Hacker News Reader

"Google can do whatever it wants" - wouldn't this be anti-competitive behaviour if they stated favouring certain sites in their algorithm?

I seem to remember reading somewhere that they get audited to make sure they don't do this, although can't find the link.

View on HN

I would think they're perfectly allowed to favor certain sites over others, especially with good reasons for doing so.

What I would expect to be illegal would be overly favoring their own sites/services over those of competitors, since they are so big and that would be abusing their search marketshare to spread into other markets.

> What I would expect to be illegal would be overly favoring their own sites/services over those of competitors

They've been doing this for years in search results, progressively so.

Didn't the EU get on them for that and they had to pay a large fine? Can't recall the details of what was the offending behavior.

Yes, but specifically for their shopping product.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/27/534524024...

The practice continues (and continues to worsen), at least in their US version. I can't speak for their European sites.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com