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Comment by onemorepassword | Hacker News Reader

Try finding a video that isn't on YouTube without specifying the property in the search.

If YouTube videos rank highly because Google is pushing them up, that's a problem. If YouTube videos rank highly because people like YouTube, that's not a problem.

Likewise, if someone has an official YouTube page and doesn't have an official page on some other video site, putting their official YouTube page at the top of the list of results is preferable from a user point of view.

If the real problem is that Google controls the 'best' video site, address that problem directly instead of trying to sway users by manipulating search results. If YouTube really is 'the best' then users won't stay away no matter what search results they get.

Seems to work fine with a test search for [gangnam style]; the results page shows five videos, and only one is from YouTube: http://i.imgur.com/zv0TsRH.png

Now do a video search. Note the difference.

The top few are PSY's official channel and official videos, followed by videos on dailymotion, mtviggy, and jibjab. Paging through, I'd say about half of the results are from YouTube, mostly "how to dance gangnam style" home videos.

I don't see anything obviously wrong with these results.

Why is this bad? If I put an address in Google, I expect a Google Map. I don't want them to send me to MapQuest.

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