[ignostic]

Long story short, Google is using its search dominance to provide unfair advantage to other Google and Alphabet products. This is primarily done through features or "snippets" competitors cannot earn or even pay for.

Many of the details are not yet public. The individual investigations (some being conducted by states) are said to focus on multiple issues, but the one with the most discussion and evidence centers on the issue I described.

For example, google a flight you may take regularly, or just "LAX to JFK". Your first result after ads will probably be a Google widget. Can sites like Kayak or Expedia get that widget? No. Can they compete with Google showing real-time prices right in the SERP? No. It's the definition of anti-competitive behavior.

Google originally argued they don't advantage their own products. They've since admitted they do. Meanwhile they company is moving into more and more verticles and squeezing others out using its search engine as the weapon.

The vast majority of qualified traffic comes from search engines, and for my sites it's more like 95-97% Google. Many have argued the 90% market share figure is too low, because Yahoo and Microsoft include their internal searches to sound better. If Google decides to create a search widget competing with some function of my site, even if Google's version is really shitty, my business suffers badly. This isn't theoretical. Go Google "speed test." Your first result is a Google widget they added to search results. Ookla IMO has a much better product. But Google's widget is first for basically everyone who searches for a speed test. The M-Lab/Google test caps out for me well short of my real bandwidth. But I guarantee Ookla's traffic took a beating when Google decided to insert their own product at the top.

Unfortunately, Google has a lot of lawyers, and it's also reported that Barr is trying to rush this thing forward to provide a win for Trump. The actual career lawyers are arguing they can build a solid case, but they need more time. My fear is we'll see this thing rushed through and the changes will be cosmetic. And I do think Google's actions are a real problem. The most recent testimony before congress was pretty shocking. Facebook and Alphabet execs were basically admitting to anti-competitive behavior.

[visarga]

"LAX to JFK" - at the top, after 3 ads, I see links to Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak, Travelocity and Skyscanner. Then comes the flights widget. Then Expedia direct link, another widget - this time a COVID alert for how many flights are still operating this route - quite useful and well placed. After that many more direct links.

I don't see anything wrong. It's a good response page. If they didn't provide the widget the page would be worse, I would have to dig through all the links and filter the noise to find information.

There's an assumption that people come to Google in order to find websites. No, they come for information. They can get information in many ways. People are not there just to provide sales to organically ranked sites.

In a few years voice interfaces will probably replace text for search. In a voice interface, you have to provide the answer directly in plain language, not a link to a website. What would the displaced websites do, sue for monopolistic practices again?

[JimDabell]

Here is a screenshot I just took for that query on mobile:

https://imgur.com/gallery/zmudRmH

The entire screen is filled with the Google Flights widget. There are no ads from competitors or organic results visible on the screen at all unless you scroll down.

[wbl]

For the longest time to competition was a click away. Now its a drag away. Google is providing the information you likely want, and your can still type in or use a bookmark to go to your favorite travel site.

[username90]

Problem is that Google can easily bulldoze their way into any market just by creating their own service and then putting at the top as a widget. They did that with flights as you can see here and they were sued for it 8 years ago already, although I think that case is still active.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2502509/expedia--tripa...

[visarga]

On the other hand I don't think it's OK to put limits on their creativity and efforts to improve user experience. If they want to make a topic specific widget, why not?

If you type 123+321 it will say 444 first, then display search results. That's how it should be, they don't have to protect the "123+321" keyword market.

[darkwizard42]

Ah, you replied just as I did! I too share this sentiment that people are going to Google not to search for a plethora of websites, but for answers.

You can still certainly look at websites if you want and Google does not bury them or delist, but the widget is very useful and probably answers a high amount of the incoming queries.

[ehnto]

The information comes from the websites. If the websites die, due to lack of traffic, the information suffers or disappears.

I agree that users just want their information, but unless Google plans to start generating, fact checking and sourcing data and content itself, it would do it well to not burn it's bridges with the content creators.

You picked a fairly good result page, but there are plenty of examples of unattributed scraped information being the first block users see. It's often scraped incorrectly too, and frankly I think Google are getting ahead of themselves as it can be wrong or unrelated data but stated as fact right there. They don't seem to realise they are taking on a role as information curator, not gatherer, with this type of work. Their scraping, machine sorting and tagging is good, but if you are trying to be a source of truth you need to be better than good.

[username90]

> The information comes from the websites. If the websites die, due to lack of traffic, the information suffers or disappears.

Actually no, the widget for flights is Googles own service, it wouldn't disappear just because other sites disappear. They have already been sued for putting it on top though. Google gets sued quite a lot.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2502509/expedia--tripa...

[ehnto]

I meant in general for these types of widgets, I was unclear about that sorry.

[bryanrasmussen]

>In a few years voice interfaces will probably replace text for search.

I was thinking that wouldn't work because that would mean search results would tend to be crap, but then I realized that for most search the results are crap so why not use a voice interface!

[Closi]

I just did the search and the widget came up first and filled the page - maybe try on mobile?

[shadowprofile77]

Seeing as how some of these comments about their search results claimed the Google widget dominated while others said that competitor results were plainly in top spot, it seems that Google selectively does both one and the other for the sake of plausible deniability while also giving itself a certain discreet edge for Google products in its own supposedly unbiased search system.

[username90]

A factor to consider is that Google Search is a mess internally, I worked there. There isn't a regexp deciding whether to show a widget or not, they use machine learning for that. Likely it considers something else it knows about you to decide whether to show it or not. There are so many data-scientists creating models based on outputs from each others models that I would be surprised if there aren't a lot of strange subtle interactions going on.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

Not defending Google. I want to see them broken up, but let's not get needlessly conspiratorial.

Google could be running an ab test.

Google could also have some algorithm that decides which widgets to show where and to which users.

Just like some days I get 37 captchas before I see my Google search result,and other days I can make hundreds of searches without a single captcha.

[darkwizard42]

I see where you are coming from, but...I don't see how its the responsibility of a search engine to provide fair and unbiased access to the web's ability to answer your query.

Ex. speed test - Google's responsibility is to the customer who wants to most likely conduct a speed test. Displaying an in-result widget that does so completes the query that the user requires.

The line is certainly drawn if you searched "in-home IoT device" and Google showed its own Nest/Home products at the top even above ad space without paying for it, but the example you provided doesn't really break it for me.

Google doesn't prevent you from finding Ookla, doesn't bury it or delist it, doesn't stop you from going direct to the site... I don't see how that is going to hold up in court. There are competitors to Google that can offer a user a search experience that gives them lots of choice on how to answer their query, Google is just choosing (and customer's are probably responding to it as well) a better way to answer the query.

Posing this as a hypothetical argument, I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

[nl]

While this is a commonly understood argument on HN, this doesn't appear to be the Federal Government's argument at all.

Instead, they are arguing that Google should be forced to share user data with rivals (like Bing).

This might surprise many in the tech community - even those who are sympathetic to the idea that big tech is too big (because it seems a terrible idea).

However, it appears to be a fairly common lobbying point. Notably in Australia a similar argument against Google in the news field is seen where news organisations don't get access to audience preferences for advertising.

TL;DR: The government appears to be looking to force Google to share personal data with other companies which is likely to be the opposite of what many consumers want.

[Covzire]

I wonder if sharing "user data" with Bing would even make it more useful. It seems like the biggest problem with Bing and all other search engines is they are still >22 years behind Google in their search algos.

[nl]

This antitrust action isn't about improving Bing's search, it's about improving Bing's advertising business.

[Covzire]

If you ask me, they're highly correlated.

[nl]

Yes, one way to a more profitable search business would be the normal way - make search better etc so you get more traffic.

The other is to get additional sources of data so your ads are more valuable even with the same amount of traffic.

[m0zg]

> Barr is trying to rush to provide a win

That seems implausible. Under the best of circumstances this is going to take half a decade. Wheels of justice turn slowly.

[sdenton4]

Alas, political wins come from starting things. We lowly engineers win by finishing things.