Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2011 as an opinion piece. It predates later antitrust outcomes on this issue, such as the European Commission’s 2017 Google Shopping fine and the 2024 US ruling on Google search. Google’s moves into comparison and travel, and Bing and Yahoo as alternatives, reflect 2011.
Google has been accused countless times of bias in its search engine, that is, of showing unfair, subjective results in the top positions of its search rankings. Google is also accused of altering the search rankings, pushing down some websites that could compete with its own services.
Google is accused of monopolistic practices and of using its dominant position in this market to its own advantage. To understand these accusations, we first need to understand how the search engine works.
How does Google search work?
When someone runs a search, at the top of the results (in the first positions) we find several paid results, that is, from people who have bid to appear in those first positions. The more money you’re willing to pay, the more likely you are to appear there.
The rest are natural results: the results that Google’s algorithm identifies as the most relevant to the user. In every search, some website has to appear in position number 1 and others in position 11, 20 or 275. Clearly, whoever appears first is very happy with how Google’s algorithm treats them, and whoever appears near the bottom won’t be very happy with Google and will feel they’ve been treated unfairly.
Many of these companies turn to the well-known SEO techniques, ranking techniques for getting their page into the top search results quickly. Sometimes these companies use legitimate techniques and climb fast. Other times, they use techniques to trick Google’s algorithm. Sometimes that doesn’t work and the website is penalised; other times it does work, but after a manual review Google’s engineers detect the fraudulent techniques and the pages are penalised just the same. In that case, the unfairness feels even greater for these companies, because they’ll struggle to rank well on Google, and their only option will be to pay to appear in a visible position in the search results.
Where’s the problem, and why the accusation against Google?
Google is accused of misleading users, because when users search online they regard the company in first position as more important than the one in position 23. What’s more, users rarely go past the second page of search results.
Seen this way, you could say that position 40 might hold the ideal offer for the product we were looking for, while in first position we’d find a company with a higher price and lower quality than the one in position 40. Why is it in first place when the product is bad and the quality dreadful? Very simple: because it paid to be there.
That fact alone already creates some dissatisfaction among users.
Other companies accuse Google of treating them badly in search because they compete with Google itself. Say a new online video site feels annoyed because YouTube ranks ahead of it in the search engine.
Why are people afraid of Google now?
When we say that a company that isn’t on the internet simply doesn’t exist, that’s not entirely true. Rather, your company needs to be on more than just the internet: it needs a visible position on Google, because that’s the search engine most internet users choose.
What people now fear about Google is that it’s moving into new businesses, such as direct product comparison in Google Shopping and, more recently, the world of travel agencies. Airlines can lose a lot of money if they don’t make it into the top results of Google’s comparison.
Suppose Google penalised certain companies
Now suppose Google penalised companies that compete directly with Google services. Imagine for a moment that YouTube2 is born, and Google thinks it could compete with its own video portal, so it manually pushes it down the search results.
Is it unfair for Google to promote its own products by giving them a better position in the search results than its competitors’ products? Should Google be forced, or can it be forced, not to alter its search results so as to make room for its competitors?
Clearly, this demand goes against what business schools teach you (crush your competition). If I were the chairman of Carrefour, could I force El Corte Inglés (Spain’s leading department store chain) to advertise me in its own stores? Would El Corte Inglés be obliged to let me set up my own clothing shops in its departments without paying it anything in return?
People use Google’s search engine freely. Nobody is obliged to use Google; we choose it because it’s the search engine with the best quality. The search engine belongs to Google, so Google can use it as a shop window to promote its own services, and that doesn’t violate anyone’s freedom. If anything, asking it to do the opposite is what violates Google’s freedom.
Is it unfair to me that I can’t compete with Google’s services? Of course it is. Is it an injustice? Honestly, I don’t think so, because if you’re not happy with what Google offers you, you can always turn to Bing or Yahoo.
What many people find hard to understand is that Google is a business, and like any business owner, I’d look for ways to make it profitable. Is everything that appears on television the best on the market? Clearly not, but on television, just as on Google, the company that pays gets more visibility. Why does nobody accuse a TV channel of not advertising their company while advertising another company that paid for it? The answer is obvious, and yet it seems Google is being asked to become the internet’s pushover.
I remember doing internet searches before Google arrived. Searching for “flats in Murcia”, the top results would show “apartments in Barcelona”, “vehicles in Madrid” and “restaurants in Valencia”. Nobody put enough time into the number one business in the history of technology, and now many people want a slice of a cake they haven’t earned.
As always in these cases, this article reflects my personal opinion, and I’m open to criticism of my position.
Featured image: Marcin Wichary from San Francisco, Calif., CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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