search for "best buy" on Google and aren't blocking ads, you'll notice the ad at the top is a Best Buy ad. There's no good reason they should have to buy that ad, because they're obviously the best result, the user already knew what they were looking for. But if you want to be the "top result" on Google search, you have to pay for it now.
And we've hit that mixed motivation issue with an ad-based search engine: Google makes a lot of money when you click an ad. It doesn't make a lot of money when you click the organic search results. So Google has a huge incentive to make the ads look like search results, which is why Google search ads now look nearly identical to search results.
Be warned, you didn't care now when they abuse their power against others ,don't expect anyone left to carr when they use it against you.
The way people so casually excuse immoral behaviour, as if we have no obligation to do the right thing, truly sickens me.
They've made a fortune so instead of saying they've "offered it for free" let's point out that they are not a charity. Google became famous for saying that they will list the best SE when ranking, not Google properties or ads.
>>and playing an important role in building the internet? For most, all the internet they know is thanks to Google
Even if you said is true, another one would have done what Google did. By the way, internet as we know it today, would have happened without Google. In fact, MS and Apple did a LOT more for the internet...a computer in every home and all.