[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.