Four years after offering special placement in a "top stories carousel" in search results to entice publishers to use a format it created for mobile pages, called AMP, Google announced last week that it will end that preferential treatment in the spring. "We will prioritize pages with great page experience, whether implemented using AMP or any other web technology, as we rank the results," Google said in a blog post. From a report: The company had indicated in 2018 that it would drop the preference eventually. Last week's announcement of a concrete timeline comes less than a month after the Department of Justice called Google a "monopoly gatekeeper to the internet" in a lawsuit alleging antitrust violations and as pressure mounts on officials in the European Union, which has already fined Google more than $9 billion for antitrust violations. "I did always think AMP posed antitrust concerns," said Sally Hubbard, author of the book "Monopolies Suck" and an antitrust expert with the Open Markets Institute. "It's, 'If you want to show up on the top of the search results, you have to play by our rules, you have to use AMP.'" Google spokesperson Meghann Farnsworth did not address the timing of the change but said AMP is not dead, saying the company is "fully committed to AMP as a technology." She said AMP continues to be required for certain features that "are not technically possible" without it, such as "swipe to visit" in Google Images, and that it's "preferred" in the "for you" feed in Google's news reading app, Google Discover.

Apple is stepping up efforts to develop its own search technology as US antitrust authorities threaten multibillion-dollar payments that Google makes to secure prime placement of its engine on the iPhone, Financial Times reported Wednesday [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From the report: In a little-noticed change to the latest version of the iPhone operating system, iOS 14, Apple has begun to show its own search results and link directly to websites when users type queries from its home screen. That web search capability marks an important advance in Apple's in-house development and could form the foundation of a fuller attack on Google, according to several people in the industry. The Silicon Valley company is notoriously secretive about its internal projects, but the move adds to growing evidence that it is working to build a rival to Google's search engine. Two and a half years ago, Apple poached Google's head of search, John Giannandrea. The hire was ostensibly to boost its artificial intelligence capabilities and its Siri virtual assistant, but also brought eight years of experience running the world's most popular search engine. The company's growing in-house search capability gives it an alternative if regulators block its lucrative partnership with Google. When the US Department of Justice launched a case last week, over payments that Google makes to Apple to be the iPhone's default search tool, urgency was added to the initiative.

A group of search engines from around the world are banding together to demand European Union regulators address Google's dominance in the online search market. They are also urging the EU to take a closer look at Google's controversial auction process. From a report: The news comes hot on the heels of the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) antitrust case, which formally launched last week. The suit alleges that Google violates anti-competition laws by crowding out rivals in the internet search and advertising markets. DuckDuckGo (U.S.), Ecosia (Germany), Lilo and Qwant (France), and Seznam (Czech Republic) have penned an open letter to European Commission executive VP Margrethe Vestager asking her to take a "renewed look" at the policing of Google's search market dominance. As an initial step, the companies are calling for a trilateral meeting between themselves, the European Commission (EC), and Google to look at the issue of search engine competition in Europe and elsewhere. More specifically, Google's smaller rivals want to establish a more "effective preference menu," giving Android users an easier way to choose a default search engine when setting up their device for the first time.

Google doled out more than $1 billion last year to U.S. mobile carriers to distribute its search engine, according to the landmark antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department. From a report: The DOJ suit, filed Tuesday, details several methods Google uses to make its search the default service on browsers, smartphones and other devices. That includes deals with Apple and Android manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics. Google also cut hefty revenue sharing agreements with major mobile carriers to box out competing search engines and browsers, the Justice Department said. In exchange for placing Google search as the default on phones, carriers received a portion of search advertising revenue. "If a carrier or manufacturer does not renew its revenue sharing agreement with Google, the distributor loses out on revenue share not only for new mobile devices but also for the phones and tablets previously sold and in the hands of consumers," the Justice Department said in the suit. "This provision is punitive to the carrier or manufacturer and helps to ensure that carriers and manufacturers will not stray from Google."

A system Google set up to promote competition on Android has left some smaller search engines having trouble gaining traction, fueling rivals' complaints about the tech giant's compliance with a European Union antitrust decision ahead of potential U.S. charges. From a report: Since March, Alphabet-owned Google has been showing people in Europe who set up new mobile devices running the company's Android operating system what it calls a "choice screen," a list of rival search engines that they can select as the device's default. The system is part of Google's compliance with a 2018 decision that found the company used Android's dominance to strong-arm phone makers into pre-installing its search engine. But some small search engines that are relatively popular in Europe failed to win spots in large European countries in the latest round of auctions to appear on the choice screen, according to people familiar with the results. The results, which cover the fourth quarter of the year, are set to be announced on Monday.

DuckDuckGo, maker of a U.S.-based search engine that doesn't collect data about its users, lost the auction in all but four small European countries, the people said. Berlin-based Ecosia, which donates most of its profit to planting trees, also didn't win a slot in any large European country, the people added. The major winners of the auctions -- which offer three spots in each of 31 countries to outside search engines -- include Microsoft's Bing, as well as a handful of other small search engines, the people said. Google doesn't participate in the auctions but is offered automatically as a choice in every country along with the auction winners. The elimination of some smaller search engines gives fodder to Google rivals who have complained that the company has crafted its compliance with the EU's antitrust decisions in ways that don't fundamentally change the competitive landscape.

Google said it will block some autocomplete search suggestions to stop misinformation spreading online during the U.S. presidential election in November. From a report The autocomplete feature of the world's largest search engine regularly recommends full queries once users begin typing words. The company said on Thursday it will remove predictions that could be interpreted as claims for or against any candidate or political party. In addition, Google said it will pull claims from the autocomplete feature about participation in the election, including statements about voting methods, requirements, the status of voting locations and election security. For instance, if you type in "you can vote" into Google's search engine, the system may have suggested a full query that includes misleading or incorrect information. Typing those three words into Google on Thursday produced the full phrase "You can vote yourself into socialism" as the top recommended query.

Early this year, Google pushed out a seemingly tiny tweak to how it displays search ads for desktop computers. From a report: Previously, the search engine had marked paid results with the word "Ad" in a green box, tucked beneath the headline next to a matching green display URL. Now, all of a sudden, the "Ad" and the URL shifted above the headline, and both were rendered in discreet black; the box disappeared. The organic search results underwent a similar makeover, only with a new favicon next to the URL instead of the word "Ad." The result was a general smoothing: Ads looked like not-ads. Not-ads looked like ads. This was not Google's first time fiddling with the search results interface. In fact, it had done so quite regularly over the last 13 years, as handily laid out in a timeline from the news site Search Engine Land. Each iteration whittled away the distinction between paid and unpaid content that much more. Most changes went relatively unnoticed, internet residents accepting the creep like the apocryphal frog in a slowly boiling pot.

But in January, amid rising antitrust drumbeats and general exhaustion with Big Tech, people noticed. Interface designers, marketers, and Google users alike decried the change, saying it made paid results practically indistinguishable from those that Google's search algorithm served up organically. The phrase that came up most often: "dark pattern," a blanket term coined by UX specialist Harry Brignull to describe manipulative design elements that benefit companies over their users. That a small design tweak could inspire so much backlash speaks to the profound influence Google and other ubiquitous platforms have -- and the responsibility that status confers to them. "Google and Facebook shape realities," says Kat Zhou, a product designer who has created a framework and toolkit to help promote ethical design. "Students and professors turn to Google for their research. Folks turn to Facebook for political news. Communities turn to Google for Covid-19 updates. In some sense, Google and Facebook have become arbiters of the truth. That's particularly scary when you factor in their business models, which often incentivize blurring the line between news and advertisements."

Google's not the only search engine to blur this line. If anything, Bing is even more opaque, sneaking the "Ad" disclosure under the header, with only a faint outline to draw attention. [...] But Google has around 92 percent of global search marketshare. It effectively is online search. Dark patterns are all too common online in general, and January wasn't the first time people accused Google of deploying them. In June of 2018, a blistering report from the Norwegian Consumer Council found that Google and Facebook both used specific interface choices to strip away user privacy at almost every turn. The study details how both platforms implemented the least privacy-friendly options by default, consistently "nudged" users toward giving away more of their data, and more. It paints a portrait of a system designed to befuddle users into complacency. [...] That confusion reached its apex a few months later, when an Associated Press investigation found that disabling Location History on your smartphone did not, in fact, stop Google from collecting your location in all instances.

An anonymous reader shares a report from Coywolf News, written by Jon Henshaw: For several years, it's been reported that Google pays billions of dollars to Apple to remain the default search engine on Safari for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The deal ensures that iPhone, iPad, and Mac users search with Google when they use Safari. That is unless they manually change the default search engine in Safari's preferences. The deal between Apple and Google may be coming to an end soon. In July 2020, Reuters reported that the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority was taking aim at the deal. If the U.K. regulators take action, there may be a ripple effect from the European Union, which has a history of going after Google for anti-competitive behavior. Regulators in Europe may force Apple to remove Google as the default search engine and have users choose which search engine they want to use when they first launch Safari.

Regulatory pressure, a contentious relationship with Google, and the maturation of Apple's Siri and iCloud are presenting an opportunity for Apple to create and launch a search engine. There are several signs right now that indicate Apple may be doing just that:

- Apple doesn't need Google's money: Apple is now the world's most valuable company. They may want the money Google gives them, but they don't need it.
- Apple is pouring resources and money into search: Apple is investing heavily in search, as shown in their job postings for search engineers. The job listings reveal they incorporate AI, ML, NLP, and more into all of their services and apps.
- iOS and iPadOS 14 beta bypasses Google Search with Spotlight Search: It's not clear if Apple uses Bing anymore, as results are labeled only as Siri Suggestions. It is clear that Apple has started to return search results within Spotlight Search and is completely bypassing Google altogether.
- Apple recently updated its Applebot web crawler page: In July 2020, Apple published a significant update to its About Applebot support page. The additions are very similar to the details Google provides to webmasters and SEOs. Here are the changes they made to the Applebot support page: Added how to verify traffic from Applebot; Expanded details on the Applebot user agent, including differences between its desktop and mobile version; Expanded robots.txt rules; Added a section stating that they don't just crawl HTML, but also render pages similar to Google; and Added a section on search rankings and the factors that affect how it ranks web search results.
- Applebot has been busy crawling sites: Checking my server logs on WP Engine revealed that Applebot had been regularly crawling my sites daily, something I haven't noticed until now.

Mozilla and Google have extended their search deal for another three years, news outlet ZDNet reported Wednesday, citing sources familiar with thee matter. Mozilla confirmed the news. From a report: The new search deal will ensure Google remains the default search engine provider inside the Firefox browser until 2023 at an estimated price tag of around $400 million to $450 million per year. Mozilla officials are expected to announce the search deal's extension later this fall, in November, when the organization is scheduled to disclose its 2019 financial figures. Terms of the new deal were leaked to this reporter after Mozilla announced plans to lay off more than 250 employees on Wednesday in a move that had many users fearing for the browser maker's future, as Mozilla's current Google search deal was scheduled to expire at the end of the year. However, several sources have confirmed that the organization is sound financially, and the layoffs were part of a restructuring of its core business, with Mozilla moving away from its current role of internet standards steward and experimental approach to its product catalog to more commercially-viable offerings that generate revenues on their own.

Google could lose 20% of the mobile search market that it dominates if more users had the option to choose their default search provider via a preference menu, privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo argues in new research. From a report: This study fleshes out that idea and gives DuckDuckGo ammunition it can give authorities investigating Google for anticompetitive practices in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. Google developed the Android operating system, which is used by roughly 80 percent of the global mobile market, and Google's search tools are built into Android in a variety of ways. DuckDuckGo conducted user testing of 12,000 people in the U.S., UK and Australia, where Google market share in mobile search is 95%, 98% and 98% respectively. A preference menu could reduce those market shares by 20%, 22% and 16% respectively, the testing found. Testing also concluded that when given options, users scroll through to see the options before making a choice on a search engine. DuckDuckGo also tested user behavior when Google was placed on the last screen of the preference menu, finding no statistically significant difference in how often users selected it.

An anonymous reader writes: More than 80 million Chrome users have installed one of 295 Chrome extensions that have been identified to hijack and insert ads inside Google and Bing search results. The malicious extensions were discovered by AdGuard, a company that provides ad-blocking solutions, while the company's staff was looking into a series of fake ad-blocking extensions that were available on the official Chrome Web Store. AdGuard says that most of the extensions (245 out of the 295 extensions) were simplistic utilities that had no other function than to apply a custom background for Chrome's "new tab" page. In addition to the 295 cluster, AdGuard also found a large number of copycat extensions that cloned popular add-ons to capitalize on their brands, and then load malicious code that performed ad fraud or cookie stuffing. ZDNet has the full list of 295 Chrome extensions embedded in their article.

In Google's early years, users would type in a query and get back a page of 10 "blue links" that led to different websites. "We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible," co-founder Larry Page said in 2004. Today, Google often considers that "right place" to be Google, an investigation by The Markup has found. From the report: We examined more than 15,000 recent popular queries and found that Google devoted 41 percent of the first page of search results on mobile devices to its own properties and what it calls "direct answers," which are populated with information copied from other sources, sometimes without their knowledge or consent. When we examined the top 15 percent of the page, the equivalent of the first screen on an iPhone X, that figure jumped to 63 percent. For one in five searches in our sample, links to external websites did not appear on the first screen at all. A trending search in our data for "myocardial infarction" shows how Google has piled up its products at the top. It returned:
Google's dictionary definition.
A "people also ask" box that expanded to answer related questions without leaving the search results page.
A "knowledge panel," which is an abridged encyclopedia entry with various links.
And a "related conditions" carousel leading to various new Google searches for other diseases.
All of these appeared before search results by WebMD, Harvard University, and Medscape. In fact, a user would have to scroll nearly halfway down the page -- about 42 percent -- before reaching the first "organic" result in that search.

A Wall Street Journal investigation found that Google gives its online video service YouTube the advantage when choosing the best video clips to promote from around the web. From the report: Take a clip of basketball star Zion Williamson that the National Basketball Association posted online in January, when he made his highly anticipated pro debut. The clip was popular on Facebook Inc., drawing more than one million views and nearly 900 comments as of March. A nearly identical YouTube version of the clip with the same title was seen about 182,000 times and garnered fewer than 400 comments. But when The Wall Street Journal's automated bots searched Google for the clip's title, the YouTube version featured much more prominently than the Facebook version.

The Journal conducted Google searches for a selection of other videos and channels that are available on YouTube as well as on competitors' platforms. The YouTube versions were significantly more prominent in the results in the vast majority of cases. This isn't by accident. Engineers at Google have made changes that effectively preference YouTube over other video sources, according to people familiar with the matter. Google executives in recent years made decisions to prioritize YouTube on the first page of search results, in part to drive traffic to YouTube rather than to competitors, and also to give YouTube more leverage in business deals with content providers seeking traffic for their videos, one of those people said. A Google spokeswoman, Lara Levin, said there is no preference given to YouTube or any other video provider in Google search. "Our systems use a number of signals from the web to understand what results people find most relevant and helpful for a given query," Ms. Levin said. She declined to comment on the specific examples cited in the article.

Type a query into the Google search bar on a smartphone and there's a good chance the results will be dominated by advertising. From a report: That stems from a decision in 2015 to test a fourth ad, rather than three, at the top of search results. Some employees opposed the move at the time, saying it could reduce the quality of Google's responses, according to people familiar with the deliberations. But the company brushed aside those concerns because it was under pressure to meet Wall Street growth expectations, one of the people said. By 2016, the extra marketing slot was a regular feature. It's one of the many ways the search leader has altered how it presents results since its early days. Another example is the pre-packaged information Google often displays in a box at the top of a page, rather than sending users to other websites.

Phased in gradually over years, changes like these have gone largely unnoticed by legions of consumers who regularly turn to Google to call up information and hunt for bargains. The company says these changes support its mission to organize the world's information and make it useful and accessible to everyone. But to many web publishers and other businesses that have historically relied on the internet giant to send users to their sites, Google's subtle tweaks have siphoned off vital traffic and made it harder -- and costlier -- to reach customers online.

A Google crawler has been adding products to e-commerce site shopping carts, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. From a write-up: Sellers have been complaining about a serial cart abandoner named, John Smith. Turns out John is a Google bot. A Google spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that it built systems to ensure the pricing seen on the product pages is reflected when a user adds a product to the cart. GoogleBot shopping. Google told Search Engine Land in a statement, "We use automated systems to ensure consumers are getting accurate pricing information from our merchants." Sellers that upload their product feeds to Google Merchant Center may not realize it, but they agree to having Google's bots crawl their sites for price verifications when they agree to the Terms of Service. The bot is designed to ensure the price in the feed matches the price on the product page and when the product is added to the cart. The automated system will disapprove items that don't pass pricing verifications. Google is aware that this may cause issues for merchants and owners of e-commerce sites. Google told the WSJ, "This sometimes leads to merchants seeing abandoned carts as a result of our system testing the price displayed matches the price at checkout." That data can mess with e-commerce site owners' abandoned cart metrics, making them look artificially higher than they really are.

Google will expand free shopping results from a narrow experiment in its shopping tab to the main search engine, dramatically expanding their reach. From a report: The company announced the move today in a blog post written by commerce president Bill Ready. The shift is part of a continuous move away from paid search results and follows a trend of users searching more for information on subjects like the coronavirus and less for products. At the same time, advertisers have been cutting spending as the pandemic takes an economic toll. Ready attributed the move to Google's desire to help sellers and buyers connect and noted that it remains difficult for users to find what they need online in terms of product, price, and seller reputation. Likewise, digital remains a challenge for many small businesses, even as shoppers continue to gravitate toward online purchasing. "It's crucial that we help people find all the best options available and help merchants more easily connect with consumers online," Ready wrote.

Sridhar Ramaswamy once ran Google's $115 billion advertising arm. But he grew disillusioned and worried that growth was too much of a priority. From a report: Nearly two years after he left Google, he is testing his newfound conviction by mounting a challenge against his former employer. His new company, Neeva, is a search engine that looks for information on the web as well as personal files like emails and other documents. It will not show any advertisements and it will not collect or profit from user data, he said. It plans to make money on subscriptions from users paying for the service. As evidenced by the antitrust investigations into Google's businesses, challenging the company is no easy task. Google accounts for roughly 90 percent of all searches globally and competitors have tried unsuccessfully for years to make inroads. Neeva faces the additional hurdle of getting people to pay for something that many have come to expect as free. While there is a growing awareness that free services from Google and Facebook come at the expense of personal data, many consumers -- even those who express a concern about their privacy -- are often unwilling to pay for an alternative.

Neeva recalls a notion raised, ironically, by the Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in a 1998 research paper when they were doctoral students at Stanford University. They wrote, at the time, that "advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results." Search advertising has become much more sophisticated since the 1990s, but much of the same "conflicts of interest" remains, according to Mr. Ramaswamy. Companies are often torn between serving the interests of advertisers or the interests of users. He pointed to how Google has devoted more space to ads at the top of search results with the results users are seeking pushed down the page -- an issue more pronounced on smaller smartphone screens. "It's a slow drift away from what is the best answer for the user and how do we surface it," he said. "As a consumer product, the more pressure there is to show ads, the less useful in the long term the product becomes."

According to Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi, Apple should acquire privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo to put pressure on Google Search and tap into lucrative advertising revenue. 9to5Mac reports: According to Sacconaghi, Apple should acquire DuckDuckGo for around $1 billion as a way to put more pressure on Google and capture the advertising revenue that comes from the search industry. As reported by Street Insider, acquiring DuckDuckGo could serve as a 'stalking horse' to pressure Google: "Google is clearly the dominant force in search today. However, we suspect the company's fear of 'rocking the boat' -- which could compromise $15B in profits it captures today from iOS -- may ultimately limit its freedom of action with Apple. Conversely, Apple may be in a stronger position than at first glance, given it controls the keys to the kingdom on who can monetize iOS search. However, it remains uncomfortably dependent on Bing to act as a counter weight to Google -- hence our suggestion that Apple acquire its own search engine. Finally, Microsoft Bing may (counterintuitively) have the most 'option value' vis-a-vis the status quo -- although it remains to be seen how aggressively it will pursue this opportunity." What do you think of Sacconaghi's suggestion? Do you think Apple should cut ties with Google and acquire DuckDuckGo?

U.S. federal and state authorities are asking detailed questions about how to limit Google's power in the online search market as part of their antitrust investigations into the tech giant, according to rival DuckDuckGo. From a report: Gabriel Weinberg, chief executive officer of the privacy-focused search engine, said he has spoken with state regulators, and talked with the U.S. Justice Department as recently as a few weeks ago. Justice Department officials and state attorneys general asked the CEO about requiring Google to give consumers alternatives to its search engine on Android devices and in Google's Chrome web browser, Weinberg said in an interview. "We've been talking to all of them about search and all of them have asked us detailed search questions," he added. Weinberg's comments shine a light into how the inquiry is examining Google's core business -- online search.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A man from Washington state was arrested in May 2019 and was indicted on several charges related to robbery and assault. The suspect, Joseph Sam, was using an unspecified Motorola smartphone. When he was arrested, he says, one of the officers present hit the power button to bring up the phone's lock screen. The filing does not say that any officer present attempted to unlock the phone or make the suspect do so at the time. In February 2020, the FBI also turned the phone on to take a photograph of the phone's lock screen, which displayed the name "Streezy" on it. Sam's lawyer filed a motion arguing that this evidence should not have been sought without a warrant and should therefore be suppressed.

District Judge John Coughenour of the U.S. District Court in Seattle agreed. In his ruling (PDF), the judge determined that the police looking at the phone at the time of the arrest and the FBI looking at it again after the fact are two separate issues. Police are allowed to conduct searches without search warrant under special circumstances, Coughenour wrote, and looking at the phone's lock screen may have been permissible as it "took place either incident to a lawful arrest or as part of the police's efforts to inventory the personal effects" of the person arrested. Coughenour was unable to determine how, specifically, the police acted, and he ordered clarification to see if their search of the phone fell within those boundaries. But where the police actions were unclear, the FBI's were both crystal clear and counter to the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights, Coughenour ruled. "Here, the FBI physically intruded on Mr. Sam's personal effect when the FBI powered on his phone to take a picture of the phone's lock screen." That qualifies as a "search" under the terms of the Fourth Amendment, he found, and since the FBI did not have a warrant for that search, it was unconstitutional.

Attorneys for the government argued that Sam should have had no expectation of privacy on his lock screen -- that is, after all, what everyone who isn't you is meant to see when they try to access the phone. Instead of determining whether the lock screen is private or not, though, Coughenour found that it doesn't matter. "When the Government gains evidence by physically intruding on a constitutionally protected area -- as the FBI did here -- it is 'unnecessary to consider' whether the government also violated the defendant's reasonable expectation of privacy," he wrote. Basically, he ruled, the FBI pushing the button on the phone to activate the lock screen qualified as a search, regardless of the lock screen's nature.