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

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31–40 of 107 posts

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

#31
post #24
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.

But since google auctions ads, Case A results in higher prices to the non-Google ad buyers. So it’s better than neutral.

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

#32
post #29

> 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

If by "Kelkoo" you mean "a yahoo proxy", then yes

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

#33
post #22

> 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.

Recently my impression of the WSJ is incredibly poor. Just BS article after BS article. To me the bias has never been more obvious. Though I only see their content on aggregators like HN, so perhaps that plays a part.

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

#34

> 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 inclu…

It took less than 30 seconds to find out that they're not.

https://www.ft.com/content/4044d354-b825-11dd-ac6d-0000779fd...

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

#35
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

If by "Kelkoo" you mean "a yahoo proxy", then yes 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)

From the wikipedia page:

> On March 26, 2004, Kelkoo was bought by Yahoo! Inc for €450 million.

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

#36

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?

https://github.com/JoaoAparicio/read-ft-wsj

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

#37
It's kind of a clever solution by Google, if a bit troll. They can make that ad auction 100% fair and still win it because they have more expertise on running efficient ad campaigns than anyone. IMHO that just doubles down on the danger of their monopoly power, but perhaps it complies with the antitrust requirements.

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

#38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inclu…

It took less than 30 seconds to find out that they're not. https://www.ft.com/content/4044d354-b825-11dd-ac6d-0000779fd...

Do you have a citation that's not behind a paywall? Crunchbase says they were acquired by Yahoo. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kelkoo

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

#39
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the service isn't profitable, then you are subsidizing the cost of a service that your competitors need. You aren't benefiting from the fact that your competitors are spending money. They would have had to spent money anyway.

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

#40
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 wish the fiduciary rule can be applied more broadly other than just in the financial industry.
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