[sznio]

>But why the fuck should any company pay for an ad when the user explicitly searched for their product?

If you don't buy out the top-place for the query, someone else will. In a better case a competitor - imagine Facebook Marketplace being the top result for "ebay". In the worst - a phishing site. The latter happens quite often for software searches.

[ThunderSizzle]

Right, but that's because Google permits that. OP is saying Google should simply stop permitting advertising over the real answer.

[tardedmeme]

Why would Google give themselves less money?

[ThunderSizzle]

There's a lot of reasons, but it's probably how Google makes most of their money - brand names end up being high value ad targets - at least 6+ years ago when I worked in that sphere of things (ecommerce, primarily). It's legit extortion.

I guess that's why - because extortion is immoral. Eventually, those paying the protection fees will eventually find someone better to pay or will stop paying when the protection doesn't show up.

[godelski]

Let me repeat myself

  >>>> When making more money requires degrading the product you know we've fucked up

[tardedmeme]

That just sounds like business to me. You do whatever makes money.

[godelski]

Maybe it is today, but that's not how it's always been. The idea is that competition means the best product wins. But there's a lot it ways to degrade competition, not just monopolization. We're living in a lemon economy

[tardedmeme]

There's never been any rule that the best product wins. Trivial example if I make RAM chips and give them away for free I'll lose.

[fsflover]

This is called enshittification. Business behaves like with with the lack of regulations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41277484

[fsflover]

It should be illegal to mislead the users like this. The search terms weren't generic and didn't match anything.