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

[Anonymous Coward]

So you don't see the potentially anti-competitive nature of this? Or are you one of those folks who think whatever business does is okay?

Now, before you go off on a rant, I don't know that Google did anything wrong. But if Google were to exclude competitors from its search engine, you really don't think there is wrong with that? Really?

Re:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

At the end of the day, a search engine is just a website that offers it's opinion of what URLs closest match what you typed. Last I checked opinions are free speech, though I suppose not every country respects free speech.

Then again, even in the US, investment advice firms have been sued for expressing opinions that cause other company's stock to tumble. Though generally the companies that sue these firms are doing so because said firm looked at their books and smelled a rat, and the suing company doesn't want the public to know about that rat's existence. Sometimes those lawsuits are successful anyways though.

Re:A free search engine

[ShanghaiBill]

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

Whether it is "free" or not is irrelevant. In many countries, it is illegal for a company to unfairly exploit its dominance in one market to gain advantage in another market.

Re:A free search engine

[MitchDev]

Seriously. Google is free, they can also present those free search results in the order they want, they aren't the only search engine out there, so whiners can go elsewhere and pound sand...

Re:A free search engine

[MitchDev]

Too bad Google is NOT a monoploy, and it's free, so your whole argument falls completely flat.

Re:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

Yes, really. He's one of those libertarian morons who thinks companies should be allowed to grow into absolute monopolies unimpeded, and then should be able to do whatever they want at that point, free from any kind of consequences because with a monopoly position it's nearly impossible to unseat them or compete against them. He'll probably say something about you wanting to "punish success".

Well first of all, that's a really shitty assumption as he may not be a libertarian at all, second of all, few libertarians favor a monopoly situation.

As a libertarian myself, I view a monopoly as basically the same thing as socialism. And when I say socialism, I'm not talking about welfare, I'm talking about a form of economy where the government owns the means of production and at the end of the day doesn't give a shit about its customers because it has no competitors...which is no different at all from a monopoly.

Re:A free search engine

[OrangeTide]

Commercial speech is not supposed to be free speech. Some countries may have decided they are the same thing, but the general consensus is that a government can regulate a business including their advertising, practices and stock announcements.

Re:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

To add to that, when most people buy a computer, their default search engine is Bing, and if they download firefox, it's yahoo. Yet still, Google manages to hold some 65% (or so) of the market anyways. Probably helped by the fact that the verb "to google" is now basically an actual word in the English language. At any rate, you can't do that while running a bad search engine that nobody likes.

Now some might argue that Google holds a monopoly as far as advertising goes, but that's just not true. Google does have quite an advertising presence, but there are quite a few good alternatives. Google is just very attractive because of the sheer number of ad impressions that they can bring.

Re:A free search engine

[Actually, I do RTFA]

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

So a paid operating system included a free web browser 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:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

Commercial speech is not supposed to be free speech.

That's a strange claim. What law is it based on?

Some countries may have decided they are the same thing, but the general consensus is that a government can regulate a business including their advertising, practices and stock announcements.

Well you aren't allowed to speak in a manner meant to defraud somebody, which is a well established limit to the free speech clause of the first amendment. There are other limitations as well, such as shouting fire in a crowded theater. However none of these discriminate over whether the speech is for commercial purposes or not.

Re:A free search engine

[RabidReindeer]

In the US, banks had been prohibited from selling securities ever since the Great Depression.

But that was against the principles of the Free Market. So Congress got all Libertarian and repealed that prohibition.

Banks started selling securities again and we ended up with the Great Recession.

We obviously didn't return to unrestricted Free Market principles fast enough, if it was only a recession.

Re:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

In the US, banks had been prohibited from selling securities ever since the Great Depression.

But that was against the principles of the Free Market.

Hmm...no, it's not. A Free Market just means that prices are determined by the forces of supply and demand. That's it, pretty simple.

There are typically only four situations where prices are either not influenced by or are lightly influenced by supply and demand:

1) Price floors and price ceilings
2) Socialism (Socialism, contrary to popular belief, simply means that the government owns the means of production and just sets the price to whatever they want)
3) Monopolies (there's only one producer and thus only one entity owns the means of production, so they can create artificial scarcity.)
4) Highly inelastic markets (such as oil) where people will basically pay whatever is asked because they want it so badly.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but your rants about the evils of the Free Market and/or libertarians are highly uneducated.

Re:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

What you're getting at are the limitations to free speech, which yes there are some. Often cited is shouting fire in a crowded theater, which goes against the clear and present danger litmus test established by SCOTUS. What you're alluding to is speech intended to defraud, which yes, there are limits on as well. However in the case of Google, I don't really see any intent to defraud anybody. To promote their own services? Perhaps, but I'm not sure what legal theory that would run afoul of.

It's kind of like saying if you own a store, and a customer walks in, while they're there you offer them a free cup of tea in hopes that they might buy another, because you don't want them to go down the street to buy from a competitor instead. There is a careful balancing act there however as it may run afoul of a few antitrust (aka anticompete) laws, but in order to do that, you there are four criteria you need to meet, among them is an unavoidable necessity, which Google doesn't have (their customers come there completely by choice, it isn't like say Microsoft's Windows where customers HAD to have the platform in order to run their apps that they needed for their livelihood.)

Re:A free search engine

[sexconker]

In my country, all speech is free.

Re:A free search engine

[chipschap]

The problem here is in trying to find a simple answer to a complex question. This is not a matter of having a binary choice of answers to "Monopolies are bad, yes or no?"

Can there be problems when an entity is so large that it completely dominates, and the barriers to entry are high, preventing effective competition? Of course. Are there times when a monopoly-like situation could be in the public interest? Think national defense or possibly electric power utilities (and the counter-argument that the government louses up implementation and regulation only goes so far). Are there intermediate cases? Almost certainly.

So where do you draw the line between abuse of power and Google being in the end a dominant for-profit corporation? Do we really think there's a simple one word or one sentence answer?

Re:A free search engine

[ShanghaiBill]

However, the cost of entry to using another search engine is zero.

This is NOT about other companies entering the search market. It is about Google muscling their way into other markets by unfairly exploiting their dominance in search.

It is not illegal to dominate a market. It is not even illegal to be a monopoly. But it is illegal to use that dominant power unfairly.

Re:A free search engine

[Jawnn]

Google isn't a monopoly. You can use whatever search engine you want. People choose to use Google. Go use yahoo/bing/duckduckgo/etc if youwant.

That's not really the point though, is it? If I run a business that is competition with some Google business unit, what really matters is what search engines are being used by my customers. Odds are that they're using Google, a decision over which I have no control. If Google is messing with search results to penalize me and boost their business, that is clearly and abuse. Wouldn't you say?

Re:A free search engine

[I'm New Around Here]

You're right, the Wintel regime of Microsoft and Intel were not free, unlike Google.

Re:A free search engine

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Wintel machines were free?

Holy shit, I overpaid more than I thought!

Re:A free search engine

[I'm New Around Here]

It's interesting that you think President Bill Clinton and Representative Barney Frank "got all Libertarian" when they did that.

Re:A free search engine

[lgw]

Banks started selling securities again and we ended up with the Great Recession.

The causation there isn't what you imply, not at all. The two banking-related problems were (1) mortgage-backed securities were not required to be traded as standardized instruments on an exchange like normal securities (if they had been, we likely wouldn't have had the mess), thanks to thorough corruption of regulatory agencies, and (2) we bailed out the failures to the tune of trillions.

No one except straw men confuse "corrupt regulatory agency" with "free market". We didn't need any new "bank regulations", just the long-established rules of the exchanges, which are about as "free market" as will ever exist in the world. And then the bailouts turned a disaster into a 5-year-long catastrophe. The more one supports the free market, the more one depends on the governing effect of failure.

Re:A free search engine

[I'm New Around Here]

A paid operating system included features that prevented competitors' programs to run on it. Oh the humanity!

A paid operating system included a memory optimization program that was a copy of a competitor's paid memory optimization program. Oh the humanity!

If the paid operating system's maker had only ever abused it's monopoly by offering a free web browser, no one would have cared.

Re:A free search engine

[Archangel Michael]

Why yes, it is inconceivable to use BING or YAHOO or whatever else is out there.

The greatest threat to liberty are those that say "There ought to be a law" without any thought. Because some idiot always obliges.

Re:A free search engine

[Jawnn]

Well first of all, that's a really shitty assumption as he may not be a libertarian at all

Fair enough. Most of the tools who identify themselves here as libertarian exactly that - "not libertarian at all".

As a libertarian myself, I view a monopoly as basically the same thing as socialism. And when I say socialism, I'm not talking about welfare, I'm talking about a form of economy where the government owns the means of production and at the end of the day doesn't give a shit about its customers because it has no competitors...which is no different at all from a monopoly.

About the kindest thing I can say about that is that your understanding of socialism is simplistic and incomplete. That it is "no different" from a monopoly is patently absurd. There is perhaps no better illustration of that difference than the case of electrical utilities. Where I live now, the power grid is owned and operated by a monopoly. The condition of lines, reliability of service, and just about any quality metric you'd care to list reflects that they are beholden only to their shareholders. In other places where I have lived, the electrical utilities are "owned" and operated by a "public utility district". That operation is beholden to the rate payers, who are also the voters who elect the commissioners to it's board. The difference is, in a word, stark. I can count on one hand the number of times I saw the power go out for more than a split second in 20-some years before moving to this model of free enterprise. The power went out more than that last week alone. The two (one a monopoly and one as close to socialism as it gets) could not be more different when it comes to the things that count.

Re:A free search engine

[IamTheRealMike]

In many countries, it is illegal for a company to unfairly exploit its dominance in one market to gain advantage in another market.

But Google aren't doing that.

The argument of these complaining companies boils down to "our business is so crappy and generic that we have no customer loyalty at all, and as such our customers simply click on whatever result comes first when they search". Therefore they argue "we should be first because otherwise it's not faaaaaaaair".

If the only justification for your existence is that hapless customers end up at your website due to an accident of ranking, why should anyone care about your business? Facebook, for most of its history, wasn't crawlable at all - the entire site was behind the login screen. Literally the only search term they showed up for was Facebook. Guess what - it didn't hurt them at all, because their customers wanted to go there.

Re:A free search engine

[RabidReindeer]

It's interesting that you think President Bill Clinton and Representative Barney Frank "got all Libertarian" when they did that.

So did a lot of Democrats. Of course back then, you were still allowed occasionally to cross ideological boundaries without being labelled a traitor to your party.

Re:A free search engine

[MachineShedFred]

And here in the US, it's been case law for a long time that free speech != unlimited speech. For example: yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater, libel, etc.

Re:A free search engine

[Anonymous Coward]

I have State Farm auto insurance. I recently got a letter in the mail advertising their life insurance policies. That action is the analogue of what you are complaining about. They know I am a customer, and they have my address and name and so forth. Using this information that I'm alive and use insurance, they send me an advert for another service of theirs.

Is that wrong? If not, then what is the difference between this and what Google is doing being an internet Clippy?

If anything, their actions are less aggressive than other companies in most regions. Don't know about the EU, but in the USA, Microsoft defaults the internet browser to their own. You only got the OS, but even text or media documents default to their software. There are certainly other companies that behave the same, but MS is the big fish to easy comparisons.

Does Amazon get brought up on charges for entering new industries or making new services and advertising it across the top of their store pages? Is the problem merely that other companies pay Google to advertise for them, but Google can put their own services in that list (or a better position)? If some one advertises with Google through a sponsored link, they should already know if Google has a competing service and no company would ever advertise the competition's over their own. Don't go to a tourist trap's Hotel and see pamphlets for other places to rest. These cases might just make Google follow Apple and not list (like Apple does in its store) competing products.

My impression of this specific case, is that it is simply India trying to extort money from Google on a case they've had trouble with before.

Re:A free search engine

[RabidReindeer]

Hmm...no, it's not. A Free Market just means that prices are determined by the forces of supply and demand. That's it, pretty simple.

Not according to what our local tax-is-theft basement dwellers say. They assert that any sort of restriction in trading is "interfering with the market." In other words, according to them, the Free Market includes interference with supply-and-demand by restricting the market. And that includes prohibiting a market althogether.

Re:A free search engine

[Archangel Michael]

If Google is messing with search results to penalize me and boost their business, that is clearly and abuse. Wouldn't you say?

No. Google has no obligation to yours or anyone else's customers. Period. End of story.

Re:A free search engine

[Archangel Michael]

I would suggest to you that LINUX arose partially and probably substantially because of the WINTEL monopoly. Monopolies create alternative opportunities, the problem is that most people are unwilling to wait for them.

Re:A free search engine

[Archangel Michael]

Monopolies are only maintained for periods of time, and are doomed to fail eventually. Most people don't have the patience to wait it out. I use LINUX as an opportunity that arose at least partially because of the Microsoft Monopoly. Microsoft couldn't kill what it couldn't control.

Re:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

Not according to what our local tax-is-theft basement dwellers say. They assert that any sort of restriction in trading is "interfering with the market." In other words, according to them, the Free Market includes interference with supply-and-demand by restricting the market. And that includes prohibiting a market althogether.

Well a trade restriction certainly can hamper a free market, though usually it has a less noticeable impact than the four I mentioned above. For example, a tariff typically raises the price of a particular good by artificially increasing scarcity. But tariffs are bad for a different reason. Namely, they end up costing more than they supposedly save.

For example, the steel tariffs that George W Bush implemented were designed to save jobs by raising the price of foreign steel. The problem is, it ended up costing our economy something like $300,000 per job that was saved, meaning that while a few steelworker jobs were saved, many more people in adjacent industries probably lost their job. How does that happen? Well for example, steel is used to make cars, and if domestically produced cars now cost more because we are forced to pay a higher price for steel, then foreign cars are more attractive.

So slap a tariff on foreign cars then you say, right? Well, problem with that is sticking tariffs on foreign cars doesn't make our domestically produced cars anymore attractive to say Australia or Canada than Japanese cars. So, the end result is you're going to sell less cars, which means people might lose jobs. Remember, we're operating on a global economy now, so you can't just assume that forcing domestic purchasers to pay more means you're going to make more. In fact, it very rarely ever works out that way and usually results in a big loss, which is why even the most left leaning economists are overwhelmingly against tariffs (this even includes the New Keynesian economists, who are now in opposition to John Maynard Keynes who strongly believed in tariffs.)

For better or for worse though, politicians left and right typically ignore economists.

Re:A free search engine

[MrL0G1C]

Words means whatever the people using them mean them to mean if there are enough people using them that way. A dictionary does not control what a word means, it simply documents the meaning of the word as it used.

In the UK when many people say socialism they mean having a social security system, a national health service, public pensions, public roads, public emergency services etc. Since that is how they are using the word - that is what it means.

Oxford dictionary:
"The term 'socialism' has been used to describe positions as far apart as anarchism, Soviet state Communism, and social democracy; however, it necessarily implies an opposition to the untrammelled workings of the economic market."

Re:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

Well when I use the term, I need to distinguish government owned means of production from welfare, which are two very different things.

Re:A free search engine

[Anonymous Coward]

In many countries, it is illegal for a company to unfairly exploit its dominance in one market to gain advantage in another market.

But Google aren't doing that.

Are you seriously claiming that Google is not at all using their search position and user base to promote their own services like maps, shopping, finance, etc.? They all come up on top when I search, not on AdWords but on the "organic" results. Facebook example isn't the same, that is a specific brand. But search for generic high-interest terms like maps and shopping and finance and Google comes out on top.

Re:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

So where do you draw the line between abuse of power and Google being in the end a dominant for-profit corporation? Do we really think there's a simple one word or one sentence answer?

Well here's a question: Who is Google abusing? And before you answer end user privacy, note that there are some very good alternatives to everything Google offers.

Re:A free search engine

[Flavianoep]

The problem is that Stalin did not understand Socialism as well.

Re:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

At least in a socialist economy, assuming a democratic political structure, the people could vote in new managers. That's much more difficult when trying to do the same to a privately held monopolistic corporation.

Theoretically yes, but so far in every socialist country that has ever existed, the political elite end up granting themselves favors that the average person cannot obtain. Take for example Venezuela has free elections, but the common people live in the gutter, where the political elite and only the political elite have it made.

Granted, in the US the political elite have a status of their own, but being a politician isn't the only way to obtain that here, nor it is even the most common way. The most common way is exploiting an underserved market (also called disruption,) and/or creating a new market entirely. Which by the way, when you do that, you're making your customers happy in the process, as people only pay money for something if they value it more than they value their money.

I've seen a lot of people lament the fact that among the 20 most powerful/influential people in the US, only one is a government official, which is the US president. That's not something to lament at all however, in fact that's exactly what the founding fathers intended. They knew that democracies fail when any one entity gains too much power, so they were very adamant that there needs to be a balance between all types of power, such as balance between public and private, and balance between haves and have nots. So long as none of them become too powerful, then they all keep one another in check. So if somebody asks me if I am happy with having various CEOs being roughly as influential as the president, I'll answer that yes, I am happy with that.

Re:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

The difference is with socialism or marxism the government tries to make the service affordable to the people, whereas with a monopoly, a corporation tries to make as much profit as possible.

That's almost never the case. For example, in the USSR, cars were so expensive that buying one was a really big undertaking, and even after you paid all of those rubles for it, it took a long time to actually receive it, and even then it wasn't necessarily your car. And it wasn't just cars that were like this, most capital goods were.

Re:A free search engine

[ArmoredDragon]

In other places where I have lived, the electrical utilities are "owned" and operated by a "public utility district". That operation is beholden to the rate payers, who are also the voters who elect the commissioners to it's board. The difference is, in a word, stark. I can count on one hand the number of times I saw the power go out for more than a split second in 20-some years before moving to this model of free enterprise. The power went out more than that last week alone. The two (one a monopoly and one as close to socialism as it gets) could not be more different when it comes to the things that count.

I think that's more of a symptom of you're just beholden to whoever operates it, government or not. Take Arizona and California's relationship for example. California is mostly public run utility, and even then, they can only provide about 75% of the total power demand of the state. The rest of that they obtain from Arizona, and Arizona has so much ample power that it actually sells most of it to neighboring states. Arizona's power grid is also owned by two major companies: SRP and APS, both of which are privately held, for profit companies, generating electricity from hydro power and nuclear power respectively. They both only really answer to the Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates them.

Here's another fun fact about Arizona: Our power grid is so reliable here, that a lot of the world's biggest tech firms have built major datacenters here, even though it's so hot that air conditioning is a real cost concern. In fact, Intel built the world's most advanced semiconductor fabrication plant just a few miles from me. Why? Two reasons: No earthquakes, and a very reliable power grid.

Re:A free search engine

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I'm honestly lost by what you wrote. People cared about offering a free web browser. I've never heard of the other points you brought up.

Re:A free search engine

[sjames]

You're using the over-simplified definition of monopoly they teach in grade school. It's a question of market power. Yes, there are other search engines, but there is one that is big enough for long enough that it's name is regularly verbed as a synonym of searching.

Re:A free search engine

[ShanghaiBill]

I have State Farm auto insurance. I recently got a letter in the mail advertising their life insurance policies. That action is the analogue of what you are complaining about.

No it isn't. State Farm Insurance is not dominant, and no where close to a monopolist. Geico is the leader, followed, by Allstate. State Farm is further down the list. There is nothing illegal about cross marketing if you are not abusing a dominant position. You can't abuse a dominant position if you don't have one.

Re:A free search engine

[ShanghaiBill]

Define "unfairly."

Unfair: Found to be violation of the law by a judge or jury in the appropriate jurisdiction.

Re:A free search engine

[sjames]

If I run a service similar to something Google does, it nearly *IS* inconceivable that more than a small fraction of potential customers will use anything but Google to search for it.

Re:A free search engine

[Lobachevsky]

When's the last time you've seen a cigarette ad on TV?

Re:A free search engine

[Archangel Michael]

If you're running a service similar to Google, and you can't compete, you need government to help you? Color me unimpressed.

On the other hand, if you HAD said "I run a service that IS better than Google", then you wouldn't likely need government assistance.

And frankly, I don't want Government picking winners and losers in the economy, their track record is pretty grim (See Solyndra)

Re:A free search engine

[Archangel Michael]

It is my opinion. And law is nothing more than opinion. Once upon a time, "Separate but equal" was a court's opinion, it isn't any longer. Opinions change. Laws change. Ideas change.

Which makes my opinion equal to all others. And you NEVER heard of any law you disagreed with. EVER?

Re:A free search engine

[sjames]

Wow, you really have no idea how this monopoly thing works, do you?

You might want to actually read Smith.

Re:A free search engine

[Grishnakh]

And when I say socialism, I'm not talking about welfare, I'm talking about a form of economy where the government owns the means of production and at the end of the day doesn't give a shit about its customers because it has no competitors...which is no different at all from a monopoly.

Actually it is different. In theory, the government answers to the people, and the people have the ability to change the government through elections (of course in this country they don't work too well in most places, thanks to our crappy first-past-the-post voting system, though some localities actually have other voting systems which work better). With a corporate monopoly, there is no such ability, since the citizens have no power over the corporation, except perhaps through laws (which don't work well because the kind of laws affecting such corporations are mostly state- or federal-level, not local-level, so unless the monopoly affects the whole state or country the voters won't have much power to change things).

Anyway, you don't sound much like modern liberatarians, who basically just want a government that has a totally hands-off approach to corporations and doesn't do much except run the military.

Re:A free search engine

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but everything you say was (at least as) true of Windows and Internet Explorer back in the 2000s. Did you defend Microsoft on the same grounds?

Google has as strong a monopoly on the search "market", now, as Microsoft did on the desktop OS market in 2000. Back then, the cost of installing Netscape or Opera on your Windows PC? Zero. Or you could buy a PC that had no Windows on it at all - Linux, BeOS, BSD were all perfectly viable options.

And yet Microsoft was universally pilloried for doing exactly the same as what Google is doing now.

Re:A free search engine

[I'm New Around Here]

Apparently you have to R more FAs.

Re:A free search engine

[Bengie]

If a search engine returns bad results, then fewer people will use it. Lets try another headline shall we?

Taxi bad service drops people off at competitors of the requested destination based on how much the competitors pay the taxi service. Yeah, that taxi service will be used a lot. /sarc Search engines are in the unique position that the service they provide almost entirely overlaps with advertising. If I search for computer parts from Newegg and Google results results from Amazon, either I'm going to stop using them or there is a damned good reason they returned Amazon results.

Re:A free search engine

[Archangel Michael]

Actually, my opinions are worth more than a random AC on Slashdot. Because I value my opinion more than you value yours (by hiding behind AC), you too also value my opinion more. Additionally, you responding to my opinion, means that it does have merit and is not irrelevant, negating your whole point.

Re:A free search engine

[Archangel Michael]

Seperate but equal was "law" because it was held in a court "opinion" as such. It isn't my logic that sucks, it is your understanding of how law actually works. Laws are legal, until a court's opinion overrules the law. Additionally, some court opinions become equal to law, such as "separate but equal" was an opinion that had the full force of law (see also Abortion/Right to privacy).

Yes, opinions change, laws change, they are related. If they didn't, then gays wouldn't be getting married. Again, I asked if there was no law you ever disagreed with. Ever?

Now, if you're suggesting that some laws are objective and some are subjective, I would suggest to you that might be correct. If any law is subjective, then it really shouldn't be a law.

Re: A free search engine

[hardeep1singh]

Remind me the reason why you hate Microsoft.

Pay more, get more

[war4peace]

Isn't this how commerce works?
Company A pays 100 bucks for ads, company B pays 10000 bucks for ads, company B gets results displayed first on similar search terms.
Is this illegal?

Re:Pay more, get more

[hcs_$reboot]

Company A pays 100 bucks for ads, company B pays 10000 bucks for ads, company B gets results displayed first on similar search terms.Is this illegal?

When you pay an ad on Google, your own result from the search is flagged with a yellow "Ad" mark. That implies if there is no "Ad" mark, that's not supposed to be a Google Ad. Now Google is known for [trying] not to do evil, and people trust the search results coming from an algorithm based on "relevance", and relevance means the results fit best the search terms ; relevance does/should not take into account "paid a bunch to Google". So having the search results not flagged ad "Ad" being arranged based on what money Google got from some companies is certainly not illegal per say, but that's certainly deception.

Re:Pay more, get more

[war4peace]

Oh, so they're not only doing that for ads, they're also doing that for regular search results?
I agree, if they're paid for, they should go to the ads section.

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.

Re:Pay more, get more

[penguinoid]

; relevance does/should not take into account "paid a bunch to Google".

No, but "paid a bunch to Google" probably correlates to "has a bunch of money" which probably correlates to "relevance/popularity". Although it would be interesting to know if Google has finally decided to commit search engine suicide by replacing relevant results with sponsored ones.

Re:Pay more, get more

[rossdee]

As long as it has the word sponsored by the result I don't see a problem.

Re:Pay more, get more

[ArmoredDragon]

You mean like how that show Under the Dome always has product placement integrated into the script? In fact, I have a working theory about the show's plot that hasn't been revealed yet:

If you notice, basically every character in that show goes around carrying a windows phone and/or a surface tablet. One of the aliens told the town that the dome was sent down to protect. My guess is that since so many Microsoft products were under the dome, somehow that billion dollars worth of surface tablets ended up there and not in customer's hands, the dome was sent to protect the world from surface tablets and windows phones by trapping them all inside. The people inside are screwed of course, but at least the rest of the world is safe.

So there, you don't need to watch that show anymore because you already know how it ends (besides, the directing and writing sucks anyways. They scored some good acting talent, but even good actors can't make that show look believable.)

Re:Pay more, get more

[hcs_$reboot]

Oh, so they're not only doing that for ads, they're also doing that for regular search results?

TFS is not 100% clear about that. Maybe only Google services (favored but not sponsored) ...

Re:Pay more, get more

[MachineShedFred]

I really don't see how what is described in TFS is different from charging more for prime time TV advertising rather than daytime TV rates. You pay more, you get more eyeballs. That's how advertising has always worked.

Re:Pay more, get more

[dj245]

You mean like how that show Under the Dome always has product placement integrated into the script? In fact, I have a working theory about the show's plot that hasn't been revealed yet:

If you notice, basically every character in that show goes around carrying a windows phone and/or a surface tablet. One of the aliens told the town that the dome was sent down to protect. My guess is that since so many Microsoft products were under the dome, somehow that billion dollars worth of surface tablets ended up there and not in customer's hands, the dome was sent to protect the world from surface tablets and windows phones by trapping them all inside. The people inside are screwed of course, but at least the rest of the world is safe.

So there, you don't need to watch that show anymore because you already know how it ends (besides, the directing and writing sucks anyways. They scored some good acting talent, but even good actors can't make that show look believable.)

They lose immersion every time that immaculately spotless Prius is in the scene. Not that I was that immersed anyway, with all the ridiculous things that go on in the show. My wife and I watch it as a comedy program now.

So a country with zero respect for our IP laws...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is going to fine Google for manipulating search results?

India is corrupt

[Anonymous Coward]

India is corrupt and they just want money. They see all other investigations and they want their own chunk of money.

Re:India is corrupt

[Grishnakh]

There's nothing corrupt about holding companies accountable for their violations of the law (including anti-trust law), and then fining them heavily when they're convicted. It sure beats the US/EU way of going to all that legal trouble, and then slapping them on the wrist with a paltry fine that's written off as "the cost of doing business" since they made far, far more by doing the illegal thing than they have to pay in fines as a consequence.

(The EU isn't quite as bad as the US in assessing paltry fines, but their fines are still paltry.)

Re:India is corrupt

[MitchDev]

Dear Google, cut India off of Google. Problem solved.

Re:India is corrupt

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, just give up that billion sets of eyeballs in a rapidly developing nation. Who needs them?

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?

So... they got what they paid for?

[EndlessNameless]

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.

So sponsoring a link with more money gets it shown more frequently? Are they complaining about this?

It sounds like what they should expect---maybe even get in writing---when they give Google money.

Click farms

[GuB-42]

India is known to host click farms. Where people are paid to spend their days liking pages and clicking ads.
And it seems that they found that Google prefers to get paid for ads rather than allowing said click farms to artificially boost search results.

The most ridiculous is this part :

It also states that sponsored links shown in search results are dependent on the amount of advertising funds Google receives from its clients.

Isn't it the whole point of sponsored links, aka ads?

Re:Click farms

[Actually, I do RTFA]

There are two different things. Ads and search results. The fact that both are being investigated shouldn't cause you to dismiss one because the ads part is stupid.

Although, I don't know what exactly they're saying about the ads.

Re:Anti competitive as well

[chilenexus]

Google intentionally has everyone disavow your search engine links

Source?

Re:Do No Evil..

[phantomfive]

The problem is, everyone has their own definition of evil. If you ask Bill Gates, he'll say he did no evil (and has said that hobbyists are immoral). If you ask Steve Ballmer, he'll say he's done no evil, that everything he did was fair and by the rules. Google doesn't feel that spying on people is evil.

I don't know about Larry Ellison, he might take 'evil' as a badge of honor.

Slashdot links to itself! See top of page.

[raymorris]

Omg now Slashdot is doing it too! Right at the top of the page there are links to Slashdot and Dice's other pages and services. We should sue them for a hundred quadrillion dollars!

Yeah, that's how web pages work. They have links. A page on a company's site will primarily link to the company's other pages.

IF Bing, Yahoo, etc. didn't exist, and Google was virtually the only way to find web sites, THEN they would have a special position that would justify special laws. Since Bing is the DEFAULT search engine on Windows, Google isn't in a special position where they should be forced to promote Microsoft.

History of doing this?

[Stan92057]

Didn't Google get sued and lost once before for the same thing only more deviantly? Didn't they putting paid ads on top that looks just like a normal search result? no notice of Paid ad or anything. Google lost my trust long ago but the competition isn't much better anyways.

All Google Results Are Rigged

[sudon't]

Some countries are forcing Google to "rig" its search results, others are complaining about it. Regardless, all Google results are rigged in one way, or another, even at the individual level. For a long time, Altavista had a pure keyword search engine, but that disappeared at some point. I'm not sure who, if anybody, provides neutral results, based solely on keywords, anymore. I feel lucky that there are at least a couple of search engines that claim to not be spying on me.

IF they are doing that...

[tlambert]

IF they are doing that...

Which they aren't, since there's no money in it for them, getting involved in law suits,

Weird, Microsoft is involved.

[stongef]

FTA: "Microsoft has made an extensive submission on Google's alleged abuse of power, according to the report, seen by ET". Surprise, surprise ... I don't trust big companies in general, but I trust Microsoft + any country's justice system and even less than I trust Google ...

Is that how Sponsored Links work?

[thedavidcathey]

It also states that sponsored links shown in search results are dependent on the amount of advertising funds Google receives from its clients." Isn't that what the sponsors are paying for?

Re:So a country with zero respect for our IP laws.

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

US laws apply outside the US if the other country signs treaties that say they'll follow those laws.

Google Terms and Conditions

[windyweather]

Maybe it's time for Google to have Terms and Conditions... For Countries. Quote: If you want google to be available within your countries boundaries - based on IP address and nothing else by the way since we aren't going to check anything but this - then you as a sovereign country agree to the following: (1) Google does not support "Right to be forgotten" or any other censorship that you may want. Forget it or forget google. (2) Google does not fiddle with it's search results based on your country preferences. If you don't like the results, seek help with an SEO expert, or google will just not be present in your country / jurisdiction. (3) Google will abide by the terms and conditions that it has published. If you don't like them, then don't use Google or don't have google in your country. (4) We are running the best search engine that we can, based on our own conscience and our business plan. If you don't like these terms and conditions, make your own search engine. Up to you. End Quote: Seems like it's time for this.