Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 229 posts

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#141

Post by squeaky-clean »

throwaway_kufu wrote: post #66

What so many people fail to realize about these issues vis-a-vis Google, it’s not so much the issues of Google having a monopoly or not on the ad market...in either case google is a dominant market incumbent that uses its position (in this case web traffic, data and online ad platform) to unfairly compete and stifle competition. Google has often used data acquired through their market position to start subsidiaries t…

I totally agree with the idea of your post. Just wanted to share a sort of funny tidbit about the specific example you chose: I work in fare marketing for airlines, and google flights is actually a bit of a boon for us because it drops you directly into the airline booking engine with pre-filled info.

Before Google Flights we were mostly competing against Expedia/Kayak/etc. Now Google Flights indirectly gives the airlines the top rank again, and we're competing against the OTA's for the secondary spots with ads and SEO. I can also anecdotally attest that Instagram ads work very well for airlines. (Well... worked very well, pre march 2020 and all).

I do agree with your main sentiment though, and the case could totally be made that google flights is doubly screwing over the OTA's now. Just wanted to share some interesting anecdata.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#142

Post by dwild »

nova22033 wrote: post #104
speeder wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the CMO for a company. Google is the ONLY ad provider that give results, all others don't even get any clicks. How that is not a monopoly on the classic definition? Every time Google has a bug and screw with my ads, the revenue of the company I work for tanks hard, and I am yet to find any solution for it.

Google is the ONLY ad provider that give results, all others don't even get any clicks. Being effective doesn't make you a monopoly.

They do have exclusive access and control over the source of data that bring you that effectiveness though. I'm not saying anyone else should have access to Google data, but the fact that this is what make it effective and that essentially no one else can reproduce it, that kind of make it a monopoly.

At a point when the cost of entry is too high and it's not humanly possible to beat it, isn't it essentially impossible to compete, thus make it a monopoly?

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#143

Post by nightski »

emteycz wrote: post #107
giancarlostoro wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may want to contact the antitrust regulators, testimonies such as your are highly relevant to this case.

they are also untrue in general. in some markets social networking ads work, in some search ads work, that's to be expected - you don't expect eg. ad placements by the train company to be always effective regardless of what you're selling.

Don't worry Google does not need your defense, they'll have plenty of very highly paid lawyers and lobbyists ready to do that.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#144

Post by brendoelfrendo »

animationwill wrote: post #127
ardy42 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somehow a lot of people choose to believe interpretation #2 is true, and spend a lot of time debating whether this or that company is a "monopoly" as if it is somehow more important than the substantive issues Not to accuse anyone here of this, but intentionally doing what you describe is an disingenuous but effective way of shaping the conversation to discourage scrutiny of more general kinds of anti-competitive b…

Are you saying OP is a Google PR insider accusing Google of abusing market privilege while ensuring the perfect definition of “monopoly“ isn’t marred by inaccuracy?

No, I'm pretty sure they're saying that debating the semantics of an argument rather than the merit of the argument is a tactic often used by bad-faith actors who seek to reshape a conversation to their advantage by discouraging deeper scrutiny of their position past "yeah, well, they keep using that word and I don't think they know what it means."

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#145

Post by [deleted] »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #105

If Congress cuts Google into pieces, they should be consistent and set some sort of maximum market value (as a percentage of US GDP). That way, once companies reach a certain size, they can expect a split. I actually think this would be good for society, because it would shuffle things up consistently to force new ideas. Also, smaller companies can grow more effectively, so the stock market should enjoy that as well.

[deleted]

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#146

Post by ta1234567890 »

Ensorceled wrote: post #134
quest88 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point out any specific examples, and why Google would forgo that ad money?

What ad money do you think Google is forgoing in this example? There is an example at the end of the comment you are replying to, flights. Two other examples that took me only a couple of minutes to find: google 'smart thermostat' or 'corporate email providers'

Also Yelp with Google Reviews / Google MyBusiness

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#147

Post by emteycz »

nightski wrote: post #143
emteycz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they are also untrue in general. in some markets social networking ads work, in some search ads work, that's to be expected - you don't expect eg. ad placements by the train company to be always effective regardless of what you're selling.

Don't worry Google does not need your defense, they'll have plenty of very highly paid lawyers and lobbyists ready to do that.

I don't care about Google. I simply know from experience this is untrue. If anything, I am defending Facebook here.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#148

Post by turtleturtle »

hannasanarion wrote: post #140
Spivak wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don't think this tracks unless you treat search as something special. If I own a billboard then I have a monopoly on that billboard. Presumably I built/bought that billboard because I knew that the ad space would be valuable and that companies would need to pay me for it. Google owns extremely valuable ad space but that to me doesn't make a monopoly just because Bing or Facebook's ad space isn't as good for cer…

And if only one company owned all the billboards in the world, that would be a monopoly too. Monopolies are traditionally assessed in terms of product categories, not entire industries. Nobody ever said "standard oil isn't a monopoly, because you can also buy coal fuel"

And practically any company can build as many billboards as they want. Online ads aren't restricted by physical space. Google just happens to own most web traffic because they're really good at search.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#149

Post by blhack »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #136
manigandham wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what happened. The question was asking why a child saw a family member in an ad while playing a game. The Congressman just held up an iPhone while asking but it had nothing to do with the hardware. Of course there are numerous factors that may have contributed to the ad (and maybe Google wasn't involved) but they went with the smartass answer and the media ran with that narrative instead. It's not the grea…

He does specifically say "how does that show up on a 7 year old's iPhone" at 1:30, and those words will be entered into the record, which is probably why Sundar responded with that. iPhone claims aside, that's just a terrible question. Doesn't know what type of phone it was, doesn't know what type of game they were playing, doesn't give any details on the sort of photo shown or the ad copy shown. By all likelihood it…

No, it's not a terrible question. It is a general question about the business of online advertising, something that Sundar Pichai is unquestionably an expert about since he is the CEO of the largest company in the world that sells online advertising, and for all you know it could have been a web game that the grand daughter was playing in a chrome browser.

A reasonable, non-combative answer to this question may have been something along the lines of:

Senator, ad providers have little control over what the content of the ads that are going into these applications is. While I'm not sure what the specific ad that your granddaughter saw was, I can tell you that at google, there is a system where a user can report an ad as inappropriate. Again I'm not sure what the specific ad that you saw was, or if it was part of google's advertising platform, but if it was, you could have reported that to google for review, and I can understand why that would have been an uncomfortable experience for you.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#150

Post by tynpeddler »

doukdouk wrote: post #70
throwaway_kufu wrote: post #66

What so many people fail to realize about these issues vis-a-vis Google, it’s not so much the issues of Google having a monopoly or not on the ad market...in either case google is a dominant market incumbent that uses its position (in this case web traffic, data and online ad platform) to unfairly compete and stifle competition. Google has often used data acquired through their market position to start subsidiaries t…

Words get abused a lot, and for some of them, they do not have a clear-cut, universally agreed upon meaning. "Monopoly" is one of such words (others candidate include: freedom, democracy, justice). When random person X complains about, say, Google having a monopoly, there are two possibilities: - Person X means something along "Google has a dominant market position and abuses its power", slightly abusing the meaning…

If someone wants to make a charge against Google, then by all means do it. But the people making the charge have a responsibility to communicate their position clearly. Complaining that the the wider population is not following along with an intentional abuse of language sounds like a bad faith argument, especially when we're talking about a well established term like "monopoly".
Post reply on HN