You know, at some point (and we are around that point) Google does cross a line where they are abusing their near monopoly on search. This is a pro consumer move, but it's another instance of Google saying do things our way or we punish you.
Also, Google's search engine has never, ever, ever been objective in the signals used for ranking. Their results have been different and biased ever since the start, which is what made their search engine successful in the first place. It's a little late to complain about that.
It's not so much the curating that's the problem, nobody would care if Duck Duck Go did it, the problem is with the regulators that view Google to be the only curator out there.
> without specifying what metrics Google is and is not allowed to use?
Why not? If society depends on something, we regulate it. There are many different possible degrees of regulation, so this is not a boolean condition, even though painting such situations as a boolean choice between pure laissez-faire and nationalizing an industry (instead of merely regulating).
If you don't like this idea, I suggest that Google (or any other business) should find a way on their own to handle the situation (possibly by making their metrics more available, transparent, and verifiable?), or the choice may eventually be taken out of their hands.
However, focusing on my suggestion of transparency and verification misses the point. The method by which Google regains (and maintains) the public trust is their problem, and I'm sure that more than one solution exists.
My point is it would probably be in Google's best interest to fix this problem, because waiting too long has consequences. At some point, the people who feel that are treated unfairly by Google - it doesn't matter if they are correct in that belief - will fight back, which has already started in small, preliminary ways.
> The outcome would be ugly.
The outcome would also be ugly in a future where a socially-necessary service is controlled entirely by a single entity. As usual in these situations, the best situation is somewhere in the middle.
To your broader point, I agree that it's reasonable to want Google regulated to some degree, though I do fear regulators will take on that "transparent algorithm" point of view, which will just make search terrible. Governments generally aren't very good at regulating tech businesses.
So ranking measures derived from user behavior: great. Ranking measures designed to prioritize features in your browser, or to push people away from apps (that, just by total happenstance, your dominant competitor does better than you, and which threaten to undercut your dominance in search/display ads): not fine. Which really is classical antitrust: you can't use your monopoly (search) to juice your other businesses (browser, app store).
Users will bounce if they don't like ads, with or without countdown timers. Acting based on observed user behavior is great. If they don't like it, they bounce. If they tolerate it, they don't bounce. Over time, users will migrate to less-annoying sites. Ranking sites on observed bounced rates, whether caused by ads, low quality, or what ever else, is awesome and should have no anti-trust implications. That's not what google did.
After all, if these ads really annoyed users in general, that would show up in their behavior, and thus naturally be picked up on by ranking algorithms, no? (They annoy me, but I'm not all users.)
In any case, that concept of using monopoly power in one market to bolster power in another doesn't really apply here with Google.
I share a lot of the unease many people have with the amount of power Google has been able to amass as the de factor curator of the Internet, but I'm also somewhat amazed they are in the position they are in and have been as (mostly) benevolent as they have been. I suspect it is actually pretty hard work just to remain somewhat close to neutral when you are sitting on that much power.
Windows 7 in Europe.
Remember them pushing Chrome on you? having ads directly on Google.com? To this day forcing you to use Chrome for Hangouts? And so on?
Do you seriously think Chrome would have caught on if it weren’t for this push of advertisements?
This is direct abuse of near-monopoly in one market (search engines) to gain unfair advantage in another market (browsers).
Seriously, look up "Dear Sophie" to see how many awards it won. Google doesn't do TV, so that's not a monopoly.
It was horrible, and I really believe this was unfair competition. Especially as people using AdSense complained that they got paid next to nothing or nothing for people viewing and clicking Chrome ads.
When they launched chrome, the browser wars had long since been won. Everyone who knew what a browser was had installed firefox, and everyone else thought IE was the internet. Just because you ignored the ads doesn't mean the general public did. It sounds like you're being biased.
If you're going to attribute Chrome's growth to "accidental clicks on ad manipulation" instead of the massive awareness campaign, you're going to need to provide proof.
Several people on this page provided statistics and reports how they got nothing or next to nothing when Google replaced all ads in the AdWords network with their Chrome ads.
As I’m also not interested enough in the topic to research sources just to change your opinion, I don’t care if you’ll downvote me again.
Are you sure you understand what you're talking about?
That's not what you meant.
It could be hard to argue that an interstitial pushing an app (especially an app specifically for the site the user is visiting that gives them enhanced features compared to the mobile web version of the site) is more annoying, distracting, or otherwise harmful to a user than any other kind of blocking interstitial.
Thus, one might try to conclude that Google's actual interest here is trying to keep users from using apps to access content instead of using the web site where Google is more likely to be the ad provider.
I have no idea if this could rise to the level of an antitrust violation, but it's the first place I'd look for one.
Still, I feel like newsletter prompts are also easy to detect, so that argument doesn't hold a ton of water unless there's also a separate plan to address those—or maybe they're testing the waters with this one. I think I need more information to have a real opinion :/
Also, the blog post states they're essentially calling these sites mobile-unfriendly, which I think is entirely fair. All full-page interstitials are annoying, on the mobile web or desktop web, but only "install our app" interstitials are unique to mobile. So if you view "mobile friendly" as meaning "as good as desktop web", banning bad things that are only relevant to mobile makes sense.
This is anecdotal, but I almost always abandon pages that lead to an app interstitial, which means that I end up back on the results page. This is a pretty unambiguous signal to Google that the search result was bad. So, the remedy that they're proposing is good and obvious.
PS Another thing that may also hurt Google's core business may be once Apple starts blocking their ads. Google ads will become the next Flash.
Why only this type of interstitial and not those pushing newsletters or paywalls or surveys? "I know you've only just arrived and read all of one sentence but CHECK OUT OUR NEWSLETTER!"