Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally • Hacker News Board

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#21

Post by natch » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

benchaney wrote: post #11

natch wrote: post #6

Tell me if I've got this right: Say you have some businesses in industry X that all rely on advertising. Say one of those businesses also happens to own the dominant advertising platform that businesses in industry X need to use, in order to effectively find customers. (Special note for those subset of HN readers who tend not to read: Yes there may be other platforms, but before you present that as an objection, note…

You are assuming that running and advertising business is profitable. If this is the case then yes, running an advertising business plus X always gives you an advantage over just doing X. This is true no matter what X is, even if X is unrelated to advertising, or even just doing nothing. I’m not sure in what sense this means that the game is rigged (unless of course the bidding process is unfair).

Does it need to be profitable? It seems to me that if it siphons money off from competitors, that's already enough to hurt the competitors relative to itself. In fact not only does the advertising not need to be profitable, even the sales of X do not need to be profitable, for the competitors to be harmed... dumping would be the extreme example of that.

You are talking about a different aspect of the scenario, where the company is reaping profits from advertising. Sure, that's kind of beside the point though. Which is why it's important to recognize that the harm happens even without the advertising being profitable.

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#22

Post by sqdbps » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:31 PM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #19

> Kelkoo CEO Richard Stables says the firm’s revenue from general search traffic dropped by 62% last year, to €2.3 million. In 2018, he projects a two-thirds drop to €800,000. I decided to go to http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/ to check it out. This website is so clearly a scam created for this antitrust case. I went ahead to compare two cameras: the Canon EOS 1D X Mark II (a $4k camera) to a Canon Ixus 275 HS ($200 camera),…

>This is pure bullshit, and bullshit journalism.

It's the "Wall Street Journal", a Murdoch business publication that approves of every business as long as it isn't Google.

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#23

Post by admax88q » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

benchaney wrote: post #20

admax88q wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point, it's not that doing two profitable things is better than one, which you're right is always the case. It's the more specific case of running businesses X and Y where X is dependent upon buying services that Y provides. If you have a monopoly on Y (advertising), then it's easier to complete in X, because everyone else in X has to buy their Y services from you. So you end up paying your com…

I'm not sure that I did. If you are trying to compete in business X, you have a side income Z, and everyone competing in X has to buy service Y, what tangible benefit do you get from Y and Z being the same thing? Unless you can rig the bidding process I don't see any advantage.

It means that any expense you spend on Y isn't really an expense, since the money goes right back into your pocket.

So not only do you get the extra income from other people buying Y, buy you can operate at higher margins than everyone else in X because Y is available to you at cost.

EDIT: On further thought it seems no different than being vertically integrated.

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#24

Post by Ilverin » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #6

Tell me if I've got this right: Say you have some businesses in industry X that all rely on advertising. Say one of those businesses also happens to own the dominant advertising platform that businesses in industry X need to use, in order to effectively find customers. (Special note for those subset of HN readers who tend not to read: Yes there may be other platforms, but before you present that as an objection, note…

I think this effect is small because of opportunity cost.

In Case A, google wins the bid, they gain the ad space, but gain no revenue.

In Case B, google does not win the bid, they lose the ad space, but do gain revenue.

Revenue and ad space are mutually exclusive, each is the opportunity cost of the other. Yes, in both cases google wins, but that is because google is the reason the ad space exists in the first place.

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#25

Post by dmitrygr » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #19

> Kelkoo CEO Richard Stables says the firm’s revenue from general search traffic dropped by 62% last year, to €2.3 million. In 2018, he projects a two-thirds drop to €800,000. I decided to go to http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/ to check it out. This website is so clearly a scam created for this antitrust case. I went ahead to compare two cameras: the Canon EOS 1D X Mark II (a $4k camera) to a Canon Ixus 275 HS ($200 camera),…

No kidding. The "laptop" page says (emphasis mine):

Many of us have replaced our desktop systems with a laptop, as they are affordable, portable, and just as powerful as a traditional desktop PC. Laptops have screen sizes ranging from 9-inches to 17-inches, measured horizontally. Laptops with screens smaller than 11-inches are called netbooks while full-screened laptops are called notebooks. Some laptop models include built-in hardware to connect to wirelessly to a 3G or 4G networks and often require a data contract with a mobile phone carrier. Many laptops include built-in Wi-Fi modems and software to make portable computing easy. Some of the most recognized names for laptops are Apple, Dell, Sony and Acer. Kelkoo has all of these brands and more. You can be assured that you’ll find the best laptops at the absolutely lowest price from online retailers you know and trust.

And the third product lsited under laptops is a razor: https://www.shaver.eu/en/shavettes/proraso-shavette?utm_camp...

But look in archive.org and it is clear who they are and what their beef with google is: they are Yahoo. See the "a yahoo company" at the very top of this archived page: https://web.archive.org/web/20050701004143/http://www.kelkoo... (you'll need to collapse the archive.org banner on top - it is hidden behind it by default)

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#26

Post by thetwentyone » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:38 PM UTC

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #17

dugmartin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this bookmarklet I use when I hit paywalls and I don't care if Facebook knows I'm interested in it: javascript:location.href='http://facebook.com/l.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)

How about this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-wsj/

The page says that it's GNU licensed but where I can I find the source?

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#27

Post by ikeboy » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #6

Tell me if I've got this right: Say you have some businesses in industry X that all rely on advertising. Say one of those businesses also happens to own the dominant advertising platform that businesses in industry X need to use, in order to effectively find customers. (Special note for those subset of HN readers who tend not to read: Yes there may be other platforms, but before you present that as an objection, note…

Oh noes my vertically integrated company can out compete competitors

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#28

Post by fwdpropaganda » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

thetwentyone wrote: post #26

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-wsj/

The page says that it's GNU licensed but where I can I find the source?

The .xpi file is essentially a .zip in disguise (all Firefox add-ons work like this). Unzip it as normal and read the source. Aside from the manifest, it's 5 lines.

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#29

Post by phpnode » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #19

> Kelkoo CEO Richard Stables says the firm’s revenue from general search traffic dropped by 62% last year, to €2.3 million. In 2018, he projects a two-thirds drop to €800,000. I decided to go to http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/ to check it out. This website is so clearly a scam created for this antitrust case. I went ahead to compare two cameras: the Canon EOS 1D X Mark II (a $4k camera) to a Canon Ixus 275 HS ($200 camera),…

> This website is so clearly a scam created for this antitrust case.

I can't speak for the quality of their product but this is absolutely not true, Kelkoo has been around since 1999[0], almost as long as Google itself.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelkoo

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#30

Post by prepend » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

rocqua wrote: post #13

natch wrote: post #6

Tell me if I've got this right: Say you have some businesses in industry X that all rely on advertising. Say one of those businesses also happens to own the dominant advertising platform that businesses in industry X need to use, in order to effectively find customers. (Special note for those subset of HN readers who tend not to read: Yes there may be other platforms, but before you present that as an objection, note…

It raises the question, why is Google in the comparison shopping business. Thinking about it, it makes sense for google though. Web scraping and data analysis is their forte. And it fits within google's approach of "answering any question someone has". If someone wants to know the cheapest place to get X, they just want someone to type X into google and get the best answer. For them it's not about making money on com…

They are in the business of making companies pay for placement in the comparison shopping business.

It seems obvious to me that this is just an artificial product to make more revenue.

Froogle was actually better for results a decade ago when they just sorted the normal web scraping for shopping items. Adding the forced ads to show up resulted in worse deals for consumers. This was part because advertisers had t pay for ads, thus raising prices. And part because advertisers didn’t have the best products, just the most efficient ads.