Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress | Hacker News Reader

Eric Schmidt Testifies Before Congress

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The central question seems to be the following, articulated most precisely by Mike Lee (R-UT): even if the organic search results are entirely unbiased, Google also programmatically (via "Google Universal Search", the system that organizes the overall search page) inserts specific links to other Google pages--such as Places, Maps, Shopping, or News--in very prominent positions. There are competitors for all of those sites (Yelp, Nextag), but Google systematically (it seems) prefers their own version.

This behavior is relevant to an antitrust principle that a firm with a monopoly in one area/market should not be allowed to use that monopoly to get inordinate market share in other markets.

The senators do not appear to have concluded that Google is doing anything illegal, though several have used the words to the effect of "I'm concerned with what is happening here."

My take: I agree with other commenters here that the senators have at several points seemed to have gaps in their understanding of Google vs. the average HN commenter, though I didn't hear any overtly wrong claims with respect to the central question. Maybe this analysis is better done by the FTC (there is an investigation in progress there), but it does not seem ridiculous that Congress, which is somewhat more transparent, is asking these particular questions, which do not seem incoherent or pointless.

Google is free for users and free to anyone wanting to get in their index, so they do not owe any self proclaimed competitor anything and that is the crux of it, the law is on their side, you cannot monopolize "free" and all this politicians' propaganda is waste of time and tax payer dollars..

You clearly have very little understanding of how antitrust laws work.

He shares the point of view of the person defending Google (she's a former anti-trust investigator?). If you can freely and instantly switch from Google to Bing then you cannot claim they have a monopoly. If you don't like Google's results there is nothing locking the consumer into Google except their own choice.

Not only can you switch instantly from Google to Bing, you can do the same with the indirect competitors such as yelp.

Yelp claims Google is hurting consumers because often Yelp's results are better than what Google displays as their own Location results above.

Is it really hurting a user to have to scroll slightly down? Or if Yelp's results were really better would users not go directly there or use their apps as an alternative?

I find it very interesting you can claim Google has a monopoly on the web + mobile, which seems to be the necessary premise to make these claims.

it's anti-competitive. the question is not whether it's hurting consumers directly, but whether it is stifling competition in the spaces that Google enters, which then indirectly hurts consumers -- a lack of competition, the theory goes, slows down the pace of innovation, and gives dictatorial control over a market sector to one actor. bundling IE with Windows didn't directly hurt the consumer, either (and for a long time, IE was the best browser available on Windows), but it didn't stop the DOJ from pursuing Microsoft over it.

given how steeply traffic falls off as you get farther down a SERP (see, to name the first page I found searching for "serp clickthrough", http://www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/understanding-google-serp-cli...), it's hard to argue that (theoretically) practices which unjustly downrank non-Google properties would not constitute anticompetitive behavior when Google has a 65%+ share of search.

Not only can you switch instantly from Google to Bing, you can do the same with the indirect competitors such as yelp.

That argument is quite compelling for search, where switching is easy and other search engines are going to give you fairly comparable results most of the time. But search isn't the only market Google is in. In the advertising market the "just switch" argument doesn't hold as much weight in my opinion: what good is switching to an advertising network that doesn't generate any views? If Google can dominate advertising and analytics due to their search monopoly, does any other advertising platform stand a chance?

Disclaimer: I've never been a Google customer, and I don't really know how much competition they have in the advertising market, so I don't know how much ability they have to jack up prices etc.

It's a bit too much gymnastics for my brain right now but shouldn't one also look at this from the perspective of Google's paying customers, i.e. advertisers? Looking only at those who use Google to search seems to be missing one half of the business.

When you become a monopoloy in a certain industry, under american law, you do owe it to your competitors to allow them to compete on fair ground with you.

This is why theaters were not allowed to be owned by studios, Car Dealerships by actual Car companies, etc.

Anti trust exists to protect costumers and when the product is free and the alternatives are free, where is the harm?

Yelp cant build google to in order to funnel traffic into their local business ratings website

Let's say Google entered a clearly different market, such as making & delivering pizza. Further say: Google's pizza is slightly more expensive and somewhat less good than pizza created by their competitors. Based on that, we would ordinarily guess that their market share will be low to nonexistent.

But let's say Google reserves the most prominent position on their SERP for hundreds of relevant queries for one-click pizza delivery. Maybe the majority of people will still click through to Goat Hill Pizza or whatever, with tastier, cheaper pizza. But Google's more prominent position gives them an advantage vs. their competitor, and that will lead to increased and probably significant market share.

Now this is the key: we users could decide that Google's promotion of bad pizza on their SERP means we should switch to Bing. But Google's search engine is, despite this one bad case, still far superior to Bing's. So according to standard micro-economic analysis, pretty much all of us stick with Google, so Google Pizza continues to get the boost.

In summary, in this hypothetical, Google is using the "excess" excellence of their search engine to increase market share of very different products. Since those products may be unusually profitable, they also have an increased ability to drive competitors out of the market. If unchecked, wealthy firms with one great product can use this technique to extend their monopoly into more and more fields. The end result is that more consumers end up with worse quality products and (over time) fewer options due to less competition.

(Note: I'm not arguing that this is truly happening in real life. I'm trying to explain how even a free product with monopolistic dominance can be used to take over other markets with inferior products.)

As a general rule (ie I'm not taking sides here) - it makes it more difficult for higher quality options to compete.

That is a naive view... anti-trust exists to take choice away from the consumer and put it in the hands of the government, thus making companies more beholden to them.

I can't speak for the down-voters, but I disagree with you on the grounds that Google is not free. You seem to be confusing its users with its customers. The advertisers are the customers. The have terrible customer service for people who don't spend a bundle, you can point out faults with their penalties and get a response of "meh" (when you eventually do get a response). In principle I can see great harm from a Google monopoly, not the least harmed being myself as a small G customer.

That said, I can't argue this article specifically because I didn't rtfa, and probably won't until much later if at all.

I think the consumer are the entities (Fujitsu, Coke, eBay, etc.) advertising on Google, not the people using Google (mom, sister, dad) for search.

From that perspective, Google being the pre-eminent search provider (i.e, where the advertisers' customers search for a product or service) this becomes relevant.

Basically, yes, an advertiser could only advertise on Yahoo! (but in the process lose quite a chunk of their potential customer base).

I think Google would be well served if Schmidt had a little more Steve Jobs in him. Not a lot, as I think Jobs might get so frustrated he'd melt down, but a little. Eric makes everything sound somehow slightly sinister, even when it isn't.

When asked about something like maps and places the correct answer is:

We realized that is what people wanted in response to their queries. We looked around, and the other map products sucked. Also, we couldn't use them in the way we wanted to serve the users, even if we had wanted to. So we spent a ton of money developing our own -- and it absolutely clobbered the competition. It was magical, far better than anything that existed before it. Way more information, way easier and faster to use. And the users have responded overwhelmingly positively to it.

If you're asking if we favor our own maps properties, damn right we do. Because it is better. Were the people that made other maps products happy about it? Of course not. We didn't build it for them. We built if for our users.

As a part of any online maps product, users want to use it to find information tied to the locations and businesses they are looking at. We call this places. We realized we needed to build something so that we could serve up this information in a highly integrated way, because we believed users wanted a unified experience. So we spent a ton of money, and we built out our maps product with Place information. Business hours, phone numbers, pictures, and reviews. We tried to partner on reviews. It didn't work out. So we built our own review system.

And it is brilliant, consumers love it. Maps and Places absolutely blow away anything else that exists in terms of ease of use and functionality and richness of information. It is one of our greatest feats. Again, consumers love it.

Were existing business directories and review sites happy about it? Of course not. We didn't build it for them, we built if for our users.

Maps, and Places, and Product Search -- they are all part of search. They are all part of finding information, and answers. And that is what we do, and we'll continue to push forward on that front. Because that is what consumers want.

Perceived arrogance doesn't go over too well in these type of hearings.

Yeah you really don't want to give them an emotional reason to come after you.

> Maps, and Places, and Product Search -- they are all part of search.

That's a very relevant point, but it also sounds at least superficially similar to Microsoft's "the browser is part of the OS" argument, which generally seems to be a failure. That case has been referenced several times in this hearing; it's clearly front of mind.

No, that meme is wrong, it's not similar. You bought Windows and Microsoft bundled IE with it, you didn't by Google you use it, Google is Google's. And no one says that search must be just the 10 links and nothing more.

Your reasoning is flawed!

Microsofts case would have been (or should have been) bolstered if their next largest competitors were all doing exactly the same things. All Google has to do to point out that these things are a natural part of search is point at Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, etc -- and look for maps, places, condensed information and answers served up directly.

Microsoft was hamstrung by not having any competitors doing the same thing. It makes it more difficult to make that argument.

Good point. Schmidt mentioned that competitors have similar features, but I didn't connect the idea that they're all doing very similar things, which they probably are, with the idea that those features are part of any complete search product.

You could imagine Bing implementing a preference which will automatically swap in Google's Maps, News, etc. in place of home-grown versions whenever you search on Bing. If such a preference is feasible (leads to an okay user experience), it would help make the case that these ancillary features are in fact separable from basic search, and that Google ought to do the same. My guess is Google wouldn't mind that terribly.

Eric did well. What bothers me is that no reps of small businesses were in this hearing, it just seems like one big corporation is shilling a fight against another.

Welcome to Washington.

If you're asking if we favor our own maps properties, damn right we do.

That sound bite would be taken out of context, and the game would be over for Google.

Isn't the fact that Google Maps appear at the top of any results page that might be location related the smoking gun evidence?

It's an obvious truth. I understand the need for diplomacy, but acknowledging the obvious and then explaining A) Why you do it, and B) Why you're entitled to do it just seems like the right answer. Or at least more right than saying you don't do it, and acting kind of ashamed about it.

Obviously I was facetious with my overly Jobsian approach, but I'd like to see a little more upfrontness about it.

Of course we do it. Here's why.

Whatever else it may be, your Steve Jobsulator is pitch perfect.

no, the google maps thing isn't a ranked search result, it's a onebox result

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-onebox-resul...

To the end result it looks the same though. In fact many of my non-techie friends click on adverts thinking they are the search results. Either the ads are too good or thhat they are very well placed.

Disagree. Eric Schmidt is being very careful and respectful, knowing that his quotes will be taken apart later, and it's hard when you have congressmen some of which with their own agendas who want to show their constituents that they are asking Google the tough questions and are not afraid to take action.

Whenever I see a person and think, "man, that would be really hard for me to do, and I am a CEO!" I think they are doing an excellent job.

I would say that a programmer's carefulness is serving him well here. Even though he's not one, as far as I know. :)

Eric Schmidt is no longer a programmer, but he was one of the authors of lex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_(software)

> Even though he's not one, as far as I know. :)

He is one of the authors of Lex if that helps :)

I hope the politicians don't confuse plain old search result rankings with smart searches.

http://www.google.com/landing/searchtips/

When I enter "1+1" into Google, I expect back "2", not a link to a calculator website. When I enter a street address, I want the first result to be a map, not a link to a mapping website. When I enter a stock symbol, I want the current stock price at the top of the results, not a link to a slow loading website.

Google has had these smart search results since day one and the functionality keeps expanding much to the displeasure of some companies. One could argue that this is an example of Google "favouring" its own services, but as a consumer, that's what I expect and that's why I keep using Google! I don't want links, I want answers. Bing likes to talk about being a "decision engines", but Google did it first.

at D9: According to eric at D9, these are the top consumer companies 1-4-the gang of four(appl,google,amazon,facebook) 5-6(paypal,twitter) Schmidt said he believes Microsoft is “not driving the consumer revolution.” He doesn’t count Microsoft’s Xbox business because it’s “not a platform at the computational level.”

today before congress: Microsoft's Bing has continued to gain in popularity, perhaps because it comes pre-installed as the search default on over 70 percent of new computers sold. Microsoft's Bing is the exclusive search provider for Yahoo! and Facebook. Microsoft recently signed a deal for Bing to power English language search on the fast-rising Chinese search engine Baidu, which Baidu has acknowledged will help it become more competitive in markets outside of China. In addition to Internet Explorer, Microsoft has integrated Bing into its popular gaming console, the Xbox 360, which it is in talks with cable companies to convert into the set-top box of the future. Microsoft?s Bing launched in June 2009 and has grown so rapidly that some commentators have speculated that it could overtake Google as early as 2012.

Indeed, but one is comparing the consumer tech market as a whole and the other is just in the search market, so this isn't apples to apples (so to speak), no?

when bing alone can challenge google's core business, isn't putting the whole microsoft after twitter and paypal as a consumer tech company silly?

Really? Microsoft does:

Bing -- second largest search engine

XBox -- one of the largest gaming platforms, including Indie games.

Windows -- most popular consumer OS

Halo -- one of the most popular game franchises ever

Kinect -- hottest selling consumer electronics gadget ever

Windows Live Messenger -- most popular IM platform in the world

Hotmail -- one of the largest email sites in the world

IE -- one of the most popular web browsers in the world

Metro -- one of the most interesting consumer UIs currently available

And all this puts them behind -- Twitter? Really?

I guess that's the whole problem, Microsoft wants to be everything to everybody.

Now just compare the same with Apple. They don't have 1/10th the product line as Microsoft and are still more successful.

Focus is important here, when you do so many things and none of them properly you are ultimately in a situation where all your products are weak quality wise. There are always better alternatives in the market and people will feel compelled to switch to them. Imagine this happening with most of your products. Ultimately the whole ecosystem gets weaker.

Even though your numbers may be looking good due to volume, that doesn't tell the whole story. Slowly your competitors one by one will drive you out of the market.

Now just compare the same with Apple. They don't have 1/10th the product line as Microsoft and are still more successful.

The Apple comparison is a red herring. Apple is unique, not only to the computer industry, but virtually all industries. No other company has risen so quickly, from so low, on a few products.

To put it another way, if you take Apple out of the equation, MS appears favorable to just about every other company in the industry. From SAP, to HP, to Google, to Facebook, to Twitter, to EA, to DropBox, to Oracle.

So.. who is the asshole, sitting behind (visible to the left of) the ex-FTC commissioner, that's constantly laughing, shaking his head, and rolling his eyes at what she's saying?

He is extremely irritating.

He keeps staring at the camera, I almost wonder who is paying him to be there making those actions. I would bet a 6 pack of beer he is a paid lobbyist.

I noticed that, too. Not only did I find that annoying, I think it was disrespectful.

I wouldn't be surprised either. I'd like to know how do spectator get access to the room? Can anyone show up to a hearing like this?

Placing someone would be hard, involving knowing where the cams are and how to position yourself and getting there first.

The lack of eloquence and understanding by those congresspeople is very, very disappointing.

Mr. Schmidt answered those questions in an excellent manner.

The racetrack analogy was particularly unnerving.

I disagree that he did a good job answering questions. For instance, I have no idea what it means to "game the system" from his description, nor do I understand the consequences if someone were to game it.

How about instead, "If we told everyone our algorithm, when someone searches for this event, it wouldn't be an issue of whether or not your questions or my answers hold the first position, but whether or not the first 100 results are for Viagra or Cialis."

Did anyone else notice that Al Franken was almost entirely incomprehensible? I'm happy that Schmidt has the presence and patience to pleasantly attempt to correct these scary misinterpretations.

The antitrust regulator just asked about sending in a third party to review google's search algorithm. Haha. Hahahahaa.

Not a chance.

And why not?

Google could put up a lot of resistance but if the government wants something bad enough they generally get it. The other option is not to do business in that particular country, and for google that option is not on the table.

Not sure if it was the GP's point, but it seems incredibly naive to think that the search algorithm itself is such that someone can just go in and "look" at it and gain any meaningful understanding. Even assuming Google is guilty of outright manipulation there's never going to be a smoking gun of "if(website == google) rank = rank +1, it is going to be an abstract machine learning algorithm with hundreds of inputs and dozens of outputs, all themselves the results of complex statistical properties gleaned from the web. There would be zero insight available to any mere mortal who might gain access to the code driving it.

I'm going to get burned for this comment but ...

Microsoft has had a desktop monopoly for 20 years. They have 90% desktop market share and people don't complain about that. They destroyed their competition yet people complain because Google has 65% market share on a product that people can leave overnight. I'm not sure why people get bent out of shape over Google.

People did complain and Microsoft did have anti-trust case brought about them and a set of behavioral limitations imposed.

> Microsoft has had a desktop monopoly for 20 years. They have 90% desktop market share and people don't complain about that

You don't count being fined billions of dollars over that monopoly, being forced by governments to make changes to Windows to help competitors, and being sued by several state governments and others as people complaining!?

People have complained about Microsoft's monopoly at great length. They had an anti-trust case successfully brought against them in the US and similar cases overseas. It's an issue that people are very much aware of.

That aside, the department of justice could (if they hadn't already won against Microsoft) bring two suits simultaneously. The need to investigate one company doesn't stop you from investigating the other.

It's all political, all grandstandings, and an overall a welfare operation for antitrust lawyers. There is not issue here to start with.

We need more technically savvy congresspeople.

Maybe we should start electing websites as our representatives.

Last I checked it wasn't possible to switch the default search engine on Android phones (whether it was set to Google or otherwise). Is this still the case? I couldn't find anything conclusive in my searching.

From what I understand that is an issue with the Telcom, not with Google.

I don't see an option for it, but you can replace the entire home screen app (though maybe not if your carrier has locked it?), which could accomplish the same thing if there was a good bing-based home screen out there.

I'm not sure what you mean. You can't try a new widget instead of the Google Search one? Or are you saying that widget should allow you to switch to Bing?

I think generally this is a very simple thing to do, by installing a widget for another search engine for instance. Also once you install Chrome on the desktop you get a choice of Google, Bing, or Yahoo as your default.

Seems to me that one way you can tell Google has competition is the facebook.com/cspan tag at the bottom of the screen.

Huh? Google doesn't really compete in hosted company pages -- at least not until yesterday.

Yes, I find it odd that Google gets so much attention while Facebook never rates a mention. I find Facebook way more creepy and actually much harder to switch away from - I can use bing any day of the week and the results are comparable. I can use G+ today and the results are useless. To my mind there has to be some recognition of whether a "monopoly" is due to exploitation of natural barriers to entry or not, and Google seems one of the least problematic in this regard.

They keep pounding the same misconceptions again and again in endless repetition, and I can't help but wonder, who hired these guns? (that's not to say that some of their arguments don't hold water, but they are going to incredible lengths to cast Google as a monopoly, why?)

The cynic in me doubts that the cause is a lack of understanding.

Jeff Katz (NexTag) is slamming Google right now for copying his business.

Yelp is up now.

I can't wait until he starts talking about why Google is bad, I wonder if any one knows about Yelp's "pay us for advertising or you'll have your good reviews deleted" policy.

This was my first thought as well. I completely disagree with him that Yelp would not have been able to start up right now. Google would have helped drive traffic to yelp now just as it did then. Edit: I think I remember it being "join Yelp so you can delete the bad reviews".

I really thought he was going to talk about how he couldn't create Yelp now because of Google buying Zagat but it seemed like his entire point was "Google is evil."

I'm glad the person currently speaking who actually understands technology (seemingly) and worked on antitrust law suits knows what she's saying.

Yelp's own actions notwithstanding, it is quite true that Google has pulled some questionable moves and is clearly attempting to drive traffic to their own products.

Not that I like Yelp however ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Why shouldn't Google attempt to drive traffic to their own products? If I write two books, should I be able to recommend one in the other? How is this any different?

except perhaps at great effort and expense, you can't gain a monopoly over books on a given topic, and once someone has transferred all of the information out of your book into their mind by reading it, the book has no enduring value to them.

the analogy is more like that of a car manufacturer gaining 90% market share, designing the interface between it and its seats to be proprietary (and preventing other manufacturers from learning about it except through a business agreement with them), then getting into the seat business and making it clear that third-party seat manufacturers make inferior products.

I guess he just did an interview with the WSJ

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190337400457658...

Holy shit, they're are hammering down on Eric Schmidt accusing Google of tampering with search results and what not for pretty dumb reasons imho. Seems really unfair to me.

They expect him to be able to say "We know that we are not tampering with search results because of x, y, and z"--a strong statement--instead of "Search is a magic box that is imperfect. Shrug?" which is kinda what he said.

Something that kind of irked me about Jeremy Stoppelman's testimony: He failed to mention that Yelp provides an API and, in essence, gives away their data.

If Google was consuming their API (vs. scraping content directly from their site), would this even be an issue?

Let's assume, hypothetically, that Google used the API provided by Yelp to enhance their search results. If Yelp said, "We don't like what you're doing, so stop because we said so", I feel that it would totally be within Googles rights to say, "Fine, we no longer wish to do business with you and will exclude you from our index".

Of course, I'm not entirely sure what the Yelp API of 2010 looked like, nor have I read their TOS. However, I still feel that Stoppelman's testimony did more to remove my desire to ever use Yelp than it did to convince me that Google is this big evil monopoly that's destroying the little guy.

http://www.yelp.com/developers/getting_started/api_terms http://www.yelp.com/developers/getting_started/display_requi... http://www.yelp.com/static?p=tos

"5. Restrictions

You agree that you will not, and will not assist or enable others to:

...

B. modify the Yelp Content, or use it to update or create your own database of business listing information;"

"As between you and Yelp, you own Your Content. We own the Yelp Content, including but not limited to visual interfaces, interactive features, graphics, design, compilation, computer code, products, software, aggregate user review ratings, and all other elements and components of the Site excluding Your Content, User Content and Third Party Content. We also own the copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade names, and other intellectual and proprietary rights throughout the world ("IP Rights") associated with the Yelp Content and the Site, which are protected by copyright, trade dress, patent, trademark laws and all other applicable intellectual and proprietary rights and laws. As such, you may not modify, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works or adaptations of, publicly display or in any way exploit any of the Yelp Content in whole or in part except as expressly authorized by us."

republishing of Yelp's content, except as allowed by its Terms of Use, Terms of Service, and Display Requirements, is against the terms of your agreement with Yelp, and illegal. even though someone grants you an API to remix their data, their intellectual property rights to that data are not waived.

Agree; this strikes me as a kind of anti-trust theater, with two companies that didn't have the foresight to build their own independent branding strategy (nextag) or actually innovate in local search (yelp) complaining about how they are suffering from their own bad business decisions. They put all their eggs in one basket. Whose fault is that? Not Google's!!

Susan Creighton knows her shit.

She is smart, but she did skate around the question of scraping. They asked whether Google had scraped content, but instead she attempted to change the question to whether or not it is scraping when they show the excerpt about the site in results - not whether they had scraped Yelp reviews.

I think that's the crux of it though. Of course Google does scraping. They'll even give you a full cache of a page if you ask for it.

A cache is a bit different though I think - that is a reference. The Yelp case was them using content in their own competing product and then not representing the source clearly.

I deal with this as an affiliate all the time. I don't mind Google cacheing my web pages to increase our search ranking and help drive traffic to our site. However, if Google made a competing site about the same products and then took our reviews to use in that site without our permission, then I would have a major problem.

I'm not in favor of regulating Google, but I am in favor of some discipline and guidelines being laid down. The government clearly cannot decide how this should work, but I think Google is responsible enough to know that things need to be adjusted and just how much is needed.

Not representing it clearly? When the places pages included Yelp reviews it would put the top review with a link to "View more reviews on Yelp" and very clearly had a Yelp logo next to it. Same with TripAdvisor reviews. Now the places page is only showing Google reviews with "Reviews from around the web"

Is there a recording available?

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/301681-1

It's also available from senate.gov: http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=3d9031b4...

For once Google are being honest and the others are being slimey. In one image they covered the sponsored ads in a box which hid the fact there is a clear differentiation between Sponsored and algorithmic results, they also say "Ads".

>For once Google are being honest and the others are being slimey.

For once? I hardly get the impression that Google is slimy and duplicitous, and their competition not so.

They still haven't open sourced Android 3.0, in which they said they would never release that part of Apache licensed code to the public.

So there could then be a possibility, again be hidden APIs so that their tablet app offerings could be better than others.

I personally think that, if you claim open source, some should be able to obtain the code if they are using the software itself. I clearly don't think a normal android tablet user would reasonably grab a copy of that source code.

Do you have a reason to believe the source code will not be released for Ice Cream Sandwich?

If ICS would run nicely on tablets, it would have some meaning.

It sounds like both questions and answers are scripted.

Edit: that was my impression in the beginning of that show. After warming up the questions became deeper and more interesting.

Watch the recording here: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/OversightofG

Also available here: http://sunlightfoundation.com/live/

> "Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp and also a witness at today's hearing, said otherwise. He said Google demanded that Yelp comply with Google demands to be included in Google's search engine, including providing its content to Google."

Is that quoted out of context? If not, that sounds worrying.

From Jeremy Stoppelman's written testimony, as posted on Yelp's blog (here: http://officialblog.yelp.com/2011/09/seeking-a-level-playing...):

"In 2010, Google began incorporating the content that it indexed from its competitors into Google Local without permission. Although Google had previously acknowledged that it needed a license to use Yelp’s content, it was now using it without permission to prop up its own, less effective product. In some instances, Google even presented this content to its users as if it were its own. [See Exhibit C]

Google’s Offers a False Choice

In response to our objections, Google informed us that it would cease the practice only if we agreed to be removed from Google’s web search index, thereby preventing Yelp from appearing anywhere in Google web search results. This, of course, was a false choice. Google’s dominant position in the market prevents services like Yelp from exercising any sort of meaningful choice in the matter: it is a choice between allowing Google to co-opt one’s content and not competing at all."

That sounds evil.

Google Places is just another search engine but specifically for places (aka restaurants and stores). It used to be the case that it will aggregate all reviews from multiple review sites and show snippets of the reviews and then have a corresponding link for them to click on to go to the real site.

So in a sense, it's really just another search engine again, no different than the universal Google search, image search, product search, and etc. It's using the same indexed data but presented in two forms. Yelp wanted Google to remove them from product search and not universal search. This is why the google lawyer said this requires extra engineering. Yelp basically wants one thing and not another.

If you do a product search now, of course, you don't see any Yelp links at all (since they requested Google to remove them) and you see no snippets from any other review sites. All you see are google's own reviews and then some links on the bottom showing show more reviews from other sites. This was changed - and I think it makes it worse for Yelp and other review sites - but they wanted it this way.

Is this not similar to "Free-to-Air" TV stations promoting their own shows rather than competing stations shows.

Seems identical given the fact they both generate revenue from advertising, are "anti-competitive", and free (to the viewer of ads)

Senator: "Ok Mr. Schmidth, tell me what I`m thinking."

Simply put, IMHO what needs to happen is Google needs to be pushed to stop blatantly favoring it's own properties vs. others. At the same time, it cannot become so regulated as to become a utility.

Ms. Creighton is claiming that competition needs to flourish - one important aspect is that competition in an ecosystem you control falls under this statement.

Senator, you have so many hypothetical !

For fuck's sake senator Blumenthal just asked if Google "Has ever scraped content?" !!

Of course not, it's all user submitted.

That had a very specific meaning in context. He was asking if Google used Yelp's content to build its Places content, in which case Google would be using its capacity as a Search company in order to grant its Places division a competitive (anti-competitive?) advantage against Yelp. If simultaneously it can be shown that Search was favoring bringing attention to Places over Yelp, there might be an anti-trust case.

There's a lot of posts on here about how uninformed the politicians seem to be. We seem to forget that _we're_ the ones who are uninformed of the vast technicality that is anti-trust law and the oceans of oratorical precision required in order to establish a legal case.

He asked both question, that was a separate one in general meaning. As for Google showing snippets of Yelp or anyone else that is still lawful, the whole search business is built of snippets and fair use.

again, you're using 'snippets' out of context and taking the letter of the politician's word at the expense of his intent.

These senators seemed ignorant about pretty much everything involved.

And as for Mr. Schmidt he should have started by saying that Google is free, it's free for users and for those wanting to be indexed by them so they don't owe any self proclaim competitors anything.

What's new? It reminds me of the dog and pony shows with Enron and Goldman. These guys aren't skilled at anything other than pandering to the elderly.

They actually just did. They argued that Google is free, and there's nothing to prevent users from using a different search engine. The argument seems to be that a large market share does not constitute monopoly power. In order for monopoly power to exist, there have to be barriers preventing users from switching search providers.

> In order for monopoly power to exist, there have to be barriers preventing users from switching search providers.

That is incorrect. A "monopoly" is simply having a large enough control over the market that you dictate how others access that market. Monopolies are not illegal. Google does have a monopoly on search, Schmidt admitted that much today by saying they are "in the area" of having one.

Abusing your monopoly power is however illegal, and that's what Google is being investigated for.

> Abusing your monopoly power is however illega

However the principle that underwrites all of it is harm to the consumer. If you can't prove harm then it is hard to justify action. If consumers are choosing the monopoly provider willingly with zero compulsion by factors other than that it serves them well then you have a good argument that the monopoly is not harming the consumer.

The best argument would be that the purchasers of advertising are harmed because Google's ad prices are bolstered by their monopoly on search. However even there, Google uses a quite transparent and open bidding system for ads. They have no direct control over what people pay, they don't set their own prices - Google only shows ads at the prices people voluntarily bid. This doesn't put them in the clear but it makes it pretty hard to prove they are gouging or any of the other obvious signs of a monopoly abusing their power.

Eric Schmidt: I am not a cook.

So who cooks the algo Eric?

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