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CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

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Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#51

Post by maccard »

adventured wrote: post #27
lawrenceyan wrote: post #7

It honestly sounds like Yelp is just salty at the fact that their SEO marketing isn't as effective as it used to be because of Google's improvement to their search engine algorithms. Also, it's laughable that of all companies, Yelp is the one complaining about Google.

It's pretty obvious Google has moved against the best interests of consumers, by their own admission. They now insert ads into the top of the search flow, commingling results and ads, something their founders correctly proclaimed in the early days to be fundamentally anti user experience. When faced with mobile (and no right side area to allocate ads), they chose to violate their earliest of principles and decided th…

> hey now insert ads into the top of the search flow, commingling results and ad

Google has done this as long as I can recall - the top few results are always “sponsored”. Yelp also does this, by placing a star on your map instead of a rating.

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#52

Post by eganist »

kolleykibber wrote: post #33
telltruth wrote: post #19

CBS interview leaves out critical details. Initially, Google was scrapping Yelp reviews to show snippets in their Google Places product. Yelp CEO didn't liked that and demanded to remove all snippets. Google said it had right to show snippets like any other websites and if Yelp says their content is "private" then Google shouldn't be crawling them at all. That's what they did. This caused Yelp to disappear from Googl…

Google's results are better than yelps. As soon as that isn't true, I'll download yelp again.

Interesting. I started using Yelp specifically because Google's results are awful especially around the DC area.

Grade inflation is prevalent on every platform except yelp, at least from my experience. I haven't seen any formal research on it and would love to see something confirming or refuting my hunch, but my experience has consistently held that Yelp reviewers are picky almost to a fault--useful when deciding whether I want a solid experience vs. an exceptional one.

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#53

Post by camillomiller »

sunstone wrote: post #42
camillomiller wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right, but a company’s abuse of dominant position isn’t defined by the quality of their competitor’s offer.

Yelp has been horrible since day one. If google has or has not abused its position Yelp is not the standard we would use to determine that.

This makes no sense. Yelp could be the worst company ever created, but if they had market share and Google worked to seize that market with unfair practices, that counts as abuse of dominant position. There is a dangerous conflation of two very distinct categories in your line of thought.

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

modi15 wrote: post #40

The problem is not Google. The problem is that the government is unable to get his head around an internet based monopoly. Google shouldnt be allowed to host more than 50% of searches by law. In any other industry enjoying a monopoly position in search as google has enjoyed all these years would have reason enough to break it up into smaller pieces.

> In any other industry enjoying a monopoly position in search as google has enjoyed all these years would have reason enough to break it up into smaller pieces.

No, it wouldn't. Formation of monopolies is not illegal or grounds for breakup. Anticompetitively leveraging market power in one market to monopolize another market is illegal, and a variety of remedies, including breakup, may be available for that.

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#55

Post by realusername »

themagician wrote: post #49
modi15 wrote: post #40

The problem is not Google. The problem is that the government is unable to get his head around an internet based monopoly. Google shouldnt be allowed to host more than 50% of searches by law. In any other industry enjoying a monopoly position in search as google has enjoyed all these years would have reason enough to break it up into smaller pieces.

What?! How does that work? How does Google “host” searches? 70% of searches go to Google because 70% of people type in “google”. The other 30% open IE/Edge and use Bing to search for google. Are you suggesting that when someone types in “google.com” it redirect them?

The vast majority of browsers are still defaulting to Google, you used almost the only example (IE/Edge) which does not do that.

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#56

Post by brisance »

mehrdadn wrote: post #36
brisance wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not able to find a reputable source for this rumor.

What would be the bar for a reputable source here? An official court conviction?

Several lawsuits have been filed against it and it has prevailed every time, owing to lack of evidence and a technicality on the point of law.

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#57

Post by mehrdadn »

maccard wrote: post #45
mehrdadn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the bar for a reputable source here? An official court conviction?

Any source with any shred of proof, instead of a we-said-they-said blog post.

What do you mean by "proof", if your bar isn't a court conviction? [1] Lots of businesses have filed lawsuits over this over many years... here's just a few of the gazillion I find on Google. [2] [3] [4] [5] It's practically absurd to think these are all over nothing and there's no foul play going on. How many stories do you need before you believe it's possible that maybe not everyone who is suing the same entity is confused or lying?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14238051

[2] http://kaohana.windward.hawaii.edu/2017/05/yelp-extortion-is...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14238079

[4] https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/01/yelp-accused-of-hiding-po...

[5] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/14/yelp-bullying-pay-r...

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#58

Post by mehrdadn »

brisance wrote: post #56
mehrdadn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the bar for a reputable source here? An official court conviction?

Several lawsuits have been filed against it and it has prevailed every time, owing to lack of evidence and a technicality on the point of law.

> Several lawsuits have been filed against it and it has prevailed every time, owing to lack of evidence and a technicality on the point of law.

But does what they're doing have to be illegal to be bad? I think most people would assume that if there's foul play, a huge corporation would find a legal way to do it, not an illegal one.

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#59

Post by T3RMINATED »

lycos, hotbot, ask, duckduckgo and more exist its your fault you dont use them... google is just better.. I would never Bing or Yahoo search because their algorithm sucks - google a stackoverflow question you get it right away and on bing its like on page 2... google forever!

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#60

Post by johnnyfaehell »

maccard wrote: post #47
johnnyfaehell wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is mildly funny. You say it should be up to the consumers to decide the success. But that's not what is being suggested is happening. It's being suggested that one company is trying to hide another. It's like if you have a shop selling something and Big Shop Corp comes along and puts up a bunch of trees and bushes in around your shop so it looks like there is only a forest there and no shop. No one is be…

It’s not really. It’s more like you sell a product in BigShop, and they come out with their own range, promote it and stop selling your product. As a consumer you’re still free to go to the other shops and get the product from them instead (in this case Bing, DDG)

Google Search is not like a shop, where you go to buy specific things. It's like a road where you go down specific routes looking for things. The difference being in your example you already know what you want, with mines you are searching for what you want.
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