Google Accused of "Cooking" Search Results and Charging MSFT Too Much 285
A reader writes "Google is being scrutinized by the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee for supposedly 'cooking' their search results. In an independent study comparing search results for products, Google Shopping consistently ranked 3rd. Eric Scmidt denied these accusations at a Senate hearing Wednesday." On top of all that, Microsoft is alleging that Google overcharges them as much as fifty-fold for advertising prices as compared to other buyers.
Re:Why Is It The Government's Business?? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know or care if these accusations about Google are true.
I think the more important question is why should the government care about how Google is running their search results. They are the dominant search engine, but there are other competitors in this space and other alternatives.
Yet another example of government pushing its nose into something it doesn't understand in the name of the public good.
Several reasons.
If it results in false advertising, there can be a false advertising claim under the Lanham Act by a competitor or the FTC. unlikely in this kind of case, but Google has been investigated in the past for making money off of that kind of thing, and the same agency is doing the investigation here.
In addition, there's antitrust law. Merely having other competitors in the space doesn't mean that a company isn't violating antitrust law. The concern of antitrust law is protecting against anticompetitive use of a firm's market power in a way which reduces competition--in simple terms, doing this takes away from the total benefit that society obtains from the marketplace, because it results in the firm with market power artificially raising prices, meaning that the company demands more and produces less while people pay more for products the company would have been willing to produce for less had it not manipulated the marketplace--effectively, people lose the benefit that reflects the difference between the old price and the new price, and fewer people buy because it costs more, and the company doesn't gain as much as the consumers lose. So it's generally a net loss when a firm abuses market power.
Antitrust law doesn't always protect against monopolies, because it doesn't prevent people from using economies of scale or integrating their supply chain. It does, however, sometimes result in regulation even in markets that are or seem to be oligopolies.
Cooking? (Score:3, Informative)
Oh come on. I remember Microsoft's Bing doing some toasting> of their own on Google/a. [slashdot.org]
The Google chairman was on a hot seat (Score:5, Informative)
He failed to explain why Google results always came 3rd on product comparisons though.
The entire interview can be watched here [senate.gov].
Re:Why Is It The Government's Business?? (Score:5, Informative)
You are confusing their product with their customers. You, who use their free services, are not Google's customer. You are their product. They use their free search engine and other services to entice you into viewing pages. Otherwise, they could care less about you. Their customers are the ones who buy ad space on those pages that you view. Check out their prices; they are far from free.
They collect information about you (the product) and your actual or inferred buying habits to attempt to make their ad placements more relevant, so they can charge their customers even higher prices for them.
Re:Google bla bla bla (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the ostrich does not bury it's head in the sand during times of trouble.
When threatened, Ostriches run away, but they can cause serious injury and death with kicks from their powerful legs. Their legs can only kick forward. Contrary to popular belief, Ostriches do not bury their heads in sand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrich [wikipedia.org]
Re:Google bla bla bla (Score:5, Informative)
It does. The accepted meaning of the phrase had changed in common usage, and this new meaning is not in any way inconsistent or erroneous. If anything, it is more literal and less an of an idiom, as a given line of reasoning indeed requires a certain question to be asked at some point. Take into account that the original meaning came from Latin, and was a very bad translation to begin with.
http://begthequestion.info/ [begthequestion.info]
"To beg the question does not mean "to raise the question." (e.g. "It begs the question, why is he so dumb?") This is a common error of usage made by those who mistake the word "question" in the phrase to refer to a literal question. Sadly, the error has grown more and more common with time, such that even journalists, advertisers, and major mass media entities have fallen prey to "BTQ Abuse."
While descriptivists and other such laissez-faire linguists are content to allow the misconception to fall into the vernacular, it cannot be denied that logic and philosophy stand to lose an important conceptual label should the meaning of BTQ become diluted to the point that we must constantly distinguish between the traditional usage and the erroneous "modern" usage. This is why we fight."
As has been said before, there are many ways to say "this is a question which needs to be asked". It is not necessary to take a definition of a logical fallacy and repurpose it so that its original useage is diluted.
I not surprised to see this on other sites, but on slashdot, where many people are coders who live by the knowledge of precise definition of terms, I am.