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Comment by mancerayder | Hacker News Reader

Isn't there also a big conflict of interest between Google "the search engine of the world and indexer of all information" and Google "seller of ads"?

When I search for something, some stuff comes in front of other stuff, and sometimes that stuff isn't the best result because of a monetary incentive. If you criticize that, you're given myriad reasons why. All I know is, it's easier to find information on Reddit sometimes than Google, to the point where I add "reddit" to the search keywords, even though I barely use Reddit as a commenter or follower of subs.

And everyone hates the SEO junk that now dominates the first few pages. It's an ugly thing and not in the service of people.

Here's an idea. Separate Google seller of ads and room in the search results, from Google the "Wikipedia-like" provider of information for humanity.

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> Isn't there also a big conflict of interest between Google "the search engine of the world and indexer of all information" and Google "seller of ads"?

The biggest conflict, nobody seems interested in fixing: That Google has a strong disinterest in getting you to click on search results, when they could get you to click on ads.

It's why since Google's inception, ads have become less and less distinguishable from search results, to the point that ordinary users aren't able to tell the difference anymore.

I get multiple reports per week of malware and scams that can be traced directly back to "I hit search instead of typing the URL, and clicked the first link".

Google should be forbidden from inlining advertisements with search results, and required to make them vastly more distinct.

Ironically, two academics very concerned about this conflict of interest when they wrote a study about search engines were Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Amazing what billions of dollars will do to your ethical standards.

Indeed. I think, increasingly, Google does not want people going straight to results.

I can't find the quote but I thought their original intent was to get people off the search results page (and to their "real" destination), but I think that's a position they've largely retreated from. That and "we label it clearly".

If Google promotes ads over organics, then users can stop using Google search, no? But people seem to like Google Search.

Users often don't understand what's happening. For instance, many times the ad that pretends to be the top result, is one the brand had to pay for to avoid squatting.

People who get scammed or get malware from Google Ads don't realize a Google Ad was involved. They think they got "hacked" or did something wrong.

Sure, there are those of us who know better, but they aren't the oblivious majority that is where Google's income comes from.

Last I recall, Google was one of the main contributors to wikipedia, wikipedia allows Google to do things Google can't.

But if the US state, foundations or provide donations could create a "non-partisan" search engine, they don't need to seize the Google search to do that. They could just launch it.

I would note that a lot of Google's activities involves foiling SEO. Sure, they allow it too but if Google's search criteria was a fixed target, 100% of the results would be garbage spam. A lot of what Google does now is bad but the company is still a wall against a vast sea of worse. Most criticisms of "big tech" doesn't take into account that the troll/spam/SEO complex exists independently from these companies - sure, this complex is a product of how these companies operate but it's also a product of how things have to work in the Internet and frightfully enough, the cost of doing involves the cost of beating this complex back (establishing boundaries, some of which are nasty compromises) no matter who's in running the connections. And where does this money come from?

I'd say the relationship between Wikipedia and Google is symbiotic, at least for now. They collaborated on merging the Wikidata dataset and Google's Knowledge Graph, so now the entities can be connected.

Google gets the benefit of their dataset for their knowledge boxes. You can see the difference in the source code of searches looking at the entity ids, /g/ is Google's own data and /w/ is wikidata sourced.

I see the relationship Google has with Wikipedia similar to the one it had with DMOZ. I imagine at some point in the future that Google will see them as surplus to requirements, though not quite sure how they replace 5 million volunteer editors economically.

> Isn't there also a big conflict of interest between Google "the search engine of the world and indexer of all information" and Google "seller of ads"?

The basic concept of a search engine supported by advertisements within its results existed before Google and has been applied by essentially all of Google's relevant competitors, including the preferred "ethical" platform DuckDuckGo. If this is to be banned in Google's case it should fairly extend to all sites operating on that model, which would essentially demolish the entire search engine infrastructure as it has been understood to exist since the days of AltaVista.

Targeting Chrome by contrast seems a lot more reasonable. It also enjoys a clear precedent viz. IE.

Your argument gives a good reason that targeting search engines makes no sense. But Chrome being a loss leader and Firefox and Safari being reasonable competitors give a reason targeting the browser make no sense. IE, anti-trust action against Google makes no sense, it's pure political grandstanding. "The world sucks so we should attack X powerful cog in the system" says Y powerful cogs in the system (politicians, other corporations, mass media like the NYTimes, etc).

> Separate Google seller of ads and room in the search results, from Google the "Wikiepdia-like" provider of information for humanity

How is the latter supposed to make money? Why not just separate Google the company selling ads on Google properties from Google the ad exchange for half the Internet.

> separate Google the company selling ads on Google properties from Google the ad exchange for half the Internet

This is where I think the Justice Department and state Attorneys General can win. I don't know why the Justice Department is rushing a case on search dominance, and it definitely doesn't make sense to target Chrome.

Go after the ad tech stack.

> I don't know why the Justice Department is rushing a case on search dominance, and it definitely doesn't make sense to target Chrome.

Because Google has an abusive search monopoly that harms consumers by providing a shitty experience and there are very few alternatives. First they built their monopoly, through a combination of producing an exceptional product and then gradually building moats around it; then once it was entrenched they started squeezing out competitors in their results (eating the ecosystem) and providing an ever worsening service as they focused on maximizing revenue extraction at the cost of service quality.

Google is providing a mediocre service by their own early (and correct) definition. They're aggressively violating numerous things they spelled out as hallmarks of bad search engines in the beginning of the company. Their product sucks by their own words.

Google has a browser monopoly and it has been integral to providing a moat for their search monopoly (which is one of the reasons they did it; as with Android). It absolutely makes sense to target that gigantic moat protecting their search monopoly. The search monopoly requires the moats to survive long-term at this point, since their search service is getting worse by the year. Peel off the moats shielding it from competition and the search engine either has to improve considerably, or competition will start eating its market share.

IE, Edge, Firefox and Opera are all de facto dead. The only browsers remaining that have a user base of significant size are Chrome and Safari mobile. It's not enough competition to only have two companies (both trillion dollar companies at that) providing the browsers for nearly all Internet users globally.

Because Google has an abusive search monopoly that harms consumers by providing a shitty experience and there are very few alternatives.

There are a number of alternative search engines (Bing, Duck Duck Go, etc). These tend to have the same crap (to me) approach. But they're drive by the same exigencies - to help deliver advertising, to foil the most garbagy SEO and monetize the rest, to provide "answers" rather than just key-word search (IE, dumb things down for the masses).

Google has a browser monopoly and it has been integral to providing a moat for their search monopoly

I'm writing on Firefox, I love firefox and I've heard good things about Edge. Of course, Firefox is supported by Google and uses Google by default but I spent a year on Duck Duck Go and unlike Firefox, it really does suck. To expand, it's suckiness isn't lack of money but because it's clearly trying to do everything, all the bad things interface-wise, that Google does ("answers", weight-to-new-and-recent result, etc) but worse.

Edit: It's really terrible that all interfaces have become interfaces for morons, that the paradigm for any company is "we give you few choices and use sophisticated AI to give you the choice we think you'd want 'cause giving you choices and tools means you might not decide what we want you to decide". But this paradigm doesn't actually relate to companies being monopolies. It really is what some portion of people want/need and it serves any company that doesn't have organized nerds as their customer base. I'd love to get past this but "break up Google" doesn't address this.

> harms consumers by providing a shitty experience

But where are the search engines providing a better experience? I've tried Bing. I've tried Duck Duck Go (although DDG is mostly Bing). I've found Google to be better which is why I still use it. Microsoft even tried paying me to use Bing!

Moreover, I am no expert on antitrust law but I can't see how it helps the Justice Department's case to rush to file before the election.

The SEO junk has ruined Google.

By having rules that ensure websites are perfectly accessable and use https and perfectly structured HTML has lead to a corporate takeover of the first page.

The average programmer doesn't have time to learn the rules, but they surely understand how to program better than interns writing tutorials or the average medium article.

Btw I'll be adding 700 words to every recipe on my website.

Wait, are you suggesting accessibility is bad?

Irrelevant content that is "accessible" is worse than relevant content that's only accessable by 99.9% of the population.

And 99.9% of content isn't written by programmers who refuse to use quality hosting tools.

Do you hate grandma's who want their own website?

She makes delicious Cake and has a secret you won't find because it uses http that their grandson set up 5 years ago.

Or how about the single mom of 5 trying to sell dresses, guess we should put an expensive big corporation on the front page instead of the local seamstress.

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