New Study Accuses Google of Anti-competitive Search Behavior

An anonymous reader writes: Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu — the man who coined the term "network neutrality" — has published a new study suggesting that Google's new method of putting answers to simple search queries at the top of the results page is anticompetitive and harmful to consumers. For subjective search queries — e.g. "What's the best [profession] in [city]?" — Google frequently figures out a best-guess answer to display first, favoring its own results to do so. The study did some A/B testing with a group of 2,690 internet users and found they were 45% more likely to click on merit-based results than on Google's listings. Wu writes, "Search engines are widely understood as key mediators of the web's speech environment, given that they have a powerful impact on who gets heard, what speech is neglected, and what information generally is reached. ... The more that Google directs users to its own content and its own properties, the more that speakers who write reviews, blogs and other materials become invisible to their desired audiences."

Comments

Re:Not surprising and probably not a problem

[bluefoxlucid]

Wu claims Google's first informational result is a "search result", rather than differentiating between content and information searches. Google isn't providing its own result first; it's providing an answer to a semantic question.

There are three types of searches: Official contact (what is the home page of Microsoft?); research (find me a bunch of information about lions); and simple information (what time is it in Brazil?). Google often gives any simple query related to a particular entity an Official Contact result first (e.g. searching for Windows 10 will give you the Microsoft page for Windows 10 first), and starts with a Simple Information result if the search looks informational (e.g. what is the national animal of Scotland?).

Wu fails to differentiate, instead seeing a search engine as a research platform: if you ask for any topic, you are asking for a library of writings on the topic, rather than trying to find a specific and utterly small piece of information.