Slashdot Mirror
Group Calls For Google Antitrust Probe
CWmike writes "Advocacy group Consumer Watchdog called on the DOJ to launch a broad antitrust investigation into Google's search and advertising practices and consider a wide array of penalties, including possibly breaking the company up (PDF). The watchdog, along with a mobile entrepreneur and two lawyers representing Google rivals, called for an investigation focusing on a number of issues, including Google's marriage of search results to advertising and its book search service. '...We think all remedies should be on the table, including, we think, the possible breakup of the Internet giant,' said John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog. Adam Kovacevich, senior manager for global communications and public affairs at Google, discounted the criticisms, saying Consumer Watchdog has been 'relentlessly negative' about Google. The group recently questioned the reasons why Google stopped censoring search results in China, and criticized Google's privacy Dashboard as inadequate, Kovacevich said."
I hate those guys.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
While I think constant vigilance is needed with Google, this looks like nothing more than Microsoft once again using other groups to legitimize it's attacks on a competitor that has with consistent success kicked it in the ass at every turn.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Adam Kovacevich, senior manager for global communications and public affairs at Google,
So Google pays Kovacevich.
Breaking up companies always bugs me when the companies has grown primarily based on outright success. This sort of amounts to punishing Google for succeeding. And I have a lot of trouble understanding how there could be a substantial anti-trust issue. They aren't bundling goods in a bad way. The ads are clearly kept separate from searches in that advertisements don't alter Google rankings and you can tell at a glance if something is an advertisement or a search result. So there's no problem here. This is in contrast to some other search engines which specifically allowed companies to pay for higher ranking in search results. The authors of the complaint claim that Google has manipulated its search results to harm potential competitors. Frankly, that sounds more like sour grapes at not having done as well as Google.
If anyone needs to be broken up, it's MS, for collusion between their application software (esp. MS Office) and their OS, and their browser, and now they're trying to take over search from Google with "Bing".
Really? MS needs to be broken up for bundling software? What about Apple for only allowing their software to run on their hardware? Why do they get to stop psystar from selling their clones, but MS can't put their browser on their OS? Also, Office doesn't come bundled with the OS usually, except as a trial, so you're eventually have to choose to buy it (though obviously the trial version and ubiquity encourages that purchase).
I know market share plays a big role here (as in Apple doesn't have enough for it to matter) but they're way worse about their terms of use and forcing people to use their stuff than anyone else.
When are the mobile carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and so forth are going to be held to these anti-trust laws? They have a majority share in markets, have limited competition, and we're paying high costs for things as simple as texting.
Google gives their stuff away for free and I can go anywhere else to search for what I need. People need to figure out their priorities.
it's not fair to bet when the answer is known to be YES
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
So the first reaction is obvious: who's behind this? From the linked article:
Apparently, people who make a business out of gaming Google's algorithm. The very folks that muddy up searches with crap links to various questionable "offers", link farms, and johnny-come-lately web apps. And they're claiming Google has a bias in their search results? Do tell.
Granted - conspiracy theorists might find the possibility of other actors bing involved too hard to pass up. It does look intriguing. But I'm reminded of the whole Occam's Razor thing.
What? You have to use Youtube, Gmail and Wave when you use Google Search? That's actually what you're saying. Sopssa, you're an idiot.
Bullshit.
How is Google "anti-competitive"? And what is with all this whining about privacy?
If you don't want to use Google services, then don't. There's tons of alternatives.
Google Search -> Bing, Yahoo, etc.
YouTube -> dozens of different sites, or just don't use it.
Book Search -> your local library, Amazon.com, etc.
Gmail -> Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, your ISP-provided email, various non-free email services, etc.
Google Maps -> Mapquest, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, etc.
Furthermore, exactly how much does it cost to use Google services anyway?
I calculate that, aside from Google AdWords (for a small business I have on the side), I have spent exactly $0.00 on Google Search, YouTube, Book Search, Gmail, Google Earth, Google Maps, and every other Google service. I'm not about to start complaining about them until I feel like I'm being coerced somehow into opening my wallet for them.
Separating Windows from other MS services made tons of sense, because Windows is a monopoly, and it's nearly impossible to buy a non-Apple desktop or laptop computer without it. There's nothing forcing you to use Google. In fact, it should be easier to type "bing.com" at your address bar instead of "google.com", since it has two fewer letters.
Sure, sounds great, so long as we get to retroactively break up microsoft while we're at it.
The article criticizing the dashboard has already been slashdotted but (oh irony) it was in my chrome cache.
The google dashboard is cleverly "buried" at google.com/dashboard
Navigating to it requires the user to select the "Settings => Google Account settings" dropdown at the top right of the page when you're logged in. Maybe I've been around computers for more than a few minutes and that gives me an advantage, but that felt like a pretty natural way to find this.
I agree that Google needs to take more steps to make user behavior anonymous, but at least they're honest about that and have a means for providing dashboard feedback.
And FWIW I don't see anything in the Microsoft Online Privacy Statement about giving users a way to control their data. Nor in the Yahoo Privacy Center.
Maybe it's just too hard to find.
Speaking of companies getting too big, what say a determination of "too big to fail" automatically gets it broken up? Too big to fail is not good for the economy, even if they got that way by being saints.
Anti-trust is about determining whether a company is limiting competition or using one monopoly market to leverage itself into another.
1. Google has a huge market share in search, but it's got plenty of competition, and there's nothing stopping customers from switching to that competition immediately: there's no switching cost at all.
2. Google might have a monopoly on advertising, but I don't think so. The latest numbers I can find are from Jan. '09, which put Adsense at 57%. It's probably larger than that now. Not likely to be labeled a monopoly, though.
Google has protected itself very well with the Data Liberation Project. That alone will probably scuttle any attempt to prove Google is limiting competition. There's no tying, either.
Put identity in the browser.
What the hell are you talking about? The only thing you need to do search properly is spidering. No one is restricted from doing that by Google. As far as I can tell, Bing certainly does compete with Google in search. It's not Google's fault that no one trusts MS to provide unbiased results, especially after all the instances where searching for "linux" returned results like "how to migrate from Linux to Windows".
My foot it is.. Its their competition that is trying to stir stuff up.
Sure, it may be a valid concern, but when they hide behind fake 'watchdog' group names, you have to question the motivation.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
>>I'm getting tired of people constantly bringing up this argument. Listen carefully: MS is a monopoly. Apple isn't.
I am getting tired of people constantly bringing up this argument. Listen: Apple is anti-competitive, more than MS even with it's so called monopoly.
Except of course you're ignoring the fact that a monopoly created on the basis of customer preference/superior service is not a violation of the Antitrust Laws. Maintaining their search monopoly by continually adding features and increasing the quality of their product, thus preventing competitors from gaining a large enough market share to compete effectively, simply isn't a violation of the Sherman or Clayton Acts.
And I don't see them using their monopoly unfairly to expand into other markets. They do link to their other services, but often the top hit for most of my searches is Wikipedia. The top hit is almost always the most relevant, or at the least, a highly relevant, source.
Why shouldn't they provide trailers on Youtube. It was the most popular provider of online video clips when it was purchased, and continues to be so today. Would you force them to link to another site, even where that site is inferior? Customers want links to Youtube. Also, they do provide links to other popular video sites, if there are relevant hits. Obviously, there will be more Youtube hits, on average, because of the site's popularity. I just don't see any attempt by Google to suppress their competitors.
Being big + better than your competitors =! Antitrust violation
http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-exposed/
Both it and its predecessor link back to grassroots.com.
"At Grassroots Enterprise, we combine the best of cutting-edge Internet technology with high-impact communications to build movements that make an impact.
What does this mean, in plain English? In a nutshell, that means that we help clients:"
The question is who is the client????
Let's take your example, and search for a movie trailer. Avatar. Bing's first result is a fucking blog called avatar-trailer -- at Google's own Blogspot.com, followed by traileraddicts, youtube, youtube and Apple. Google's result's are Youtube first (with thumbnails), then three different services, image search thumbnails, then the fucking blog again, followed by the official site. The problem here isn't Google's data mining, but the fact that Bing's first hit just isn't what you're looking for. Bing is simply not very good. You can't blame Google for that.
That's not true. Why do you think Google does so much datamining? Why do you think they have a wide amount of data what people search for and how much? Why do you think they send a hidden javascript GET request in the background on what search result you click on?
It's called "advertising". They make all their money on it, and the more effective they can make it, the more profitable they are. They datamine because it makes their advertising (AdWords, etc.) more effective. It's a waste, for instance, if a Slashdotter gets shown an ad for feminine hygiene products, but if he's shown an ad for some obscure item he might be interested in, such as D&D paraphernalia or whatever, the likelihood of that resulting in a sale is comparatively very high. Google wants to find out what people are interested in, and show them ads for that stuff.
The other point is that to improve a search engine you need to know a lot about what people search for and which result they click on (which most likely is a good result).
I completely disagree. The only thing you need to know about in a search string is the string itself, and what compares with this. Google is still using the PageRank algorithm: pages with lots of links to them are more popular than pages with few links to them, and get ranked higher in search results. Your prior search history is irrelevant. What your prior search history IS relevant to, however, is the ads which you're shown. These are separate from the search results.
Besides, what exactly are you proposing? You seem to be complaining that Google is too big, and this means they get to mine more data. What's the alternative? Break up their search and advertising functions? How exactly do you expect a search engine to finance itself? The only other big search provider, Microsoft, does it by taking money from their monopoly in OSes.
Face it, a search engine is a free service that takes significant resources to provide, and makes zero money on its own. It has to be financed somehow. I suppose you could try a subscription-based search service, but with the history of for-pay services on the web, I expect that to go over like a lead balloon.
If I use Windows today. That impacts my ability to use something else tomorrow because I have to BUY EVERYTHING ELSE AGAIN.
The moment I buy one bit of Windows payware or a movie on iTunes, I immediately close my options for tomorrow.
Before I can dump that platform, I have to replace all of those 3rd party bits that won't work on any other platform.
I can trivially decide to use Bing (even as a diehard longtime Linux user) one minute and then casually switch back to Google the next.
THAT is the key difference between Google as a "monopoly" or Microsoft or Apple.
"leveraging" is a different issue. However, Apple seems much more likely to be guilt of this than Google.
Monopolies are about distorting the market and preventing users from fleeing to your competitor.
Where does that exist here really?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And FWIW I don't see anything in the Microsoft Online Privacy Statement [microsoft.com] about giving users a way to control their data. Nor in the Yahoo Privacy Center [yahoo.com].
Hmmm, did you try searching with Google?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Microsoft has already been exposed using CWD in the past as part of their fake astroturfing attacks:
http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-exposed/
I'm just saying, as with anything, always consider the source.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
You know as soon as you see a group, then you read into it a bit more and you find out that a lot of the group is composed of competitors. so then it goes from being a group with a legitimate complaint to a group of cry babies who can't compete and are trying to get the government to help them because they are weak.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
You know what? Screw this. I was defending MS and Apple in other posts, but let's actually compare:
Google bought ON2. Why? Apparently so that it can release VP8 as open source for everyone to use so that the <video> debate can be done and we can move on.
Apple? Supposedly, they're going to buy ARM. Why? So they can shut down all the competing ARM devices.
I'm through being reasonable. Google's big, but it definitely doesn't suck.
Put identity in the browser.
No, I don't hate lawyers.
I hate vultures disguised as lawyers.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !