Visit Searchville Searchville CONFLICT OF INTEREST

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Google’s competing vertical and information content services sites give it the incentive – and its dominance in search and search advertising gives it the ability – to exclude competition from independent sites. Google’s dominance in search and search advertising has grown exponentially due to a fundamental shift in Google’s business philosophy: Google has entered into competition with the very same websites which depend upon Google to reach consumers. Whereas Google at one time sought to direct users as efficiently as possible to the sites most likely to respond to their queries, today Google tries to answer those queries directly with its own products like Google Places (hotels, restaurants and destinations), Google Product Search (product information and price comparisons), Google Finance (investment and other financial issues), Google Maps (location and direction information), and YouTube (video content). As a result, Google thereby keeps users within the “Google universe,” where Google can continue to sell ads targeted at those users, and away from competing sites.

“We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers.”

— Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google co-founders (“Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” 1998)

“So, more users more information, more information more users, more advertisers more users, it’s a beautiful thing, lather, rinse, repeat, that’s what I do for a living. So that’s what someone alluded to the engine that can’t be stopped.”

— Jonathan Rosenberg, Google VP of Product Management & Marketing (“Inside the Black Box: Technology & Innovation at Google,” Speech to Claremont McKenna College, 27/2/08)

Visit Searchville Searchville CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Searchville_translations_conflict_ENG

Embed this Comic

Google’s competing vertical and information content services sites give it the incentive – and its dominance in search and search advertising gives it the ability – to exclude competition from independent sites. Google’s dominance in search and search advertising has grown exponentially due to a fundamental shift in Google’s business philosophy: Google has entered into competition with the very same websites which depend upon Google to reach consumers. Whereas Google at one time sought to direct users as efficiently as possible to the sites most likely to respond to their queries, today Google tries to answer those queries directly with its own products like Google Places (hotels, restaurants and destinations), Google Product Search (product information and price comparisons), Google Finance (investment and other financial issues), Google Maps (location and direction information), and YouTube (video content). As a result, Google thereby keeps users within the “Google universe,” where Google can continue to sell ads targeted at those users, and away from competing sites.

“We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers.”

— Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google co-founders (“Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” 1998)

“So, more users more information, more information more users, more advertisers more users, it’s a beautiful thing, lather, rinse, repeat, that’s what I do for a living. So that’s what someone alluded to the engine that can’t be stopped.”

— Jonathan Rosenberg, Google VP of Product Management & Marketing (“Inside the Black Box: Technology & Innovation at Google,” Speech to Claremont McKenna College, 27/2/08)