Google under scrutiny over search dominance

Deplore : other companies don't own/sell as much of your personal informations as Google does.

Can anyone explain to me why a company can be sued for promoting its own products within its services (e.g. Google promoting its own stuff, Microsoft bundling IE with Windows), but nobody has ever complained about, say, a grocery store pushing its own food brands, or a dozen other examples of companies doing the same exact thing?

What right does a government have telling a company it's too successful?

One thing people forget is the fact that a search engine's customer base isn't only made of net users doing searches. It's also made of webmasters. And the truth is that webmasters have no choice but becoming slaves of Google if they want to get a better trafic for their websites. This allow Google to shape the Internet to its liking, by forcing its rules upon all the webmasters of the planet. That's pretty sick if you ask me.

About bloody time! Surely I am not the only one who is sick of search engines( not just google) TELLING me what they want me to look at instead of what I was SEARCHING FOR!

Take the SOBs down a few pegs, they need it!

Ahem, for those who think Google isn't a big problem, think again. Google (the search site) is innocent to many because of its spartan interface. In otherwords, it gets out of the way and allows people to search. What many (especially the non-techie crowd) do not realize is that the innocence ends there.

They (Google) have a lock on your personal information and while they offer lot of services for free, remember, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The company sells your personal information to the highest bidder and also monetizes what they give away for free via advertisements which are based on your personal information that it has managed to mine whenever you utilize their services. The more personal information you knowingly or unknowingly provide, the better profile they are able to build of you which makes it attractive to advertisers. Example; any personal information contained in your gmail messages instantly becomes valuable information (who your friends are, your personal opinions on things, what kind of things you may have bought such as if you use your gmail address to send confirmations when ordering something online, your real name/address/phone number, etc. Upload photos to Picasaweb and they can figure out your interests including travel habits. With Google+, it will be even more invasive since they insist on users providing even more granular information.

Their search engine scrapes peoples/sites content and uses that to wrap their ads around (and they have loopholes to get around the robots.txt exclusion). And while the company makes claims of tweaking their algorithms to provide the best results, it is no secret that the results can be rigged (this is why search engine optimization is such a big business and why there are private forums where users swap and share techniques including setting up a whole bunch of fake sites with the sole purpose of boosting their ranking in order to rake in fat paychecks from adsearch)

Brian Hall who is a mobile/smartphone analyst ranted about Google back in August about how it goes about abusing its power in search... I know fandroids who dislike Apple will take issue with lot of his points but he does highlight and make it known that Google's "don't be evil" motto is a bunch of crock. For those who want a somewhat entertaining read, see the following.

http://brianshall.com/content/google-are-pussies

@ Dennis Bauer: The last time i check, apple the koolaind giver is the only one crying about everything and suit everyone on sight!!

Apple is worse than Microsoft!

but i guess you already drink your koolaid!

Notice there's no monopoly. What's the problem? Here's the problem: For many decades, a solid business plan has been to lobby congress to punish companies that are more successful than yours, under the guise of anti monopoly laws.

You don't need to have 100% of the market to hold a monopoly. Look at the concessions Microsoft had to make to EU anti-trust regulators, and there are and were clearly other OS and browser options.

Google IS much better than Yahoo or Bing, though - Bing flat out doesn't work in Japanese.

“The competition is only one click away,” he said.

Right, as Groupon and Myspace have well found out. Groupon missed out on what was billed as their billion-dollar IPO by a tad and now it will never happen - the business model has been snapped up by countless local newspapers and even Amazon, and it's only a matter of time before the company disappears entirely.

Google knows this; they offer superior products for free, a stunning range of them, and this keeps their customer base loyal. The minute they falter, though, they're gone. The barriers to entry in Cyperspace are very, very minimal.

Google gives me the best results, but here is a problem.

If you search for images of let's say Donkey. It will tell you there are million of pictures, but when you zoom through the listed pages, no way are they showing you all of them. It stops. I want to know how to continue seeing everything that is out there. I need it for my business.

Aside from Yahoo and Bing.. there should be NEW companies coming up, competition is what increases inovation, whatever happened to Excite and Altavista, they still exist but now rely on Google search!

Google's also having problems in Italy and S. Korea where their offices were raided by the authorities.

According to the tracking firm comScore, Google accounted for 64.8% of U.S. search market share in August followed by Yahoo! with 16.3%

Notice there's no monopoly. What's the problem? Here's the problem: For many decades, a solid business plan has been to lobby congress to punish companies that are more successful than yours, under the guise of anti monopoly laws. It's been happening for at least a hundred years.

Yahoo and Bing realize they can't compete, so they are lobbying the government to step in the help them gain some market share.

Stick to your guns, Google.

M$ the monpolist is crying faul, funny :p

They only discovered that now...

As I am not familiar with law, antitrust law looks somewhat weird for me. 64.8% of the U.S. search market share can't be considered illegal monopoly. As for Microsoft, I've heard that they are prohibited from setting their own browser as default on their own OS. I can't find any problems.

Google AdWords is a horrendous rip-off.

The consumer decides which service is the most reliable and infomative, Google for me is both of these,but . Competition keeps everyone on their toes

Why is google the enemy? I would fear apple more, they have a monopoly on music and video sales, plus portable music players.

It's very simple :Google's search engine is still superior to Yahoo or Bing.

God forbid a business become too successful.