The complaint will focus on how Google has used its dominant position in online search to harm consumers and crush upstart rivals. It processes 90 per cent of global search requests
There are languages and countries that Google doesn’t operate in, aren’t there? Like China maybe?
Um I think Prima Facie, I can see the problem. Say i’ve got this great idea, no bit more than that a workable profitable business but it depends on a search engine delivering traffic to me. So i advertise with Googly. After a while googly spots the traffic ,thinks ey up here’s a good business. Doesn’t appear to be anything legally or know how wise stopping us offering the same. we can make more from doing that than accepting this guys ads, so we’ll do it our selves and direct traffic to our version. Goodbye original business guy. He may be worse off but its not a given that the consumer is worse off. I mean googly maps is better than map quest and was from the get go.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-share-of-search-engines/
https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
I’m trying to think of a person or corporation with a dominant position that didn’t or doesn’t try to crush upstart rivals.
HB: And StreetMap is another order of magnitude better than Google Maps, it serves actual proper maps.
“I can’t be arsed to look for an alternative product, therefore this product must be banned”
Google is a monster and needs taking down a peg or twenty. It is parasitic on what it didn’t build and uses its power, commercially, politically and culturally, to undermine free markets, free thought and free expression.
I use DuckDuckGo and, occasionally, Bing as my search engines and Brave as my browser. No complaints.
Recusant – Yeah i see that but i’m thinking isn’t googly cherry picking stuff just an accelerated form of what competition does anyway? If your business actually depends on being high in the search and it can be easily done by someone else who can get themselves higher then should you get protection? I mean every dragon’s den ever the angels say what’s unique about your thang and can people replicate it? Sure patents but its not clear whether the right to be on a search list is a) workable b) brings benefits to the consumer.
JGH- looked good.Thx.
Isn’t it terrible how Google crushes its enemy search engines, sees them driven before it, and hears the lamentations of their searchers, by the underhand tactics of building a better search engine that people prefer to use.
If Google has such a dominant position, how did I manage years ago to chose an alternative browser to both Microsoft and Google and currently use an alternative (Brave) browser to Safari packaged with iOS devices AND hardly use Google search instead using DuckDuckGo or Qwant?
It is not Google’s dominance it is consumers either too lazy to check alternatives, or content with what they use.
There never seems to be a clamour from consumers about market dominators, just busybody politicians, bureaucrats and the media – many of whom at other times complain consumers have too much choice.
The exact same complaints were made about Microsoft not that long ago.
Give it ten years and Google will have a serious competitor. There’s simply too much money at stake for that not to be true. Or a set of minor competitors, each knowing that 2% of the market is a LOT of money..
Will Amazon just let Google choose where to direct its traffic forever?
(I remember getting Google for the first time, when it was an upstart. It wasn’t that long ago.)
Nobody ever got sacked for buying from a company called …. ah yes, IBM.
‘It processes 90 per cent of global search requests’
Pendantry: Every source I have found says 80%. So how does thetimes fvck that up?
‘consumers either too lazy to check alternatives, or content with what they use.’
Both would apply to me. If I don’t get what I want, or I need to find something, I’ll put myself to the trouble of doing something about it. But otherwise I might use my time to comment on Tim’s blog instead.
If there are languages and countries where Google doesn’t operate, they must be very small. As for China – try google.cn – if it’s not accessible in China, it’s not for want of trying by Google.