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Google Says Microsoft Is Driving Antitrust Review
GovTechGuy writes "On Friday we discussed news that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott opened a probe into whether Google ranks its search listings with an eye toward nicking the competition. Google suggested the concerns have a major sponsor: Microsoft. In question is whether the world's biggest search engine could be unfairly disadvantaging some companies by giving them a low ranking in free search listings and in paid ads that appear at the top of the page. That could make it tough for users to find those sites and might violate antitrust laws. Abbott's office asked for information about three companies who have publicly complained about Google, according to blog post by Don Harrison, the company's deputy general counsel. Harrison linked each of the companies to Microsoft."
But Google's search algorithm is published -- there's even a helpful book about it, Amy Langville's "PageRank and beyond" which demonstrates that it's no more complicated than the linear algebra you learned in your sophomore year of engineering school.
* Foundem -- the British price comparison site that is backed by ICOMP, an organization funded largely by Microsoft. They claim that Google’s algorithms demote their site because they are a direct competitor to our search engine. The reality is that we don’t discriminate against competitors. Indeed, companies like Amazon, Shopping.com and Expedia typically rank very high in our results because of the quality of the service they offer users. Various experts have taken a closer look at the quality of Foundem’s website, and New York Law School professor James Grimmelmann concluded, “I want Google to be able to rank them poorly.”
* SourceTool/TradeComet - SourceTool is a website run by parent company TradeComet, whose private antitrust lawsuit against Google was dismissed by a federal judge earlier this year. The media have noted that TradeComet is represented by longtime Microsoft antitrust attorneys, and independent search experts have called SourceTool a “click arbitrage” site with little original content.
* myTriggers - Another site represented by Microsoft’s antitrust attorneys, myTriggers alleges that they suffered a drop in traffic because Google reduced their ad quality ratings. But recent filings have revealed that the company’s own servers overheated, explaining their reduced traffic.
The basic idea behind PageRank may be published, but there is a lot more to do with it, such as all the logic for detecting link farms and other forms of intentional manipulation, which Google does not make public.
There is also a ton of logic behind trying to determine in a page what is "important," and that comes down to parsing html and making inferences as to what is the "main part", what is a heading, and so on. And then there is logic for determining what is duplicate content....again a very complex problem. The list goes on. If you think this is simple or straightforward, I'd say you are highly mistaken.
sure do. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100904101642564
note that it shows a: the antitrust links and b: why anyone can make a google search engine by their own choice
Really, why should google ever publish the "how we do our job"? that's not their job, and it's not microsoft, and it's not anyone's.
Dave Heiner, Microsoft Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. You're looking for Paragraph 6 if the whole thing is TL;DR. Completely admits they've been behind some of these hijinks at the DOJ and the European Commission, and so on.
Help stamp out iliturcy.