Google Self-promotion
WSJ: Google increasingly is promoting some of its own content over that of rival websites; http://eicker.at/GoogleSelfPromotion
Tagged: Antitrust Inquiry Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
Gerrit Eicker
FTC: Inquiry on Apple and Google
The FTC has begun an antitrust inquiry into the close ties between the boards of Apple and Google; http://tr.im/kv66
Gerrit Eicker
Google Book Search: Antitrust Inquiry
The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an antitrust inquiry into Google Book Search settlements; http://tr.im/jZp2
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Gerrit Eicker
NYT: “The inquiry does not necessarily mean that the department will oppose the settlement, which is subject to a court review. But it suggests that some of the concerns raised by critics, who say the settlement would unfairly give Google an exclusive license to profit from millions of books, have resonated with the Justice Department. … If the Justice Department decides to take action against the settlement, it will not be the first time that Google has found itself in the sights of federal regulators. Last year, Google abandoned a prominent advertising partnership with Yahoo after the department threatened to go to court to block the deal.”
SEL: “In contrast with the Yahoo action, which Google overtly went after, it’s hard to argue that Google somehow set itself up for a potential antitrust action in this case. The settlement terms came about as a result of a lawsuit, and through negotiations with those who supposedly were working in the interest of authors and publishers. Now, more and more are speaking out that those interests are not properly being looked after and question the larger implications of a deal in general.”
pC: “While Google agreed to share the revenues with the publishers and authors, libraries are worried that Google would have solitary and overwhelming control over access to ‘orphan books’ – titles whose authors and rights-holders have essentially abandoned. Since there’s no other online entity with access to these abandoned books, Google could effectively raise prices for access to the collection and libraries would have nowhere else to go for them.”
Gerrit Eicker 07:45 on 14. December 2010 Permalink |
WSJ: “The Internet giant is displaying links to its own services – such as local-business information or its Google Health service – above the links to other, non-Google content found by its search engine. … Critics include executives at travel site TripAdvisor.com, health site WebMD.com and local-business reviews sites Yelp.com and Citysearch.com, among others. … The EU received a complaint from a shopping-search site that claimed it and other similar sites saw their traffic drop after Google began promoting its own Product Search service above conventional search results. … The issue isn’t entirely new. The company for several years has used prominent links to services such as Google Finance and Google Maps to boost their popularity, with varying results.”
Google: “When someone searches for a place on Google, we still provide the usual web results linking to great sites; we simply organize those results around places to make it much faster to find what you’re looking for. For example, earlier this year we introduced Place Search to help people make more informed decisions about where to go. Place pages organize results around a particular place to help users find great sources of photos, reviews and essential facts. This makes it much easier to see and compare places and find great sites with local information.”
SEL: “The question of Google’s right to refer traffic to its own sites is once again in the center of policy debate. The European Commission is looking at this issue as part of its larger anti-trust investigation against Google. It’s also a question at the heart of the federal regulatory review of the ITA acquisition. … What are or should be Google’s ‘obligations’ to third party publishers? This is the central question it seems to me. – These are all very difficult issues and become extremely problematic at the level of execution. If regulators start intervening in Google’s ability to control its algorithm and its own SERP it sets a bad precedent and compromises Google’s ability to innovate and maybe even compete over time. … It has also been held by courts that the content of SERPs is an ‘editorial’ arena protected by the First Amendment. So hypothetically Google could only show Google-related results and still be within the law. … Google’s dominance of the market may decline in a few years. I’m not a laissez-faire, free-market lover but the market may take care of itself. Facebook and others are working on ways to discover content that don’t require conventional search-engine usage.”
TC: “Displaying local results this way is a little less in your face, but the end result is the same. In both cases, the main link still goes to the businesses’ own websites, but the Google Places links are also prominent. Either way, the message is clear to local businesses: list your profile in Google Places and you will have a better shot at appearing at the top of the first search results page. – Are these results better for users? It depends on how good are the Google Places listings. Some of them are very good, I will admit. But try any local search and I bet you will consistently get Google Places results, sometimes taking up most of page – not always at the very top, but always as a block. They can’t all be better than results for businesses which don’t happen to have a Google Places listing. Remember, Google Places is still fairly new and developing.“