European parliament wants to break up google

[Purple]

Are they really? By what objective measure have you measured this? I generally get the same results regardless of what search engine I use. Unless of course you consider localized searches to somehow be an advantage.

As someone who has been part of a comparison of Google, Yahoo, and Bing I can confirm that at least as of three years ago Google was the superior search engine.

Three years ago I can buy easy. It's just that I feel that by today this is no longer the case.

[White Haven]

That is, however, amazingly irrelevant in a discussion about how the company came to BE in a dominant market position.

[Ralin]

By the way, your approach is US-centric. In China, people think Baidu, not Google, when it comes to searching web. In IT-world, you often are biggest just because you were first.

Well yes, that does tend to happen when your one party state blocks Google and Google services.

And yes I realize Baidu is supposed to be better for Chinese language content but their success didn't happen in a void and I don't know what your point is here.

[Simon_Jester]

Other search engines have at least closed the gap by now, but in the early days? Google made waves by actually getting shit done, and that's how they became big. Success that stems from actually being superior isn't a sin.

Most of the legitimate present complaints have to do with how Google has used its superiority. Basically, they became a giant, then power corrupted.

So I agree with White Haven- let's not be stupid about this. We shouldn't assume that the present monopoly got there just by being "first." Lots of people tried (and failed) to start up Internet-related businesses around 2000; the survivors must have been doing something right.

At the same time, of course, this doesn't render them immune to charges that they are now using monopoly power to force competitors out of the market. Or to unfairly capitalize on their strong position in one area (high-quality search engines) to spread into other areas (sending you targeted advertisement).

[Terralthra]

Arguably high-quality search results and targeted advertisement are pretty close, as both are "showing you what we think you would like".

[Simon_Jester]

The main difference is that good searches do it because I want to know something, while targeted advertisements do it because someone paid them to make me know something. Or think I know something.

Cynically we all know that the search engines' real clients are the advertising agencies (who have money) not the people doing searches (who don't). But that doesn't make something we are bound to approve of, resign ourselves to, or allow to become justification for monopolies.

[InsaneTD]

Funny enough, the ads have never enticed me to click them.

[NoXion]

Funny enough, the ads have never enticed me to click them.

Same here, although after getting AdBlock I don't recall even seeing any.

But either enough other people do click on the ads for the business model to work, or something else is going on.

[bilateralrope]

Some ads pay every time they are viewed, often because clicking on the ad won't help you do whatever the advertiser wants you to do. For example, election or movie advertising.

[NoXion]

Some ads pay every time they are viewed, often because clicking on the ad won't help you do whatever the advertiser wants you to do. For example, election or movie advertising.

Doesn't the fact that at least some people, upon viewing an advert, then do nothing that could potentially lead to more money for the company concerned, serve to dilute the "value" of views relative to clicks? It would seem to me that the latter would be a more reliable indicator of actual interest in the product or service advertised. I'd imagine it's less common to accidentally click an advert than it is to accidentally view one.

[bilateralrope]

That is accounted for by ads paying per view pay way less for each view than ads paying per click pay for each of those clicks.

[InsaneTD]

Do wish such ads would be better screened for phone web browser hijackers.

[jwl]

Funny enough, the ads have never enticed me to click them.

Maybe not, but I've watched a ton of short adverts on youtube and google owns that too.

[InsaneTD]

Probably why they are so common on there now.

[Simon_Jester]

Funny enough, the ads have never enticed me to click them.

This is true; quite a few people have the mental discipline to resist that. But advertising is and has always been targeted at the people with the lowest willpower.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The main difference is that good searches do it because I want to know something, while targeted advertisements do it because someone paid them to make me know something. Or think I know something.

Cynically we all know that the search engines' real clients are the advertising agencies (who have money) not the people doing searches (who don't). But that doesn't make something we are bound to approve of, resign ourselves to, or allow to become justification for monopolies.

Tell me. How exactly do you monetize search results? Targeted adverts based on search history. That is how.

By the way, your approach is US-centric. In China, people think Baidu, not Google, when it comes to searching web. In IT-world, you often are biggest just because you were first.

Riiiight. And the fact that a one party totalitarian state blocks google from competition has nothing to do with that.

Google was not first. Not by a long shot. I remember the days before google. Back when the choices were lycos, excite, dogpile etc. Their search results fucking sucked. Excite was OK in the mid 90s, because they allowed you to manually refine search results, but they crashed and burned.

Then google came. Harken ye masses unto our vastly superior search results. Search results that competing search engines like Bing simply could not match with respect to their accuracy vis a vis what I am actually looking for.

Google's language translation algorithms are also superior to those of most competitors. Say I want to translate an abstract from english to spanish (because some journals require dual language abstracts, and I speak german and latin, not spanish). Bing gives me garbled trash. Google's only spanish language errors (I run these by a native speaker) come from word choice issues (strike as in predatory strike gets translated as labor strike, for example)

German and latin are not AS good, but serviceable considering that the algorithm cannot read your mind.

[mr friendly guy]

@ AD. I also remember back in the old days before Google. Yeah, nostalgia. I loved infoseek because you could refine the search. However I don't think any of those old search engines would match google, which can also do cool things like narrow it by time of uploading (which is useful if you want to um, read free comics). Now I haven't tried its competitors like yahoo, although I occasionally use bing at work since it comes built in with windows. However I google scholar better for searching medical articles compared to pubmed and ovid medline. That's a plus for their search algorithms. I swear pubmed and ovid search capabilities seem stuck in the 90s, where most search engines struggled to refine searches.

BTW - The Chinese government didn't ban Google. They just tried to spy on Google and Google wasn't having any of that and left. The fact that Google were already trounced by Baidu using Chinese language searches didn't give them a strong incentive to weather the storm.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Oh god yes. For general searches I use google scholar. If I need to search a particular database or go through a full scale boolean search I will go ahead and use Web of Science, which searches All of the Databases (, Molari).

[Purple]

@ AD. I also remember back in the old days before Google. Yeah, nostalgia. I loved infoseek because you could refine the search. However I don't think any of those old search engines would match google, which can also do cool things like narrow it by time of uploading (which is useful if you want to um, read free comics). Now I haven't tried its competitors like yahoo, although I occasionally use bing at work since it comes built in with windows.

From my personal experience using both yahoo and google for years I can tell you that as far back as I can remember there have been no serious differences in the quality of results.

[White Haven]

Then either your memory or your experience doesn't go back to the relevant time period.

[Purple]

Then either your memory or your experience doesn't go back to the relevant time period.

They don't. And I newer said otherwise. I was merely replying to someone who has newer used it at all and was asking how it performs now. See the text I quoted.

[Ralin]

BTW - The Chinese government didn't ban Google. They just tried to spy on Google and Google wasn't having any of that and left. The fact that Google were already trounced by Baidu using Chinese language searches didn't give them a strong incentive to weather the storm.

Last I heard Google and Google services had been fully blocked for the past year or so? As opposed to previous off and on blocks of various Google services

[mr friendly guy]

BTW - The Chinese government didn't ban Google. They just tried to spy on Google and Google wasn't having any of that and left. The fact that Google were already trounced by Baidu using Chinese language searches didn't give them a strong incentive to weather the storm.

Last I heard Google and Google services had been fully blocked for the past year or so? As opposed to previous off and on blocks of various Google services

I was actually thinking of a bit before the past year, mainly in 2010, when google threatened to leave and then redirected all searches from google China to google Hong Kong (does that sort of count as leaving).

A quick search seems to be reveal google is again subjected to on and off blocks, usually at politically sensitive times, eg anniversary of various events.