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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

#121

Post by ocdtrekkie »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

60 Minutes didn't reveal anything here a lot of us don't already know, there wasn't any hard-hitting journalism or incredible revelations. But given 60 Minutes reaches millions of people, it's probably massively raised awareness of these issues with a significant number of people who don't generally follow tech explicitly.

> 60 Minutes didn't reveal anything here a lot of us don't already know In my experience, 60 Minutes is less about breaking news than competently explaining it. The tech community, as a whole, is generally bad at communicating its non-commercial preferences. This issue is no exception.

I don't think it served well as completely explaining it, because Android and Chrome were only cursory mentions, and I'd argue they're both critical to Google's ability to control the Internet, while each also being monopolies in their own right.

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

#122

Post by almostApatriot1 »

kodablah wrote: post #16

Mainstream media story about web company? Check. Nothing new? Check. Negative? Check. Of course Yelp participated...but Yelp angle aside, CBS is just following the news cycle patterns of their brethren. I'm mentioning this a lot these days, but feels like watching cattle being herded (albeit willingly).

I don't think the vast majority of 60 minutes viewers would have been aware about any of the details mentioned in this piece. Not everybody follows Google anti-trust chatter.

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

#123

Post by mijamo »

dazc wrote: post #70
mozumder wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google reviews are also pretty horrific as well. Completely untamed and unprofessional, by people that don't know anything about the subject.

I wouldn't say Google reviews are ideal but I've found them to be a lot more reliable than the alternative. For example, Booking.com, etc.

Completely the opposite for me.

At least booking.com allows reviews only when you booked. And when I read the comments most point out real problems or benefits of the different housings.

AirBNB reviews on the other hand are painfully useless.

And Google is the worst, with a shitload of review from people that look like that probably didn't even went to the place, or just disliked being denied on a discount of something, so you jget useless 5 stars review that say "best food ever" and 1 star reviews for "super rude server, worst restaurant ever" for the same average restaurant, and nothing in between to tell you what the place actually feels like or what food is good/bad there.

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

#124

Post by andegre »

I didn't see the majority of the piece because the kids were acting up, but I must be missing something. Why is this a big deal when it's the SAME company's browser that the user is using that is showing products/services at the top for the SAME company's products?

Why can't google have their own products'/services' links at the top of all search results?

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

#125

Post by __d__ »

This is ironic. Yelps complaint about Google, is the same I have heard from a few small business owners I have worked with.

One customer had over 50% of their legitimate reviews that they worked so incredibly hard for, gone in one day. In trying to appeal, Yelps canned response was its due to our algorithm and there isn’t anything we can do. My customer was in tears over this issue.

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

#126

Post by dragonwriter »

modi15 wrote: post #92
dragonwriter wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Firstly, It doesnt have to be illegal. Monopolies decrease choice for the customer and hamper innovation. That reason should be good enough and has been good enough in the case of telecom. Secondly, if there is enough competition than why has Google enjoyed overwhelming market share for such a long time ? This doesnt happen in any other industry, not with any other company and definitely not in any industry as lucrat…

> Firstly, It doesnt have to be illegal.

Yes, in the US, for government to break up a company, there must be something illegal done.

> This doesnt happen in any other industry, not with any other company and definitely not in any industry as lucrative as search ads.

Clearly, you are posting from an alternative universe where Microsoft, who has held overwhelmingly long-term dominance in at least two different markets significanlty longer than Google has existed (desktop OS and enterprise productivity suite.)

> Thirdly, Search is critical infrastructure.

If true, that would be a reason for it to be a public utility, not to break a Google. But if we can't even get a consensus that actual internet access should be a public utility, good luck making the case that search is.

> How do we know that publishers do not self-censor content critical to Google lest they get bumped from search.

In systems with due process, punishments aren't based on “how do we know X is not true”, but instead in “here is the evidence by which we know X is true”.

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

#127

Post by saalweachter »

lazyjones wrote: post #87
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 was scrapping Yelp reviews to show snippets in their Google Places product. Yelp CEO didn't liked that Who would? What would Google do if someone decided to scrape all their Google Maps, Shopping content? Apart from adding stronger Captchas, that is... Google has been stealing content from smaller and better sites to improve their own half-arsed products for many years.

https://www.google.com/robots.txt ...?

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

#128

Post by diogenescynic »

greggman wrote: post #38

Yelp is crying sour grapes here. There are so many ways they could have innovated to stay relevant but has anything changed in years there? They could have hired professional reviewers. Yelp reviews are notoriously bad. They could have let you choose what you prefer, example (quality vs quantity) and given you custom ratings or only included reviews from people that share similar tastes. Following up on the last idea…

Yelp’s mobile website is also intentionally limited to force you to download the app (so they can mine your personal info). It’s infuriating. Not to mention the desktop website hasn’t changed meaningfully in years. Yelp is one of the least innovative companies and they manage to remain fairly dominant in their category. I really wish they had been replaced already.

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

#129

Post by sharemywin »

mieseratte wrote: post #107
krn wrote: post #64

When I want to buy something, I type "amazon.com", not "google.com". So, why don't I type "yelp.com", when I want to go somewhere? There is nothing to complain about, when your product sucks.

> When I want to buy something, I type "amazon.com", not "google.com". I do the exact opposite, I either search a specific business' site or Google something vague like "sturdy cargo pants," find a brand / store that I like and visit that store. I've been burned too many times by cheap, fake shit from Amazon. I'm not willing to deal with the hassle and wasted time.

Google really does have the best business model. It uses an auction model for advertising so most of the profits go to google and then user still blames the actual business for the problems.

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

#130

Post by potatote »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #106
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

60 Minutes didn't reveal anything here a lot of us don't already know, there wasn't any hard-hitting journalism or incredible revelations. But given 60 Minutes reaches millions of people, it's probably massively raised awareness of these issues with a significant number of people who don't generally follow tech explicitly.

60 Minutes lost me as a viewer 25 years ago. They did a hit piece on someone who I worked with that was flat out untrue. Many people at work knew the details and agreed. That one experience made me view anything I see on TV with a healthy dose of scepticism.

I agree with you about not trusting anything we see on TV/Newspapers (even if it is from 60 Minutes; NYT; whatever-is-reputed-to-be-reliable). I grew up in Myanmar and after reading a lot of one-sided coverage about the refugee issue there (labeled as 'genocide'), I realized it's impossible for news organizations to be almost always impartial and accurate.

They have to obtain information from some source. Almost always, that source of information can mislead the reporter/news writer easily because of the latter's lack of familiarity with the issue, the region or the culture. The reporter, on the other hand, works against time. Plus, s/he is, after all, human (susceptible to persuasion/personal biases and worse, is sometimes too lazy to do a fact-check and more importantly, to hear the voices from the other side).

As most things in life, the truth is always in somewhere the middle.

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