[venomsnake]

If I were google I would choose a big upcoming multi billion Hollywood film. And just return empty pages while the marketing campaign is roaring. For the star/cast/everything.

I would call it piracy prevention program - that way no one will be able to find piracy content trough google.

[vonklaus]

I assume this is a joke. This would be terrifying. The MPAA are trying to stop google from fairly distributing pages they disagree with. Google is net neutrality and should act as a dumb pipe utility in the sense that it returns the most relevant info based on your search.

If google returned empty pages for something it didn't agree with, the implications would be appalling.

Google should do during the spectrum wars when they bid on spectrum and territory to leverage telecom co.s. They should threaten to back netflix or start a studio to make movies and content. They already have distribution and funds.

[cbr]

I agree Google should return the best response to your search and not cut things out for bargaining points, but "dumb pipe utility" is incredibly off.

[venomsnake]

Google deliberately decided to downgrade the torrent sites ... so they lost all pretense at neutrality.

[petepete]

Or boost the rankings of originals over remakes.

[themartorana]

That is an amazing idea. Sometimes the original is as good as it's gonna get.

That said, aren't both usually owned by the same studio/company?

[mcintyre1994]

Or Youtube. That must be the only place people will watch a trailer without the studio paying anything. In fact, maybe they even make money from the views.

[civilian]

I once had to watch a trailer for a different movie in order to watch the trailer I wanted to watch. I think most people posting trailers disable ads, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

[SaturateDK]

That would be lovely, however that probably won't happen. Seeing google might get sued for that.

[venomsnake]

Why? They are a private company, they can do whatever they want on their site (also known as the iOS censorship apologist argument)

[vidarh]

They make up a big enough proportion of the search market that whether or not they'd ultimately prevail, a move like that would tie them up in anti-trust battles for the next decade.

[ascagnel_]

They can choose to not deliver "enhanced" search results -- showtimes, links to buy tickets, links to IMDB/RT/etc., that appear outside of the "native" search results.

As long as they don't mess around with the native search results, they'll be safer from an anti-trust perspective.

[vidarh]

Doesn't matter - it'd still be "trivial" to put together a sufficiently complicated case to have it survive dismissal attempts and drag it out for years.

The point is they're not just at risk of losing an anti-trust battle, but simply of having their execs embroiled in it for years.

[venomsnake]

But search is only metadata. Metadata is not important ...

[ChuckMcM]

Because they very much have to toe the line of being "neutral" in their search results as to not enable all the sanctions/remedies that other search engine competitors (like Bing) to have merit. Were they to overtly use their position to "punish" the content companies in this way, they would be jumped on by regulators everywhere for abusing a monopoly power.

[venomsnake]

Torrent sites downgrade, as searching for torrents were exactly that. Punishing arbitrary sites for no good reason.

[Spivak]

The sad reality is that torrent sites don't have large legal teams nor the public favor to win over judges and juries. In the mind of the public and lawmakers, they are punishing the "bad people". Any search provider will be able to continue this practice with impunity as long as they don't target people with real money.

[zamalek]

I think it would be possibly anti-competitive.

However, Google already attempts to reward original content so if they could do it algorithmically to everyone (hence not disrupting the competitive marketplace) I think they'd be able to claim "oops."

[tomjen3]

They could just choose to reward rankings to the original movie, which means Hollywood will have to make movies that are not just reboots or sequels.

[bmelton]

Until someone subpoenas their emails and sees a discussion in which the act is deliberate, during which case it's anti-competitive.

"Oops" only works when there's no proof, and it's hard to hvae an absence of proof in something that would take so much orchestration.

[glomph]

The real reason is that they fight very hard to seem like a neutral search agency. They wouldn't want to jepordise that for a squabble with hollywood.

[JoshTriplett]

They can and should be able to, but ever so often a government starts thinking that "oh, it's big enough that we should remind it we're bigger and claim it's a 'utility' or something". This kind of thing makes that argument easier.

[NicoJuicy]

They won't do that, they aren't MPAA, Comcast, NewsCorp or Hollywood ;-)

[sirseal]

They are actually a public company as you can buy stock in them.

[wmeredith]

They are a monopoly. iOS is not.

[tosseraccount]

Why is this modded down? Apple fans don't like swipes at Apple?

[verinus]

while i can this form an emotional point of view I would call this highly unprofessional.

nevertheless hollywood does everything to abolish itself producing only comic/computer game adaptions or se-/prequels.

[vonklaus]

Yeah, I assume everyone is joking or something. Do we really want google to set such a precedent? Killing pages of things they or their affiliates dislike. Scary.

[venomsnake]

This was a joke ... kinda. But since MPAA asked google to downgrade into oblivion some results. And got it without court order, this means that downgrading all results for a movie for "just because" is pretty fine too.

[BasDirks]

They won't need to. They are bigger than Hollywood in a few important ways.

[caskance]

I would call it "the best opportunity Bing will ever get"

[itsuart]

Is TV no longer a dominant channel for big budget film marketing?