Google Facing Fine of Up To $1.4 Billion In India Over Rigged Search Results

An anonymous reader writes: The Competition Commission of India has opened an investigation into Google to decide whether the company unfairly prioritized search results to its own services. Google could face a fine of up to $1.4 billion — 10% of its net income in 2014. A number of other internet companies, including Facebook and FlipKart, responded to queries from the CCI by confirming that Google does this. "The CCI's report accuses Google of displaying its own content and services more prominently in search results than other sources that have higher hit rates. It also states that sponsored links shown in search results are dependent on the amount of advertising funds Google receives from its clients. Ecommerce portal Flipkart noted that it found search results to have a direct correlation with the amount of money it spent on advertising with Google." The company has faced similar antitrust concerns in the EU and the U.S

Comments

A free search engine

[OrangeTide]

So a free search engine returned results in an order I don't like. Oh the humanity!

Re:A free search engine

[KermodeBear]

That's the thing, though. Lots of people use Google, it's true, because it provides the best search results. However, the cost of entry to using another search engine is zero. This isn't like a company that is so expansive that it can keep the prices on a product very low, preventing another company from being able to enter the market.

The cost of entering the search engine market is also very low. You just need someone smart and innovative to build a better algorithm, then some money to buy the server space somewhere.

The cost of entry is low. The cost of switching to another product is zero. Google is the dominant product, but not because it is maliciously destroying all other alternatives.

I'm also not convinced that listing one's own products first is abusive in any way. Google doesn't prevent other services from being listed. Heck, when I search for "free email" I see providers I've never heard of before (GMX, Easy.com), and a few articles about free email services. That looks like a lot of options to me.

As far as I can tell this is just another attempt by a government to squeeze money out of something simply because they can. Google will sigh, roll its eyes, and pay out whatever the government wants because - wait - it doesn't have any choice but to pay that entry fee, otherwise it cannot operate there.

Which organization holds monopolistic power again?

Re:Pay more, get more

[Cassini2]

The article specifically states that rank in sponsored links correlates to advertising spend, which I would expect.

I would also expect a weaker correlation between page rank and advertising spend in the normal links. Firstly, a site with significant advertising spend will hopefully generate more hits, and this should translate into page-rank. Secondly, I would expect a site with significant advertising spend to spend more on its site, which hopefully results in a more informative and more useful site. In turn, this should result in a weak correlation between advertising spend and page rank. Lastly, some correlation probably exists between advertising spending, and hits from the google search spider. This may translate into improved page rank for trending topics.

In all, I would be surprised if there were not correlations between advertising spend and Google page rank. What I do like from Google is that they clearly label the sponsored versus non-sponsored links. Also, Google also has a number of non-commercial sites at the top of many search suggestions, which indicates that they treat sites without advertising spend reasonably.

I don't understand

[surfdaddy]

I mean, has Google ever said it's results are "fair". And of course if you pay for advertising your "sponsored" results should show up more! Seems to me that MS packages Bing, and Cortana, in their OS! Isn't that unfair, too? Apple doesn't allow FaceTime on Android. Isn't that unfair? Canon has chips in their ink cartridges so that you buy from them - is that unfair? Why can't India just go use Bing or something else if they don't like it?