[mythz]

They're returning relevant information Customers are searching for. If it wasn't relevant or useful people would use a different Service they'd deem more valuable to them. A major part of Google's simplicity is they provide a single search box you can use to search for anything, I don't want to have to go to 100 different sites to search for 100 different things.

[Kurtz79]

"They're returning relevant information Customers are searching for."

They were really not.

For every search you assume you will be given the more popular matches, what they were doing was purposefully bypassing their own algorithm to their advantage, giving doctored results.

There wouldn't have been any problem if they promoted their service making it clear it was not part of the search results.

EDIT: For a counterexample, google "flights price compare".

You will be shown a small form at the top from which you can use their own service.

It is clearly separated from the search results, which show the actual most popular websites for flight comparison.

[euyyn]

> what they were doing was purposefully bypassing their own algorithm to their advantage, giving doctored results

Where did you get this from?

[Kurtz79]

"Google has systematically given prominent placement to its own comparison shopping service: when a consumer enters a query into the Google search engine in relation to which Google's comparison shopping service wants to show results, these are displayed at or near the top of the search results.

Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results: rival comparison shopping services appear in Google's search results on the basis of Google's generic search algorithms. Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted. Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down. Google's own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including such demotions."

[euyyn]

From this sentence?

> Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted.

Sounds like a jump to conclude they were doctoring results from "they modify their ranking algorithms".

[gpderetta]

did you miss:

" Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down. Google's own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including such demotions."

[euyyn]

I didn't. "Doctoring results" sounds to me like modifying the ranking of organic results to demote those services, which is not what that sentence says either.

[yazan94]

From the article:

> Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results: rival comparison shopping services appear in Google's search results on the basis of Google's generic search algorithms. Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted. Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down. Google's own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including such demotions.

There is nothing wrong with Google's integration. The complaint is that Google unfairly promotes its own services at the expense of rivals. When I search for something, I expect the search results displayed to be relevant and fair. I have no problem with Google having that sponsored Google Shopping ad, but demoting other highly relevant results to the fourth page is highly anti-competitive and downright unfair. How many times in the last week have you actually flipped through 4 pages of Google Search results?

[tripzilch]

So, their market dominance was established from their web search product. The antitrust ruling was based on them abusing the power that comes with this dominance to stifle competition with their shopping product.

While it may be the case that today, Google likes to pile all these things into one integrated product (the user benefit of this being really debatable, even if you personally like it), their market dominance was initially acquired from their web search.

If they had historically always been demoting other shopping sites in favour of their own, they would probably not have gotten this dominant at all. One of the features that set Google apart from the other big search engines in its early days was in fact very similar: Other engines would sell rankings and other tricks often favouring profit over relevance. Google didn't do this, partially out of "principle" (which is apparently lost now), partially because their pagerank algorithm was so superior in ranking for relevance that they didn't need to. If they had only returned results for their own shopping business, it wouldn't have gained nearly as much support and wouldn't have been as successful.

But because of this established market dominance, they can get away with it today, because everything is integrated, people just google stuff, even if shopping results are heavily skewed towards their own. And not only does this obscure competition, the competition that does appear far down really sucks, and now you have people arguing that Google Shopping is actually in fact better. Google's web search has deteriorated in quality quite a bit, especially for queries related to "integrated Google products", which makes sense because why bother sorting out a web filled with spam for the good bits (like they used to work very hard at) if you can just push your own product instead?

Finally, regardless of whether Google likes to integrate and pile everything into one heap, Online Shopping and Web Search are different markets.

That's the whole point of this antitrust, just because different businesses in different markets can be grouped under one huge company, doesn't mean it can abuse its market dominance in one market to stifle competition in another.