[jrockway]

Isn't anti-trust designed to prevent people from abusing their monopoly position? For example, Microsoft was the top OS vendor. They wanted to dominate the highly-lucrative Web Browser Vendor business. So, they forced everyone using their popular OS to use their web browser.

The government thought this was an abuse of the monopoly, but the charges didn't stick.

What Google's doing is nothing close to that, though. Nobody uses other search engines because they suck. The results are irrelevant and the ads are irrelevant. That's not anti-competitive action, that's competitive action -- they make a good product that people like. Seems legal to me.

[asnyder]

I don't know about you, but to me Google is already pretty scary. Google has the power to completely destroy your business. They have little to no human communication, thus not allowing for any real follow-up, they're like this god, or black box. You have to hope and pray your begging will correct things.

For example, lets assume you have a somewhat successful product, getting pretty good search results for your category, and one day your site throws some errors, or it goes down, or something of that nature, your site is now no longer showing for your category. They don't tell you anything, not even if you use their Webmaster tools, all you know is that according to their search query result performance that all of a sudden you stop showing up for any other term than your name. Previously you were showing up for many terms. After you correct these issues, which you can only really guess at, you submit a re-consideration request describing the issue, your solution, and why you think whatever thing you think is the problem should be corrected. Now you wait. Not for some response, but just an automated reply saying that your response has been dealt with, not whether they did anything, or if in fact you had an issue. This will come 2-3 weeks later, your business may already be dead. But if it's not, and magically you show up for Google results again, and webmaster tools shows you that your previous search terms have relevance, you will most definitely not be in your previous position. Time to get out there again, get fresh in-links, and re-build your business.

This is the current status quo. This is very very scary. Even Credit Cards have to tell you why you were rejected, not enough credit history or something like that, you can even get one free credit report in response that will explain things. Not Google. I would sleep much better at night knowing that there was some process that would tell you if there's a problem, and if possible what the reasons were, in general terms. Once you correct them you should be able to submit that you did, and hopefully that would address the situation in some reasonable amount of time.

It's crazy that most of us are ok with a search engine dominating 70% or so of search, without any ability to resolve conflicts, ask questions, or anything. We can only click buttons and hope that after enough times the great Google will listen.

[jrockway]

This doesn't bother me. If my website got delisted from Google, I'd find traffic in some other way. If my ads didn't get run by Google, I'd just advertise somewhere else.

Honestly, Google is not that big of a company. I checked out the Fortune 500 list, and Google is not even in the top 50. Amazon.com, Bank of America, and CVS Carkemark know a lot more about you than Google. And they don't care -- you come to them, and they sell you their product, and it's often a good deal for both sides. Google is just like this, except smaller.

In the IT industry, we like to think that Google is important. We see their logo a lot, we hear how nice it is to work there... but they are really small potatoes. Advertising is nothing. Giving people money, giving people drugs, selling gasoline, shipping books to your house overnight, and making light bulbs and jet engines is a lot more profitable than sending clicks to your website. Sorry, that's the reality... there is a lot more evil to be done in the world than Google is capable of. (Look at the number of Fortune 500 companies that are primarily military contractors. Their corporate mandate is to cause people to die as efficiently as possible -- Google manages your RSS feeds and cat pictures! Sorry, not evil.)

(Why isn't Google as heavily regulated as banks? Because they really don't matter that much. Yeah, you can search for your name on Google and see content that you put up on the web under your name. But the banks collect information about you, to make business decisions, without you ever even knowing. Right now, their computers are deciding whether or not you are a credit risk, and if they decide you are, they are canceling your credit card. That vacation you wanted? Gone. That house you wanted? Never. That's power that Google simply doesn't even come close to having!)

[asnyder]

Unlike the other companies mentioned there is very little alternative to Google. Especially if you target the technical demographic. If CVS does something bad, I can go to Rite Aid. However if Google delists you, your customers most likely won't go to Bing, or DuckDuckGo, you'll be dead. Furthermore, if you're not "relevant" to your search term, then advertising for that term will be prohibitively expensive. So you're screwed two ways.

I'm just saying their current status quo coupled with the power they have is scary. They should, like the banks, communicate with you. Even if it's not that detailed, a little bit of interaction goes a long way. They already have humans reading your reconsideration requests, they should allow them to issue a response, instead of just an automated reply. It shouldn't be this guessing game that we play. It's not OK that something that controls almost all of search is that inaccessible to communication, follow-up, and resolution.

[zaphar]

How much do you think they can tell you without revealing the signals they use to determine relevancy?

The fact is their current policy is in all likelihood the one that allows them to serve relevant results to the greatest number of people for the lowest cost. If they start giving it the personal touch as you say then the cost will go way up it won't bed just you and the occasional accidental delisted site owner but will be every spammer, con artist, and fly by night SEO expert. The support costs would be astronomical. And your hoped for solution is to have a government entity step in and mandate they spend that money in a hopeless attempt to let you talk to someone in person? In short you want the government to force Google to reduce its profits, potentially drastically, for your own personal benefit.

[jrockway]

Won't someone please think of the OP's failed business model? The government needs to protect the lucrative business of owning a link farm!!

[jrockway]

Why is it not OK? You are not their customer or shareholder; what obligation do they have to you?

Nobody else likes other search engines and can't find your site? Tough shit. That's not Google's concern and it's not the government's concern, which makes you responsible for dealing with it.

[asnyder]

What is wrong with you? First, you have no idea if I'm a customer or shareholder. Second, they have an obligation to their users and customers to conduct business in a reasonable way. If you actually read what I've been saying, which I know is very hard, because we have a tendency to skim and let our biases let our emotions get the best of us, I'm not saying anything crazy.

All I'm saying is that Google should set up some processes so that issues that can be major, such as an accidental delisting, or similar be addressed with some level of human interaction, whether it's an actual response, or an automated response letting you know the issues, nothing more.

In my opinion, and hopefully sometime in the near future the US Congress will agree, that it's not OK for something to have that much sway over the web and not be accountable or have any reasonable processes in place for corrections. It's just not.

[jrockway]

You keep saying the same thing over and over; you use the word "obligation". Why do you think they are obligated to reply to your emails? Are they legally obligated? Are they morally obligated? If so, why? How many people have to email them every day before they aren't obligated to reply anymore? Why?

Your point would be a lot clearer if you had said, "I wish" instead of "obligation". I wish a human at Google would reply to my email when they accidentally delist my site. I wish someone would spend $100 of Google's time to research my problem and talk to me. I wish Google would mail me ice cream and ponies once a week.

If you actually read what I've been saying, which I know is very hard, because we have a tendency to skim and let our biases let our emotions get the best of us, I'm not saying anything crazy.

If your sentences focused on one topic, and didn't diverge to psychoanalyze me, which I know is very hard, because we have a tendency to let our emotions get the best of us, causing a run on sentence, where the word obligation is used a lot, and holy shit this sort of thing is hard to read, emotions or not, and what was I saying? Oh yeah, your points would be easier to follow.

Anyway, Google's philosophy is to make decisions in general rather than in bulk and then they let the computers do the real work. It's the only sane thing they can do; there are billions of websites, and if they had to research every delisting case, they'd be out of business. It's no loss to Google or its users if your site doesn't show up in search results.

You just aren't all that important to Google or the rest of the world. Nor is anyone else.

[kelnos]

I think more of the fear of Google stems from the average person's relationship with it, and doesn't have much to do with how large a company it is.

BofA, Amazon, etc. are all companies that we deal with directly in a customer<->vendor relationship. Amazon puts up products for sale, people buy them. BofA gives people a place to put their money, in return for the ability to lend that money to others.

But your average Internet user isn't Google's customer. They're Google's product, and are "sold" to advertisers. People interact with Google every day, and in return, Google gets to collect, store, and mine our information in ways that we don't really know about or understand, and sell the results of that analysis to others.

So I think some of the Google-fear is based more on that than raw revenue generation. Being sold to advertisers on a massive scale is just kinda creepy.

[gsmaverick]

Walmart has similar power to destroy your business if they refuse to sell your product. Google has no obligation to help keep your business afloat in the same way Walmart doesn't owe your product a spot on its shelves.

[asnyder]

You can bet that if there wasn't Target, A&P, Pathmark, and local grocery stores, etc. Walmart wouldn't just be able to refuse selling your product without some sort of reason.

Google is significantly more dominant than Walmart, they're the only channel to your product for many, which isn't true with Walmart.

[jrockway]

Walmart is the only place to get Walmart's house brands. That's not a monopoly, that's merely inconvenient.

[asnyder]

What are you talking about? Nothing you said has anything to do with anything I'm saying. You and the other commenter are skewing my comments with your responses into something they're not.

[gnaritas]

You talk about Google as if it's some community resource you have a right to have; it's not. Google only has the power to destroy your business if you make your business model reliant upon them, that is a choice you make. There's nothing wrong with that choice, but you have to recognize it's your choice and Google owes you nothing at all.

[asnyder]

As soon as you start having such a huge market share like Google does, whether you have a right to it is irrelevant. The fact is that they dominate, and have a defacto Monopoly in certain segments of our population. As such, there needs to be some standards and processes to for conflict resolution.

We shouldn't be ok with a company controlling almost all of search and not having any way to check them. There's a reason certain industries are now regulated, and why there are anti-competitive laws. Google and the web in general is still too new to have such regulation, but hopefully we're not too far away from it.

Again, I'd feel much better at night knowing there's a standard procedure with actual follow-up to explain and investigate search related issues, including delistings.

[gnaritas]

> The fact is that they dominate, and have a defacto Monopoly in certain segments of our population.

No, it's not a fact at all. Use Yahoo or Bing, as long as there are functional alternatives you can't claim there's a monopoly. Google dominates search, that's not the same thing as a monopoly. Google does not have a monopoly.

> As such, there needs to be some standards and processes to for conflict resolution.

No, there doesn't, you haven't established that they are a monopoly, or that they're promoting anti-competitive practices, or that search is even a vital service like electricity that should be regulated.

> There's a reason certain industries are now regulated, and why there are anti-competitive laws.

Yes, there are, for good reasons, no such reason exists to regulate search.

> Google and the web in general is still too new to have such regulation, but hopefully we're not too far away from it.

Hopefully we're very far away from it because it's absolutely not necessary and shouldn't happen.

> Again, I'd feel much better at night knowing there's a standard procedure with actual follow-up to explain and investigate search related issues, including delistings.

Then don't use Google, no one is forcing you to, you can get traffic from other places if you put effort into it. The fact is, you use Google because their product is superior and they bring you more traffic; that doesn't mean other options aren't available, just that they don't work as well as Google does. And for having a superior product, you want to punish them with regulation. That's seriously fucked up thinking.

[walkon]

I agree with your main point, but not the Microsoft example of abuse: they forced everyone using their popular OS to use their web browser

They didn't force anybody. One of the first things I would do with a fresh install of Windows back in latter 90s was open IE to download Netscape. Having IE on there made it enabled me to easily learn about and get different browsers. I don't understand how that is so bad. Where was the antitrust on Winsock? What? Forced to use their TCP/IP stack?! Consumer-based OSes should have certain software by default.

Wasn't this more a bit of prescience on Microsoft's part? I mean, now we have Google developing a "browser" OS. Can't get much more coupled then that. What if that becomes the monopoly OS in 5-10 years?

[nl]

It's always the details that matter.

Shipping the browser wasn't the problem. The problem was that they stopped system vendors installing Netscape and/or making it the default browser.

Doing that is fine if you are in a competitive market, but if you are a monopoly then it's anti-competitive and abuse of market power.

[aranazo]

Unfortunately Anti-trust action is often used to drag companies into the unholy Congressional Lobbying racket.That's the way it worked out with Microsoft. Google's lobbying budget seems to scale with it's size so maybe it will escape serious action.

[ahi]

Google 'email'. Now gmail might have the top position organically, but if Google is a clear monopoly the DoJ might come a-knocking just to make sure.