The sooner there is some democratic accountability the better.

Right now they are a runaway make money machine crushing everyone in their path.

They have for all intents and purposes become the de facto gateway to the internet.

I wrote my reply as if replying to poons using howlingspoons.blogsapot.com as an example. My mistake and I’ll make a couple of further comments later.

“So, yes, I’m concerned enough to avoid Google services where I can.”

>That sums up why I don’t think that Google “distorts the internet”. So much of this is an opt-in. You don’t have to use Google. You don’t have to run Gmail. That’s a privacy trade-off.

For the market (each internet sector in this case) not to be distorted a reasonable level of choice has to be possible, which means that one can switch to a competitive supplier. When a single supplier has a market share of 80% (Uk search marked) or 43% (total UK online advertising revenues last year) the market mechanism cannot work as well as it should, as a competitive supplier cannot exist.

>In fact, Google is doing some good things for the internet (by pursuing their interest). They fund development of a huge amount of open source and projects that promote more use of open standards.

Of course it has. No problem with that. It is still overdominant, however.

>As for businesses relying on Google search to direct customers, Google work hard to get the most relevant search links to the top, but occasionally it screws up. Everyone knows this. Basing your business model on that is pretty foolish.

On the relevant links point, the search results have far more “sponsored” links (i.e., adverts at the top), adverts (all the way down the side) and cross promoting services (Google maps, Google directory) than used to exist. The results are highly affected by Google commercial interests.

The reality is that with an 80% market share of UK search traffic in the hands of Google, many online businesses don’t have any alternative - foolish or not. If you don’t target Google traffic, then you don’t have a business. And when you do, the 80% market share causes prices to be artificially high.

Where there is a lack of real competition, prices are higher than they should be. Consider this report from Australia:

Google dominance driving up the rates.

What we really need is more competition to the others, but that does not reduce the fact of the monopolistic position Google enjoys in multiple sectors.

I’m not attacking Google as such, simply flagging up the question for people to think about. We are all in bed with an elephant, and we need to be aware that it can tread on us.

A case study: how does your traffic from google.com compare with that from google.co.uk? If you are getting the same share in proportion to the number of search requests, it should be 20:80. for UK visitors.

The reason that this does not usually happen is that Google de-empahises .com domains in the results given to UK searchers. To put it another way, it Balkanised the results.

So we all have to dance to Google’s search policy tune to try and get out proper share of UK traffic. And spend time on that rather than writing new articles for users. So having a dominant search provider increases the overheads for all of us (or at least for those who are aware of the problem - the others just lose a huge chunk of their potential visitors).

Unfortunately, as they have done in the past, the policy can change without notice or warning - and the elephant stands on someone different at random. Not a situation that I like particularly.

In summary, they use their unique position of dominance to increase their profit and revenue just as any other commercial company does - if you’ll forgive me the expression I think you’re being a bit optimistic about Google and their purity of heart.

Enough for now. Thanks for the reply.

“So, yes, I’m concerned enough to avoid Google services where I can.”

That sums up why I don’t think that Google “distorts the internet”. So much of this is an opt-in. You don’t have to use Google. You don’t have to run Gmail. That’s a privacy trade-off.

In fact, Google is doing some good things for the internet (by pursuing their interest). They fund development of a huge amount of open source and projects that promote more use of open standards.

As for businesses relying on Google search to direct customers, Google work hard to get the most relevant search links to the top, but occasionally it screws up. Everyone knows this. Basing your business model on that is pretty foolish.

Are you happy with an 80% in any market in the hands of one company? Never mind one as important as internet search.

Matt

btw if it was, it would have been tagged “Humourous”

I’m still trying to decide whether this is a comedy post. um?

poons