[amadeuspagel]

For the vast majority of google searches there are no relevant ads. All these searches are subsidized by someone googling "flights to new york" and booking a flight right there. Google provides an immense public good with free (and mostly ad-free) results to all kinds of questions, which other flight search engines do not.

Imagine: A flight search engine as a marketing gimick starts a web search engine, and shows flight results if someone searches for "flights to ...". Seems like a good thing, no? It seems like no other flight search engine would have a right to complain about unfair competition here.

[dekhn]

Dunno about you, but if I search "SFO to NYC", the entire first page (after the Google Flights "onebox") is relevant results and they're not ads- but they effectively are- they're search results that include prices. scrolling down further I see 'sponsored results' (IIUC those are ads inline with the search results).

[amadeuspagel]

This google flights "onebox" is what I'm talking about here, and what I assume the parent comment refered to.

[dekhn]

Yes. Google's Flights product. I'm saying they give it preferential ranking treatment so more people use it (regardless of whether it's a superior product) and I would love it if the government could actually prove that).

[jeffbee]

How would you draft the rule? Is it just that Google is forbidden to offer services of any kind that other people also offer? Speaking as an informed consumer I strenuously prefer Google Flights over all others. I'd feel harmed if the DOJ just outlawed the 1 offering that wasn't a giant scam.

[dekhn]

I wouldn't know how to draft a rule (I don't even know if what they are doing is illegal). I think the Flights interface is superior to the competitors as well. However, it's unclear to what extent Google is using their control of ranking to ensure that their onebox shows up on top, and how much that prevents people from seeing competitor's sites.

[jeffbee]

I guess I find the question to be off point because when I search for flights from SFO to JFK I am looking for the ticket itself, not a fourth party that can resell the tickets to me. So all the links to Kayak etc are bad results anyway, although direct links to airlines' own sites would be good results. But that's essentially what Google Flights is: a vertical that cuts out middlemen.

If I search "sites that resell airline tickets" then Google Flights does not appear anywhere in the results.

[mrWiz]

How about forbidding Google from giving it preferential ranking treatment?

[jemmyw]

> For the vast majority of google searches there are no relevant ads

Do you have a citation for this? All I could find was that about 5% of searches end up with an ad click, but surely that means they need to show ads on way more than 5% of searches.

I stopped using Google search quite a long time ago. I'm pretty sure it was heavy on ads for most search queries.

[ricardo81]

It's (was in cases) a symbiotic relationship. Without sites offering flights, Google could have never offered relevant results to searchers in the first place. Same for any other vertical.

[amadeuspagel]

No google actually owns the backend of these flight search engines as well[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software

[ricardo81]

In 2010 though, half into Google's lifetime and well into the time where they were dominant.